James Connolly - Irish Socialist

James Connolly – Irish Socialist
From Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, The Rebel Girl, International Publishers NY, 1979

In 1907, During the campaign to free Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone, I was invited to speak at a meeting, in Newark, New Jersey, arranged by the Socialist Labor Party. There was protest against my acceptance by the New Jersey Socialist Party, which had either not been invited to participate or had refused. I felt I should go anywhere to speak for this purpose. Our rostrum was an old wagon, set up in Washington Park. The horse was inclined to run when there was loud applause, so he was taken out of the wagon shafts. This meeting is an unforgettable event in my life because it was here I first met James Connolly, the Irish Socialist speaker, writer and labor organizer who gave his life for Irish freedom nine years later in the Easter Week Uprising of 1916 in Dublin.

At the time I refer to he worked for the Singer Sewing Machine Company of Elizabeth, New Jersey, and had a hard struggle to support his wife and six small children. He lost his job when he tried to organize a union in the plant. He was short, rather stout, a plain-looking man with a large black moustache, a very high forehead and dark sad eyes, a man who rarely smiled. A scholar and an excellent writer, his speech was marred for American audiences by his thick, North of Ireland accent, with a Scotch burr from his long residence in Glasgow. On the Washington Park occasion someone spilled a bottle of water in his hat, the only one he possessed undoubtedly, and with a wry expres-sion on his face he shook it out and dried it, but made no complaint.

Connolly and I spoke again in 1907 at an Italian Socialist meeting early one Sunday morning. I wondered then why they arranged their meetings at such an odd hour but discovered it was a substitute for church among these rabid anticlericals, and happily did not interfere with their sacred ritual of the big spaghetti and vino dinner later on. I asked Connolly: ‘Who will speak in Italian?’ He smiled his rare smile and replied, ‘We'll see. Someone, surely.’ After we had both spoken, they took a recess and gave us coffee and cake behind the scenes, a novel but welcome experience for us. Stale water was the most we got elsewhere! Then we returned to the platform and Connolly arose. He spoke beautifully in Italian to my amazement and the delight of the audience who ‘viva'd’ loudly.

Later he moved his family to Elton Avenue in the Bronx and the younger children of our families played together. Once, Patrick Quin-lan, a family friend who had left a bookcase with a glass door at Connolly's house, was horrified to find all the books on the floor and the Flynn-Connolly children playing funeral, with one child beautifully laid out in the bookcase. ‘Who's dead?’ Connolly asked. ‘Quinlan,’ they replied serenely. Needless to say, the children did not like Quinlan.

Connolly worked for the IWW and had an office at Cooper Square. He was a splendid organizer, as his later work for the Irish Transport Workers, with James Larkin, demonstrated. Although the Socialist Labor Party had invited him here in 1902 on a lecture tour and he was elected a member of their National Executive Committee, there was obvious jealousy displayed against him by their leader, Daniel De Leon, who could brook no opposition. Connolly had been one of the founders in 1896 of the Irish Socialist Republican Party in Dublin and editor of its organ. Connolly's position that the Irish Socialist Party represented a separate nation from Britain was recognized by the International Socialist Congress in 1900, and the Irish delegates were allowed to take their seats as such. When membership in the SLP became impossible for him here, he joined the Socialist Party and toured the country under its auspices. Connolly was the first person I ever heard use the expression, ‘Workers' Republic’; in fact, he is called by one biographer, ‘the Irish apostle of the Soviet idea,’ though none of us ever heard the word in those days. (Only later did I learn that Soviets first arose in the Russian Revolution of 1905.)

He felt keenly that not enough understanding and sympathy was shown by American Socialists for the cause of Ireland's national liberation, that the Irish workers here were too readily abandoned by the Socialists as ‘reactionaries’ and that there was not sufficient effort made to bring the message of socialism to the Irish-American workers. In 1907 George B. McClellan, Mayor of New York City, made a speech in which he said: ‘There are Russian Socialists and Jewish Socialists and German Socialists! But, thank God! there are no Irish Socialists!’ This was a challenge to Connolly, my father and a host of others with good Irish names, members of both the Socialist parties. They banded together as the Irish Socialist Club, later known as the Irish Socialist Federation. James Connolly was chairman and my sister Katherine was secretary. She was then 15 years old. Connolly was strong for encouraging ‘the young people.’

The Irish Socialist Federation caused great protest among the other existing federations. The others insisted we didn't need a federation because we weren't foreign-speaking. We wanted a banner we could fight under. The Unity Club required us to be too placating, too peaceful. The Federation was born one Sunday afternoon at our house in the Bronx. Connolly, Quinlan, O'Shaughnessy, Cooke, Cody, Daly, Ray, all the Flynns, were there; also our faithful Jewish friend, Sam Stodel, who was sympathetic to our proposal. But we excluded him as we feared ridicule if we included a Jew.

He went into the kitchen and said to my mother: ‘Have you any-thing for this bunch to eat?’ She confessed she had not, so he went around the corner and bought ham, cheese, corned beef, beer, crackers, etc., to feed the doughty Irish when their session was over. Nourished by Sam, we went forth to battle. The Federation arranged street meetings to show that Mayor McClellan was an ignoramus and a liar, especially in Irish neighborhoods where such meetings had never been held. It had a large green and white banner, announcing who and what it was, with the Gaelic slogan, Faugh-a-Balach (Clear the Way) in big letters surrounded by harps and shamrocks. The meetings were stormy but finally accepted at many corners. A German blacksmith comrade built the Federation a sturdy platform that could not easily be upset, with iron detachable legs that could be used as ‘shillelaghs’ in an emergency. These helped to establish order at the meetings, and won a wholesome respect for the Federation.

The Federation issued a statement of its purposes (written by James Connolly): ‘To assist the revolutionary working class movement in Ireland by a dissemination of its literature; to educate the working class Irish of this country into a knowledge of Socialist principles and to prepare them to cooperate with the workers of all other races, col-ors, and nationalities in the emancipation of labor.’ James Connolly wrote one book, Labour in Irish History, one play and many pamphlets. His extensive writings were spread out over many years in various workers' papers and magazines.

He published a monthly magazine, The Harp. Many poems from his own pen appeared. It was a pathetic sight to see him standing, poorly clad, at the door of Cooper Union or some other East Side hall, selling his little paper. None of the prosperous professional Irish, who shouted their admiration for him after his death, lent him a helping hand at that time. Jim Connolly was anathema to them because he was a ‘Socialist.’

He had no false pride and encouraged others to do these Jimmy Higgins tasks by setting an example. At the street meetings he persuaded those who had no experience in speaking to ‘chair the meeting’ as a method of training them. Connolly had a rare skill, born of vast knowledge, in approaching the Irish workers. He spoke the truth sharply and forcefully when necessary, as in the following from The Harp of November 1900:


	James Connolly – Irish Socialist From Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, The Rebel Girl, International Publishers NY, 1979 In 1907, During the campaign to free Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone, I was invited to speak at a meeting, in Newark, New Jersey, arranged by the Socialist Labor Party. There was protest against my acceptance by the New Jersey Socialist Party, which had either not been invited to participate or had refused. I felt I should go anywhere to speak for this purpose. Our rostrum was an old wagon, set up in Washington Park. The horse was inclined to run when there was loud applause, so he was taken out of the wagon shafts. This meeting is an unforgettable event in my life because it was here I first met James Connolly, the Irish Socialist speaker, writer and labor organizer who gave his life for Irish freedom nine years later in the Easter Week Uprising of 1916 in Dublin. At the time I refer to he worked for the Singer Sewing Machine Company of Elizabeth, New Jersey, and had a hard struggle to support his wife and six small children. He lost his job when he tried to organize a union in the plant. He was short, rather stout, a plain-looking man with a large black moustache, a very high forehead and dark sad eyes, a man who rarely smiled. A scholar and an excellent writer, his speech was marred for American audiences by his thick, North of Ireland accent, with a Scotch burr from his long residence in Glasgow. On the Washington Park occasion someone spilled a bottle of water in his hat, the only one he possessed undoubtedly, and with a wry expres-sion on his face he shook it out and dried it, but made no complaint. Connolly and I spoke again in 1907 at an Italian Socialist meeting early one Sunday morning. I wondered then why they arranged their meetings at such an odd hour but discovered it was a substitute for church among these rabid anticlericals, and happily did not interfere with their sacred ritual of the big spaghetti and vino dinner later on. I asked Connolly: ‘Who will speak in Italian?’ He smiled his rare smile and replied, ‘We'll see. Someone, surely.’ After we had both spoken, they took a recess and gave us coffee and cake behind the scenes, a novel but welcome experience for us. Stale water was the most we got elsewhere! Then we returned to the platform and Connolly arose. He spoke beautifully in Italian to my amazement and the delight of the audience who ‘viva'd’ loudly. Later he moved his family to Elton Avenue in the Bronx and the younger children of our families played together. Once, Patrick Quin-lan, a family friend who had left a bookcase with a glass door at Connolly's house, was horrified to find all the books on the floor and the Flynn-Connolly children playing funeral, with one child beautifully laid out in the bookcase. ‘Who's dead?’ Connolly asked. ‘Quinlan,’ they replied serenely. Needless to say, the children did not like Quinlan. Connolly worked for the IWW and had an office at Cooper Square. He was a splendid organizer, as his later work for the Irish Transport Workers, with James Larkin, demonstrated. Although the Socialist Labor Party had invited him here in 1902 on a lecture tour and he was elected a member of their National Executive Committee, there was obvious jealousy displayed against him by their leader, Daniel De Leon, who could brook no opposition. Connolly had been one of the founders in 1896 of the Irish Socialist Republican Party in Dublin and editor of its organ. Connolly's position that the Irish Socialist Party represented a separate nation from Britain was recognized by the International Socialist Congress in 1900, and the Irish delegates were allowed to take their seats as such. When membership in the SLP became impossible for him here, he joined the Socialist Party and toured the country under its auspices. Connolly was the first person I ever heard use the expression, ‘Workers' Republic’; in fact, he is called by one biographer, ‘the Irish apostle of the Soviet idea,’ though none of us ever heard the word in those days. (Only later did I learn that Soviets first arose in the Russian Revolution of 1905.) He felt keenly that not enough understanding and sympathy was shown by American Socialists for the cause of Ireland's national liberation, that the Irish workers here were too readily abandoned by the Socialists as ‘reactionaries’ and that there was not sufficient effort made to bring the message of socialism to the Irish-American workers. In 1907 George B. McClellan, Mayor of New York City, made a speech in which he said: ‘There are Russian Socialists and Jewish Socialists and German Socialists! But, thank God! there are no Irish Socialists!’ This was a challenge to Connolly, my father and a host of others with good Irish names, members of both the Socialist parties. They banded together as the Irish Socialist Club, later known as the Irish Socialist Federation. James Connolly was chairman and my sister Katherine was secretary. She was then 15 years old. Connolly was strong for encouraging ‘the young people.’ The Irish Socialist Federation caused great protest among the other existing federations. The others insisted we didn't need a federation because we weren't foreign-speaking. We wanted a banner we could fight under. The Unity Club required us to be too placating, too peaceful. The Federation was born one Sunday afternoon at our house in the Bronx. Connolly, Quinlan, O'Shaughnessy, Cooke, Cody, Daly, Ray, all the Flynns, were there; also our faithful Jewish friend, Sam Stodel, who was sympathetic to our proposal. But we excluded him as we feared ridicule if we included a Jew. He went into the kitchen and said to my mother: ‘Have you any-thing for this bunch to eat?’ She confessed she had not, so he went around the corner and bought ham, cheese, corned beef, beer, crackers, etc., to feed the doughty Irish when their session was over. Nourished by Sam, we went forth to battle. The Federation arranged street meetings to show that Mayor McClellan was an ignoramus and a liar, especially in Irish neighborhoods where such meetings had never been held. It had a large green and white banner, announcing who and what it was, with the Gaelic slogan, Faugh-a-Balach (Clear the Way) in big letters surrounded by harps and shamrocks. The meetings were stormy but finally accepted at many corners. A German blacksmith comrade built the Federation a sturdy platform that could not easily be upset, with iron detachable legs that could be used as ‘shillelaghs’ in an emergency. These helped to establish order at the meetings, and won a wholesome respect for the Federation. The Federation issued a statement of its purposes (written by James Connolly): ‘To assist the revolutionary working class movement in Ireland by a dissemination of its literature; to educate the working class Irish of this country into a knowledge of Socialist principles and to prepare them to cooperate with the workers of all other races, col-ors, and nationalities in the emancipation of labor.’ James Connolly wrote one book, Labour in Irish History, one play and many pamphlets. His extensive writings were spread out over many years in various workers' papers and magazines. He published a monthly magazine, The Harp. Many poems from his own pen appeared. It was a pathetic sight to see him standing, poorly clad, at the door of Cooper Union or some other East Side hall, selling his little paper. None of the prosperous professional Irish, who shouted their admiration for him after his death, lent him a helping hand at that time. Jim Connolly was anathema to them because he was a ‘Socialist.’ He had no false pride and encouraged others to do these Jimmy Higgins tasks by setting an example. At the street meetings he persuaded those who had no experience in speaking to ‘chair the meeting’ as a method of training them. Connolly had a rare skill, born of vast knowledge, in approaching the Irish workers. He spoke the truth sharply and forcefully when necessary, as in the following from The Harp of November 1900: ‘To the average non-Socialist Irishman the idea of belonging to an international political party is unthinkable, is obnoxious, and he feels that if he did, all the roots of his Irish nature would be dug up. Of course, he generally belongs to a church – the Roman Catholic Church – which is the most international institution in existence. That does not occur to him as atrocious, in fact he is rather proud than otherwise that the Church is spread throughout the entire world, that it overleaps the barriers of civilization, penetrating into the depths of savagedom, and ignores all considerations of race, color or nationality. . . . But although he would lay down his life for a Church which he boasts of as ‘Catholic’ or universal, he turns with a shudder from an economic or political movement which has the same characteristics.’ Connolly published The Harp here as the official organ of the Irish Socialist Federation, and moved it to Dublin in 1910. Back to James Connolly
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