The Hidden Connolly 15

In March 2003 more of James Connolly‘s writings appeared in Issue 15 for the first time in over a century.

A Socialist Candidate for Dublin Corporation

[The Workers’ Republic, October 22 1898]

The Irish Socialist Republican Party have resolved to enter the electoral field with at least one candidate of their own in the forthcoming elections under the Local Government Act. We must, therefore, beg leave to avail ourselves of this opportunity to place before the Irish public our reasons for taking such a step, as well as to indicate wherein the policy presented by such a candidate will differ, if at all, from other parties in the field.

The Socialist Republican Party, whilst keeping steadily before its members and sympathisers the necessity for broader and more sweeping changes than any municipality can effect, whilst ever emphasising the need for a thorough re-organisation of society itself on a scientific and just basis, has yet never lost sight of the clamant needs of the moment or ignored the immediately practical measures which might be enforced in the interest of the workers. On the contrary, it has ever claimed that the greatest and most irrefutable charge which can be brought to bear against our civic rulers in the past and present is that they, equally with the alien government of our country, have neglected to take such steps to safeguard human life from the greed of property owners as might have been taken, even within the limits of our iniquitous property system. In accordance with this claim we have consistently advocated many measures for sweetening the lot of the toilers and for humanising the conditions under which the poor travail. Needless to say the fact that every measure at all likely to operate in favour of the workers embodied the principle of public or collective ownership or control, or in other words the spirit of Socialism, has at all times acted as a stimulus to our propaganda. We know that the lot of the toilers and the spread of our principles are so inextricably linked that no power can ameliorate the former without bearing witness to the latter—and knowing it we act accordingly. Our candidate will, therefore, take his stand unflinchingly upon the basic principles of Socialism, and the fact of his stand thereon will be the pledge of his fidelity to the interests of the working class.

We have already declared our attitude toward the Labour Electoral Association, lately formed by the Trades’ bodies,¹ but it cannot be empha­sised too often that we are in thorough accord with that movement, regard­ing it as rather the main body of that army of Labour of which we are the pioneers rather than as a distinct party. We are in the van and, believing that in the stress of conflict with our mutual foes the main body will be forced to our side, we see no necessity for moderating our uncompromising attitude to make the junction easier. It is inevitable—that is enough. Provided there be honesty on both sides.

On one question, and on one question only, can there be said to be a fundamental difference of opinion. The Labour Electoral Association declares it is not a political body. We are. We are Socialist Republicans, seeking the application of republican or democratic principles to the indus­trial or social life of the community, and therefore resolutely determined to apply those principles to public life at every step of our advance towards the ideal. Our candidate, if elected, will, therefore, act in the Corporation as an avowed enemy of royalty, and of aristocratic rule in all its shapes and forms.

He will lose no opportunity for demonstrating to the world at large the firm and unquenchable desire of Irishmen to attain their freedom, national as well as economic, and, whilst fighting and exposing sham nationalists and middle class Home Rulers, he will recognise that it would be the reverse of a gain to replace them by the representatives of a West British faction.

But at some future time our candidate will in propria persona propound his views both to the electors and to the Labour Electoral Association, whose official endorsement we intend to seek.

Meanwhile, as this candidature will now certainly be proceeded with at all hazards, we call on all members and sympathisers to rally up and help in the necessary work.

The Socialist Republicans of Ireland step at last from the domain of theory into the realm of practice. The Class War enters upon its final politi­cal expression.

Comrades: To your post.²

Home Thrusts

[The Workers’ Republic, May 1899]

Here we are again.³

And although the phrase—beloved of the children watching with gaping mouths the antics of a circus clown—may seem a trifle too suggestive for some of our sensitive readers, we venture to think it has in this instance an appositeness most peculiarly its own.

Here we are again; the cause of amusement to those whose conscience our pleasant satires leave untouched, and the cause of mental writhing to the herd of mummers on the stage of life who feel our shafts ripping open their disguises, or exposing their tricks to the ridicule of the world.

As it is the function of the jester to laugh others out of their follies by an assumption of folly on his own part, so it is the function of “Spailpín” to reveal the shortcomings of the political hucksters, by assuming the role of a huckster himself.

A huckster? Yes! On this front page “Spailpín” carries on the trade of buying and selling, and the veriest tyro in that art knows that the first requisite for driving a good bargain is to depreciate the value of your rivals’ goods, whilst extolling the merits of your own.

Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, countrymen and women, Romans, and lovers, lend me thine ears.

My own are not long enough; whereas—

Room for the Daily Nation. This broad-minded organ has declared against the Filippinos.⁴ Hence we may now consider their cause as indeed hopeless. But worse than all: that newspaper now declares the insurgents to be “almost as degraded as the wretches who formed a provisional govern­ment for Paris during the Commune of 1871.”

Now just think of that. Those degraded wretches of the Commune held Paris for three months without the aid of policemen or detectives and yet, according to the testimony of many foreigners who then resided in that city, Paris was never so free from crime, life and property were never so safe.

They held the Bank of France in their power all that time, and yet left its treasures untouched; no one, not even their greatest enemy, has ever instanced a single case in which a member of the provisional Government of the Paris Commune enriched himself as a result of his political position.

Of what Irish political leaders of the present day can the same be said? Certainly not of the political chiefs of the Daily Nation.

The Commune, if it had been successful, would have inaugurated the reign of real freedom the world over—it would have meant the emancipa­tion of the working class; therefore as it failed it serves as a mark for all the literary prostitutes who sell themselves into the service of capitalist jour­nalism. Long live the Commune! If the Filippinos are akin to the members of the Commune may their shadows never grow less.

Yes, gentlemen, what we want is a Catholic University.⁵ If we only had a Catholic University the poor ragged children who sit around the Catholic Boys’ Home in Abbey Street, or beg to find the copper necessary to procure their admission to its shelter, would have all their woes removed.

And the crowd of forlorn men and women who every night press for admission to the night refuge in Bow Street; the hungry outcasts who wait around the gates of the Mendicity;⁶ the evicted tenants patiently waiting for restoration to their homes; the broken-hearted labourers toiling their lives away for a starvation wage; the unemployed wearily tramping from insolent foremen to overbearing employers; the slum dwellers poisoned by the pestiferous air of our city tenements; the peasant mentally and physically starved on his barren mountain patch, all, all would be initiated into the delights of a happy existence—

If only we had a Catholic University.

Some of us would be satisfied with less—most of those I have men­tioned would, I think, but then they are only base plebeians, common working class people who would never see the inside of a university, anyhow.

When we speak of a university for the Catholics we don’t mean all the Catholics, but only a small portion of the whole body, viz. those who can afford to send their children to such places—shopkeepers, lawyers, gombeen men, rackrenting landlords, patriot publicans, slum proprietors, and other such bright jewels in the crown of the Church militant.

“Free Education up to the highest university grades” and, as a supple­ment to make it workable, “Free Maintenance for all children”, both planks in the Socialist Republican programme, might make the university question a popular one, but otherwise the agitation is simply bogus, a clerical-cum-capitalist dodge to divert our attention whilst a new bargain is being struck at our expense.

At least, so thinks

Spailpín.

Notes

1. After the Local Government Act 1898 gave the vote to a large section of the working class, trade unionists throughout the country formed associations to stand labour candidates in the elections. Connolly welcomed this in the editorial of the August 27 Workers’ Republic: see Collected Works II (New Books, 1988), p 227-9.
2. E W Stewart stood for the ISRP in Dublin’s North Dock Ward in January 1899, and received 448 votes, 12% of the total.
3. After the 22 October 1898 issue, The Workers’ Republic ceased publication due to the ISRP’s lack of resources.
4. There was widespread popular resistance in the Philippines to the United States, who had taken the islands from Spain the previous year.
5. Nationalist politicians were demanding a Catholic university as an equivalent of Trinity College.
6. The Mendicity Institution provided the homeless with beds for the night.