A
Portrait of James Connolly IV: The Politics of Connolly's
Catholicism
James T Farrell, New International No. 14, 1948
The historic experiences of Ireland as a subject and exploited nation can
be described as the other and non-progressive side of the rise of English
capitalism and the Industrial Revolution.
If we look at England, without in any way minimizing the horrors of the
new industrialism, we can see the advances made with the rise of capitalism.
There was an enormous economic development and, in addition, there were
real political gains of a democratic character. England became one of the
most democratic countries in the world.
But if we look at Ireland, it is much harder to see these advances. Here
was a nation invaded and despoiled by foreigners. Its industry was smashed.
Its people were driven off the land and out of the country. Its clan system
was broken up. The faith of its fathers was ruthlessly abused by the despoiling
invaders who were also the professors of an antagonistic religious creed.
Consider these facts – which are but roughly and hastily generalized
here but which were vivid, concrete and intimate to generations of the
Irish – and it should not be difficult to understand how and why
Catholic Irishmen would not see the progressive side of the Reformation.
That liberty of conscience which has historically been so influenced by
the rise of Protestantism had to be defended and fought for by Catholics.
In their own country, Irish Catholics lost their citizenship. They were
exiles in their own country, and in fact it can be said that here are the
historic roots of that melancholy sense of alienation which is to be found,
even to this day, in so many Irish and even in Irish-Americans who are
far removed in space and time from remote and oppressed Catholic Irish
ancestors.
Sean O'Faolain, in his biography of Daniel O'Connell, King of the Beggars,
writes of Catholic relief bills prior to the rise of O'Connell as a political
leader: ‘After 1771 an Irishman might lease a bog for a brief period,
if it was a mile from a town ... and if the lessee guaranteed to reclaim
at least half of his bogland within twenty-one years.’ And after
1782, as O'Faolain also wrote:
A
Catholic, i.e., one of the people was suddenly acknowledged
as a species of citizen, if a very inferior species of citizen;
so inferior that our historians of Dublin under the Georges
have been unable to find a single detail about the people,
and all we can gather about them is to be inferred from the
contemporary theatre in which they begin to appear as the faithful,
if rather foolish, servant ... every office was closed to the
native – unless he apostatized – the army, the
law, and the civil service – though he could become a
doctor in private practice, or open an apothecary's shop. Not
until 1793 ... could a native Irishman enter the army.... But
he could take neither hand, act, nor part in the government
of his country.... He walked with the word Pariah branded on
his forehead. 1
One could
add many details concerning the persecution of Catholics, including
the clergy, and the ways in which religious persecution was
linked with national and social oppression. Connolly himself,
in Labour in Irish History, wrote:
War,
religion, race, language, political reform, patriotism – apart
from whatever intrinsic merits they may possess – all
serve in the hands of the possessing class as counter-irritants,
whose function is to avert the catastrophe of social revolution
by engendering heat in such parts of the body politic as are
farthest removed from the seat of economic inquiry. 2
England is
noted in the history books for having perfected the technique
of divide-and-rule in modern times. The policy of ruling an
oppressed nation or race by dividing it was worked out, as
it were, in the terrible empirical-historical situation of
Britain's seven-century rule of Ireland.
The Irish were, then, beggared and oppressed for a long period. The horrible
conditions of life in Ireland in the eighteenth century were revealed in
Swift's masterpiece of irony and sarcasm, A Modest Proposal for Preventing
the Children of the Poor People in Ireland from Becoming a Burden on their
Parents or Country, and for Making them Beneficial to the Public.
This began:
It
is a melancholy Object to those, who walk through this great
Town [Dublin], or travel in the Country, when they see the Streets,
the Roads, and Cabbin-Doors, crowded with Beggars of
the female Sex, followed by three, four or six Children, all
in Rags, and importuning every Passenger for an Alms.
These Mothers instead of being able to work for their
honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in Strolling,
to beg Sustenance for their helpless Infants, who,
as they grow up, either turn Thieves for want of work,
or leave their dear native country to fight for
the Pretender in Spain, or else sell themselves to the Barbadoes. 3
Swift
proposed to find ‘a fair, cheap and easy method of making
these Children sound and useful Members of the common-wealth.’ And
he found a way whereby these children could be used to ‘contribute
to the Feeding and partly to the Clothing of many Thousands.’ Calculating
that there were about 120,000 children of the poor born annually,
Dean Swift pointed out that this number could not all support
themselves by agricultural and handicraft work or by thievery.
Thus the children, when they reach the age of one, would become ‘a
most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome Food, whether Stewed, Roasted, Baked,
or Boyled, and ... it will equally serve in a Fricassie,
or a Ragoust. . . . ‘ One hundred thousand of
these children could be so disposed of, and since as food they
would be dear, they would be ‘very proper for Landlords,
who, as they have already devoured most of the Parents, seem
to have the best Title to the children. 4
This enterprise would be profitable all around, it would even give the
mothers a profit, and Swift also suggested that ‘Those who are most thrifty ...
may flay the Carcass; the Skin of which, artificially dressed, will make
admirable Gloves for Ladies, and Summer Boots for fine Gentlemen.‘ Swift,
with his melancholy and savage genius, revealed the essential features
of the Irish problem. Ireland was despoiled as a cognate part of the capitalist
advance of England. Swift's sarcasm draws this out with a genius that has
been, to my mind, unmatched in centuries.
At the same time that we consider this long historic oppression, it is
necessary to remember that even in national oppression there were class
differences. Connolly pointed this out. He noted that the poor Protestants
as well as the poor Catholics were oppressed and exploited in Ireland,
and he declared, in Labour in Irish History, that the Penal Laws
against the Irish
did
indeed make the life of propertied Catholics more insecure
than would otherwise have been the case; but to the vast mass
of the population the misery and hardship entailed by the working
out of economic laws were fraught with infinitely more suffering
than it was at any time within the power of the Penal Laws
to inflict. As a matter of fact, the effect of the latter code
in impoverishing wealthy Catholics has been much overrated.
The class interests which at all times unite the propertied
section of the community operated, to a large extent, to render
impossible the application of the power of persecution to its
full legal limits. Rich Catholics were quietly tolerated, and
generally received from the rich Protestants an amount of respect
and forbearance which the latter would not at any time extend
to their Protestant tenantry or work-people. 5
In 1763,
a bill was even introduced ‘to give greater facilities
to Protestants wishing to borrow money from’ Catholic
money lenders. Though this bill was defeated, Connolly suggested
that its mere ‘introduction serves to show how little
the Penal Laws (against Catholics) had operated to prevent
the accumulation of wealth by the Catholic propertied classes.’
Connolly's
historical thesis was,
as RM Fox has indicated, ‘that
England was the exponent
of the feudal-capitalist
system in Ireland.’ The
peculiarities in Irish
history are not to be
found only in the modern
period. They are to be
found in Ireland's long
history, and most especially
during these seven centuries
of English oppression.
Let me repeat, then,
that Ireland under English
rule reveals the cost,
the other side of progress. 6
In
this context, Connolly
observed that ‘one
of’ the ‘Slave
birthmarks’ in
Ireland was ‘a
belief in the capitalist
system of society: the
Irishman frees himself
from such a mark of slavery
when he realizes that
truth that the capitalist
system is the most foreign
thing in Ireland.’ 7
In Ireland, then, the role of the Church was different from that which
it played on the continent. There it was bound up with the feudal system
and was a rich landowner in its own right. Involved in the bourgeoisie's
attack on the feudal aristocracy was its attack on the Church. The ideology
of feudalism is penetrated through and through with that of Catholic thinkers.
Not only on the planes of politics and economics, but also on that of ideology,
the Church was attacked. In France the desire of the peasantry for land
and for freedom from many remaining feudal restrictions over-weighed (in
many parts of the country) their loyalty to the Church.
Briefly, the Church was not bound up with the system of oppression in Ireland
as it was in feudal Europe. Even though Connolly did observe that propertied
Catholics in the eighteenth century did not suffer as did the poor, it
does remain true that they were discriminated against. In addition, the
alleviation of the operation of the Penal Laws, in the case of the rich
Catholics, was not a matter of law. The Irish were penalized by the foreign
invader and ruler because of their religion. Catholicism and nationalism
became bound together in the minds of many Irishmen. The consciousness
of individual Irishmen was not i-visible into compartments so that Catholicism
would be fitted into one compartment while hatred of an oppressor and desires
for freedom would be placed in another. To be Irish and to be Catholic
were, in effect, synonymous.
For an Irishman under these conditions to be free meant to escape from
penalization because of his religion as well as his nationality. The logic
of this attitude runs through the entire O'Connell movement in the nineteenth
century. In fact, Daniel O'Connell is often referred to as the Great Emancipator.
The victory of Catholic Emancipation in 1829 and 1830 was a signal step
forward in the Irish struggle; and yet, as Connolly observed and as is
well known, it was achieved at a time of marked miseries and destitution.
Connolly, in fact, described the period between 1830 and 1848 in Ireland
as ‘A Chapter of Horrors.’ And he wrote about the tithes imposed
on the peasantry by the clergy of the Episcopal and Catholic Churches as
follows:
The
fact that this was in conformity with the practice of the Catholic
Church in countries where it was dominant did not, of course,
make this more palatable to the Catholic peasantry of Ireland,
who continually saw a part of their crops seized upon and sold
to maintain a clergy whose ministrations they never attended
and whose religion they detested. 8
When the
discontent of the peasants flared in rebellion, ‘The
Episcopalian clergymen called on the aid of the law, and, escorted
by police and military, seized the produce of the poor tenants
and carried them off to be sold at auction.’ And what
aid did the peasants get during the period of rebellious struggles
which were carried on under the leadership of secret societies?
Connolly's answer to this question reads as follows:
The
politicians gave neither help nor countenance to the fight,
and save for the advocacy of one small Dublin newspaper, conducted
by a small but brilliant band of young Protestant writers,
no journal in all Ireland championed their cause. For the Catholic
clergy it is enough to say that while this tithe war was being
waged they were almost universally silent about that ‘grevious
sin of secret conspiracy’ upon which they are usually
so eloquent. We would not dare say that they recognized that
as the secret societies were doing their work against a rival
priesthood, it was better to be sparing in their denunciations
for the time being; perhaps this is not the explanation, but
at all events it is noteworthy that as soon as the tithe war
was won all the old stock invectives against every kind of
extra-constitutional action were immediately renewed. 9
With Emancipation,
the ground was cut from under O'Connell's feet. As O'Faolain,
his biographer, says, he ‘could not form a solid block
of Irish votes, an Irish Party, immediately after Emancipation,
as Parnell did later.’ The Emancipation Act was, in reality,
only a partial emancipation. And it only tended to open up
some eyes more clearly to the social question. The Young Irelanders
of '48 and James Fintan Lalor opposed O'Connell and O'Connellism.
Connolly, in Labour in irish History, justifies their
criticism of and opposition to O'Connell. They, and Connolly
later, moved in the direction of social emancipation. They – and
Connolly after them – were advocates of extra-constitutional
action, of rebellion.
The foregoing should reveal that Catholicism is not a separate question
in Ireland. In fact, religion is never a separate question, divorced
from all of the political questions and struggles of a period.
O'Faolain quotes Balzac's remark about Daniel O'Connell: ‘he incarnated
a whole people.’ And then O'Faolain also pointed out how O'Connell,
a Tory, frightened by the French Revolution, became a ‘Radical.’ He
goes on to say that O'Connell
toppled
on the brink of Atheism. He recovered as a Deist. He ended
not quite as a Catholic, but as an Irish Catholic, which among
Irish intellectuals is so often little more than two words
for one. I doubt if there were more than one or two Irish patriots
who did not run a similar course in relation to religion – Tone,
Emmet, Lord Edward, Davis, Mitchel, Parnell, Stephens and most
of the Fenians, Collins, Clarke, Connolly, almost all wavering
in a typically ambiguous way barely stopping short on the edge
of complete revolt from orthodoxy. 10
Rebellion
in Ireland was not rebellion against orthodoxy. It was national
rebellion. In some instances it was purely national, in others
it was both national and social. In the case of James Connolly,
he was both nationalist and socialist.
Leftists have criticized him as a nationalist whose socialism was either
impure or else abandoned in his last days. Sean O'Casey's first writing
was a pamphlet, The Irish Citizen Army, in which he declared that
Connolly died not for socialism but for nationalism. To discuss Connolly
in such terms is to become formal, abstract; it results in the posing of
formal questions which can only lead us away from insight. The foregoing
parts of this work have offered more than sufficient evidence on the character
of Connolly's socialist views. Abstract purists usually see the politics
of a man as though they were completely separated from that man. just as
they fail to see Connolly's nationalism as bound up with his socialism,
so do they see his socialism as in flagrant contradiction with his belief
in Catholicism. But his works, and the accounts of his life with which
I am familiar, would reveal no such glaring contradictions. Connolly as
much as O'Connell, or as much as any other Irish patriot or rebel, can
be called the incarnation of a people – to the degree that any one
man can be so characterized. His writings show to what degree the Irish
tradition was fused in his ideas. He studied this tradition and evaluated
it, made distinctions, and consciously made choices. At the same time his
emotions, his consciousness was molded out of the life of Ireland. His
personal religious beliefs were deeply felt and genuine. To assume that
he pretended to a belief he didn't hold is really to slander the memory
of a great and honest man.
1 Sean O’Faolain, King of the Beggars (London:
Thomas Nelson, 1938), pp.54-55 Back
2 Connolly, Labour in Ireland, pp.5-6. Back
3 Swift, Gulliver’s
Travels and Selected Writings, ed. John Hayward (New
York: Random House, 1934), p.512 Back
4 Farrell’s
Note: Swift also argued that this reform plan would have the
added advantage of ‘lessening the Number of Papists among
us.’ Back
5 Connolly, Labour in Ireland, pp.20-21. Back
6 Farrell’s Note: In Capital, vol. 1, Marx
has many illuminating observations on Ireland and these tend to give substantiation
to this generalization of mine. Cf. Capital, 1: 767-83. The
Correspondence of Marx and Engels also contains interesting comments
and observations about Ireland. Back
7 Connolly, Labour in Ireland, pp.xxxiv. Back
8 Ibid., p.146. Back
9 Ibid., p.146. Back
10 O’Faolain, King of the Beggars, pp.40,
74-75. Back
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