James Connolly's Participation in the 1916 Rising

James Connolly in 1911

As it is Easter and the ninety-fifth anniversary of the 1916 Rising, I thought it a good time to do a blog post on the subject. One of the patriots who died subsequent to the Rising was James Connolly. He has had a multitude of literature dedicated to him, however much of this has focused on Connolly’s Nationalism. Connolly was an ardent Socialist first and foremost and this is clearly seen in Labour in Irish History by Connolly which was published in 1910.

We studied this for one of our modules this year and in it Connolly puts his own Marxist interpretation on Irish history. He emphasises the importance of the property question in Irish history, as the reason behind Irish subjection in the past whether that be from English property interests in Ireland or that of the Irish capitalist class. Secondly, Connolly asserts that it is the Irish working class are the sole inheritors of the fight for Irish freedom, due to the ‘incorruptible’ nature of that class as opposed to the middle class, who are tied with ‘a thousand economic strings in the shape of investments binding them to English capitalism as ever against every sentimental or historic attachment drawing them toward Irish patriotism.’ Connolly takes no liberties in castigating revered Irish patriots from Daniel O’Connell to Henry Grattan whom Connolly views as not defending the interests of the most impoverished in Irish society. Connolly expressed his vehement opposition to a united class struggle which he believed had always worked against the interests of the Irish working class. In view of these opinions in 1910, I thought it was interesting to see what propelled Connolly from such an hard-line Socialist to part-taking in the Nationalist insurrection in 1916 allied with the other Proclamation signatories, the focus of whom was solely national and certainly not Socialist. This post will briefly examine what propelled Connolly into a cross-class alliance in 1916.

The most fundamental event which completely altered Connolly’s political outlook was the outbreak of the First Word War in 1914. Connolly’s internationalist outlook was destroyed by the onset of workers fighting against each other and the collapse of the united anti-war outlook of the Second International, as national parties drifted towards supporting their respective nation’s stances. Connolly believed that workers ‘had volunteered to fight for an Empire that batoned them and for the class that degraded and robbed them.’ Connolly’s view of a working class revolution was fast receding but the war saw an increased militancy in Connolly’s attitude also. The political methods of peace-time we now seen as fruitless especially in light of the Second International’s collapse, and he believed an insurrection was  now a necessity due to a number of developments. Connolly looked to form an alliance with Irish Republicans to carry out this rebellion with his recently formed Irish Citizen Army (ICA), due to his despondency with the inability to carry out a working class minority revolution due to the weak and divided nature of the class in war time. He saw as disastrous the possible consequences of the war concluding with Ireland still intimately linked to Britain after the service of Irishmen, Nationalist and Unionist, in the British Army. It would lead to the utter relegation of Irish Nationalism as a tradition to whom he was now looking to forge an alliance.  As well as this partition was now clearly on the table in a possible Home Rule arrangement after 1914, with John Redmond’s agreement with the British government and the service of the Ulster Volunteer Force on the Western Front. Such an arrangement would formally cement the sectarian division in Ireland which Connolly so utterly despised. Additionally Connolly felt it necessary to carry out an insurrection during the war when British forces strength would not be solely focused on Ireland.

The remnants of the GPO following Easter week in 1916

Kieran Allen has noted Connolly’s anxiousness to proceed with such an insurrection before the onset of conscription in Ireland which Connolly felt would bind Ireland to the Empire and militarise society. Allen criticises Connolly lack of faith in the development of possible mass working class opposition, by focusing on agitation coming solely from the ICA and the Irish Volunteers with whom Connolly had built an alliance in the run up to the 1916 Rising. Therefore Connolly’s pessimistic outlook led him to move beyond the narrow boundaries he had set on a revolution in Labour in Irish History just six years previously.

           

Connolly was focused on short term goals during the First World War and with the collapse of International organised Socialism Connolly looked to Ireland internally for military action. The weak state of the working class led to his alliance with those IRB leaders in the Irish Volunteers as Connolly suspended his desire for a Socialist Revolution in 1916. He moved to first see the collapse of British capitalist rule in Ireland as a preliminary step to the future development of Socialism in Ireland possibly in alliance with Republicans. Connolly had clearly defined goals going into the GPO in April 1916 and was not contemplating a blood sacrifice like Pádraig Pearse, but as we know circumstances conspired against the rebel leaders.

Debates about the merits of the Rising are highly divisive, seen vividly in the media reaction to the decision to commemorate the Rising in 2006, but there can be no doubt that despite the alterations to his position expressed in Labour in Irish History, Connolly held dear to his Socialist principles in participating in the Easter Rising in 1916.