James Connolly

Introduction. Afghanistan: the Russian Invasion and the Left "Workers' Voice", the "CPGB's" Turkish Stalinist Mentors Conrad and Fisher on Afghanistan: The Tankies' Tankies -1 The Tankies' Tankies -2 The Tankies' Tankies -3 The Tankies' Tankies -4 The Tankies' Tankies -5 Stalinist Mind At End Of Its Tether -1 Stalinist Mind At End Of Its Tether -2 Stalinist Mind At End Of Its Tether-3 Stalinist Mind At End Of Its Tether -4 Stalinist Mind At End Of Its Tether-5

Some men, faint-hearted, ever seek Our programme to retouch, And will insist, whene’er they speak That we demand too much. ’Tis passing strange, yet I declare Such statements give me mirth, For our demands most moderate are, We only want the earth. “Be moderate,” the trimmers cry, Who dread the tyrants’ thunder. “You ask too much and people fly From you aghast in wonder.” ’Tis passing strange, for I declare Such statements give me mirth, For our demands most moderate are, We only want the earth. Our masters all a godly crew, Whose hearts throb for the poor, Their sympathies assure us, too, If...

"Ireland occupies a position among the nations of the earth unique in... the possession of what is known as a 'physical force party' - a party, that is to say, whose members are united upon no one point, and agree upon no single principle, except upon the use of physical force as the sole means of settling the dispute between the people of this country and the governing power of Great Britain... "[They] exalt into a principle that which the revolutionists of other countries have looked upon as a weapon... Socialists believe that the question of force is of very minor importance; the really...

[A text of the Irish Trotskyists of the Revolutionary Socialist Party, 1947] On Easter Monday 1916, some hundreds of republicans and socialists rose in arms in Dublin to overthrow the centuries-old British rule in Ireland. Among their leaders was James Connolly, who for most of the years since 1896 had been the leading writer and agitator for socialism in Ireland and amongst the Irish in America [1903 -1910]. Ever since 1916 Connolly’s name has been widely honoured in nationalist Ireland, and ever since then significant minorities have tried or pretended, in one way or another, to continue his...

Article from Workers' Republic 19, mid-summer 1967. Fenianism is generally thought of as the archetypal physical force movement, directed towards establishing an independent Irish Republic. It was founded in Dublin in 1858. It organised the unsuccessful Rising of 1867. Segments of it played a leading role in the Land League agitation in the 1880s. One of its strands helped to organise the partially successful Rising of 1916. Fenianism was in the line of that Republicanism which has for seven generations now been the vehicle of radical protest against exploitation and oppression in Ireland. At...

"The Treason of the Intellectuals, and other political verse" by Sean Matgamna includes political verse previously published in Solidarity and its forerunners. All proceeds from sales of the book, above printing and dispatch costs, go to the AWL fund drive. £9.99. Buy by clicking on the button below. or click here .

Introduction When Margaret Thatcher's Tories outlawed "secondary" or solidarity strikes, they knew what they were doing. The solidarity strike had defeated the ruling class again and again throughout the 1960s and 70s. When they come out in sympathetic strike, workers act on behalf of interests not directly or narrowly their own. This is class action far more advanced than mere sectional trade-union action. Implicitly, and sometimes openly, it challenges capitalist rule in society. That is why the Tories, the Labour leaders and most trade union officials hate the idea of the sympathetic strike...

An open letter to British trade unionists, from an Irish socialist living in England, after the killing of two children by an IRA bomb in Warrington, in March 1993. Socialist Organiser 557, 1 April 1993 Dear Brothers and Sisters: Like everyone else whose human feelings are not blocked or numbed by national hatred or chauvinistic self righteousness, you are horrified and angry over the IRA bomb in Warrington which exploded in a crowed of weekend shoppers and killed two children. I understand those feelings, and I share them. So, evidently, do most Irish people, here and in the two parts of...

The striking thing about this collection ("The Communists and the Irish Revolution", edited by Rayner Lysaght) is that one of the key documents reproduced here "The Revolutionary Proletariat and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination", 1915 — one of Lenin's most important texts on the national question — has been bowdlerised so that the meaning of what Lenin wrote is transformed into its very opposite. The words in square brackets below have been excised from Lysaght's text: Socialists of “the oppressing nations must demand the freedom of the oppressed nations to secede. for otherwise...