James Connolly's The Legacy: The Dying Socialist to His Son is a powerful exposition in verse of the socialist view of working people throughout history.
The Spanish Revolution and Civil War broke out 75 years ago, in July 1936. W H Auden, then a fellow traveller of the British Communist Party, served as an ambulance driver in the International Brigade. He published this call to arms in 1937. Later, after his politics changed, he rejected the poem.
The number of Irish "rebel" songs is enormous, and they range from the god-awfull to the wonderful. The "Felons of our Land" belongs, I think, to the second category. The line,"a felon's cap is the noblest crown an Irish head can wear", breathes the true spirit of revolutionary politics - and not alone of Irish republican but of revolutionary socialist politics too.`
The Irish Republican, Robert Emmet, wrote these Lines, about the graves of insurgents killed in the uprisings of 1798. In 1803 he himself at the age of 25 was" hanged, drawn and quartered" - hanged, cut down alive and disembowelled.
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