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Reviews / Comptes Rendus
| Priscilla Metscher, James Connolly and the Reconquest of Ireland, Special Issue, Nature, Society and Thought: A Journal of Dialectical and Historical Materialism (University of Minnesota 2001)
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| JAMES CONNOLLY, born in the slums of Edinburgh, a child of Irish immigrant parents, remains a significant figure in Irish, British, and US labour history and women's history. As a feminist historian engaged in researching the contribution made by women involved in Irish nationalist, labour, and feminist movements in the early years of the 20th century, I see Connolly as crucial to understanding the political development of most of the women activists of that period. He was a close friend, an inspiration, a loyal support. He was prepared to travel from Belfast to Dublin to speak on behalf of suffragettes tyrannized by the organized mobs in the Ancient Order of Hibernians, a gesture always appreciated and never forgotten. He organized mill workers in Belfast and encouraged their self-development. It is doubtful that the Proclamation of the Republic would have guaranteed equal citizenship for women, were it not for his influence over his fellow rebels. Priscilla Metscher's exposition of the key aspects in the development of the political thinking of Connolly, the Irish socialist and iconographic hero of Irish republicans, is for those who like their analysis unadorned with any biographical gloss. For those who believe that "the personal is political," it helps to have read a biography of Connolly to appreciate the connections between his life experiences and his politics. However, Metscher's judicious use of quotations, stripped away from extraneous biographical details, has the merit of facilitating her discussion of his development as a political writer and activist. |
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As a riposte to the plethora of revisionist historians who have gathered over the past decades to damn the socialist republican legacy of Connolly, it is highly effective, although some assessment of the latest crop of texts on Connolly would have been welcome. Metscher is an exacting critic, but the impression is that this is a work researched and written some time ago. |
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She maintains a strong central thesis throughout, as she assesses the extent to which Connolly's support for national liberation was based on his understanding of historical materialism and the importance of class struggle. Her assessment of Irish politics at the time of the 1898 centenary celebration of the United Irish rising and Connolly's pivotal role in linking republican socialists and younger nationalists to challenge the Home Rule parliamentarians is well informed and gives Maud Gonne due recognition for her work. |
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Disillusionment with the lack of commitment by Irish labour and an inability to provide for his growing family led Connolly to the United States, where he spent the years 1903–1910, an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn provides some touching vignettes of those miserable times, of Connolly tirelessly attempting to educate the working-class Irish in America in socialist principles, preparatory to the unification of all workers in the cause of emancipation. The Wobblies' stress on industrial action rather than political action had a major influence on Connolly, who became an organizer for the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union after his return to Ireland. A mere six years of life remained before the sacrifice of the Easter Rising. |
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Metscher devotes two thirds of the book to the rapid maturing of his political thought in these last years. She sums up his major work, Labour in Irish History, published in 1910, in which Connolly's elaboration of the principles of historical materialism provides a framework for understanding the course of Irish history, as "a document of its time and a tremendous contribution." (83–4) Yet that acknowledgement fails to convey the real significance of this work and its absolute originality. Connolly's picture of Irish history was certainly "radically different from the conventional view." More than that, it is revolutionary in its impact, linking the national and labour struggles and providing a coherent understanding of the materialist underpinnings of centuries of resistance. For those of us who came to political consciousness in the 1960s, the excitement of discovering the political intelligence of Labour in Irish History remains an abiding memory. Its final chapter, relating the rise of the Fenian movement to the social struggles of the Irish working class, substantiates his thesis that "every attempt at political rebellion in Ireland was always preceded by a remarkable development of unrest, discontent and class consciousness."(80) As we live through more than 30 years of nationalist unrest, of political rebellion that could be said to have been preceded by the class unrest articulated by the civil rights movement of the 1960s, Connolly's analysis continues to have relevance. |
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The chapter on the "Woman Question" is too brief, although it recognizes, in Connolly's use of non-gender-specific language, his progressive nature and strong feminist instincts. Some discussion of the differences between Larkin and Connolly, particularly on Connolly's insistence on integrating women with men, both in the labour movement and in the Citizen Army (Larkin preferred separate spheres), would have helped in terms of deeper assessment of the Connolly legacy. Austen Morgan's study of Connolly, while deserving of the criticism that Morgan judges "from the high chair of academia," (viii) is well researched on Connolly's Belfast years, providing empirical information that could have informed Metscher's analysis of the woman question. |
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Connolly's warning that the partition of Ireland would lead to a "carnival of reaction" was prophetic. Metscher provides a useful and pertinent riposte to revisionists like Henry Patterson, who accuses Connolly for his failure to understand the strength of "Unionist ideological hegemony." (123) Connolly warned the working class of the north of their fate if they found themselves cut off from Ireland "left at the tender mercies of a class that knows no mercy, of a mob poisoned by ignorant hatred of everything national and democratic." (123) For Metscher, events in the years since "all testify to and justify Connolly's fears of the consequences of partition." (123) |
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The reasons behind Connolly's acceptance of the last rites in the moments before his execution have caused heated debate at many a conference. Metscher puts forward an ingenious but persuasive explanation: it was a gesture of solidarity with the Irish people, not an acceptance of the religious tenets of the Catholic Church. Maud Gonne and Constance Markievicz were two other converts motivated more by politics than religion. It is a topic that merits serious research. Of interest too must be Connolly's articles on war. He lived at a time, as he said when writing about the Boer War (1899–1902), when "Every war now is a capitalist move for new markets, and it is a move capitalism must make or perish." (50) On this topic, as on so many, the life and writings of James Connolly retain their immediacy. |
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Margaret Ward
Democratic Dialogue, Belfast |
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