James Connolly

1914-18 in Ireland: different sorts of anti-war

The currency of Catholic-hierarchy and narrow-nationalist versions of anti-conscriptionism, and the absence of international-socialist versions, explains why the revulsion against the World War in 1917-8 could take Catholic-nationalist-militant but socially-conservative forms.

The Easter Rising and Irish history

The Easter Rising and Irish history: The two souls of Irish nationalism? An attempt at a Marxist account. An inspiration across the world? Or an eclipse of working-class socialism by narrow nationalism? Both were in the Easter Rising.

Revising James Connolly

Sean Matgamna reviews ‘James Connolly: a political biography’ by Austen Morgan

“A socialistic nation of scholars and students”

This, from Erin’s Hope (1897), was James Connolly’s first statement of his thesis that primitive communism survived in Ireland much longer than in other countries, indeed until the 17th century, and so the struggle for socialism there equated with the struggle against foreign impositions. It is the fourth instalment on “Connolly’s historiography” in our long-running series on Connolly, politically unexpurgated . “Before the time of the conquest, the Irish people knew nothing of absolute property in land. The land belonged to the entire sept; the chief was little more than the managing member...

National and economic subjection in Irish history

This third instalment on “Connolly’s historiography” in our series Connolly, politically unexpurgated is chapter one of Connolly’s longest and most-worked-on piece of writing, Labour in Irish History . It argues that even the best middle-class Irish nationalist leaders offered no more than “such reforms as might remove irritating and unnecessary officialism, while leaving untouched the basis of national and economic subjection”. But it depicted national and economic “subjection” (via capitalist or via feudal relations) as more or less synonymous, and the struggle against both as a struggle...

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