A unique, ‘lost,’ important history of the 1916 Easter Rising; one of the first ever produced, and one written by a revolutionary socialist and comrade of James Connolly’s no less; Cornelius ‘Con’ Lehane (O’Lyhane). The Irish-born Lehane wrote and self-published this fine history and analysis within days of those earth shaking events and James Connolly’s execution on May 12, 1916. Only a few hundred copies were produced, and it will be of interests to all students of Connolly, the Easter Rising, The Citizen’s Army, anti-imperialism, and the Irish Revolution. Consciously, comrade Cornelius Lehane sought to grasp the opportunity opened by the Rising to bring Connolly’s revolutionary socialism to the U.S.’s Irish working class. This pamphlet was based in a lecture giving in his home of Connecticut, which began an exhaustive tour of the country speaking to well over 150 audiences. At stops, comrade Lehane worked to create James Connolly Reading Clubs in Irish working class communities which were meant to develop into a loose national institution of, sorely needed, Irish radicalism. A fine, long lost, brief recounting of the Rising with a focus on its class element and words of praise for his old comrade and occasional adversary in the ISRP. Deserving of historical acknowledgement, study by students of this history, and its place in the literature on Connolly and the Irish Revolution. It also includes a copy of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic as well as an article about a ‘Citizen’s Army’ organized by militant trade unionists in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and photos of Connolly, Sheehy Skeffington, and Constance Markievicz.

‘The Irish Republic’ by Cornelius Lehane. Self-Published, Ansonia, Connecticut. 1916.

For a whole week in Dublin 825 Irish workingmen equipped with rifles held the city against 20,000 British soldiers armed with machine guns and artillery and supported by British war vessels. These workingmen established a Republic, and from the Dublin General Post Office flashed by wireless their proclamation to the world. This armed revolt marks Easter Monday, April 24th, 1916 as a memorable date for labor not alone in Ireland but throughout the world.

The insurrection was denounced by the leader of the so-called Irish nationalist parliamentary party John Redmond who called on his followers to support the British army in shooting down the rebels, by Sir Edward Carson who offered to send his Ulster Volunteers from Belfast to fight the working class who held Dublin, and by Herbert H. Asquith the British Prime Minister who shot to death fifteen rebel leaders after they had surrendered as prisoners of war. The Republic drew upon itself the wrath of the representatives of the dominant class of all political and religious factions in Ireland and in England.

This astounding chapter in Irish history for a. time relegated to the back of the stage the stupendous military conflict raging throughout Europe, and the occurrences in Dublin have riveted the attention of the civilized world.

My comrades throughout America, especially those who were present at the addresses I delivered in over thirty States of the American union during my recent tour of this country prior to the revolution in Ireland will remember my statement that Ireland had refused to be dragged to the trenches of Flanders and that the Labor army in Ireland if it ever did go into action would fight, not the workingmen of Europe, but would turn round on the master-class at home in Ireland and fight for the industrial and political liberty of their own people. The statement that there was one nation in Europe that had refused to be goaded on to the work of slaughter in a foreign land may have to the minds of some sounded like the music of a pleasant dream. I have now to examine the realization of that dream.

Herein I shall attempt to picture the growth, structure and destiny of the labor movement of Ireland. I have some qualification for the task as I was with James Connolly, to whom was assigned the command in Dublin of the army of the Irish Republic, at home in Ireland in the early days when we founded the socialist movement in that country. Connolly was the moving spirit of the Dublin branch, while I was the first speaker and organizer of the Cork branch, and these for some years were the only places where our movement could get an organized expression. Connolly and myself bore the brunt of the first onslaught made by the privileged class on the infant industrial democracy of Ireland.

The Irish revolution is but a part of the revolutionary movement that is today making the planet quake. People had not been accustomed to associating the social revolution with Ireland, and for a time they may find it difficult to recognize it in the Gaelic dress. They had been rather expecting that the revolution would put in its first appearance in a German, French or possibly English garb. But the unexpected has happened. To those who understood the historical roots and recent development of the social question in Ireland that happening was not unexpected. On the contrary the records show that it had repeatedly been foretold. And so we are confronted with the historical fact that the revolution found its first military manifestation in Ireland, and it wore the Gaelic dress.

April 24th now stands in the revolutionary calendar side by side with March 18th. The Dublin proletariat of 1916 salutes the proletariat of Paris of 1871. Dublin today is like a lighted torch in the darkness of the war in Europe. It is the one metropolis in Europe which stood up against the war of the nations, broke the conscription plans of the ruling class, and by the sacrifice of the lives of a heroic few saved the lives of the many from worse destruction. The Dublin revolt was not a fight between the master class of Ireland and the master-class of England. It was execrated by the master-class of both countries, and the executed leaders were all workingmen, the manual and intellectual proletariat. There was not a single Irish banker, stockbroker, captain of industry, or other representative of the capitalist class proper amongst them. As in the days of the Paris Commune the French and German bourgeoisie combined to put down the revolt of the workers and thus presented the spectacle of the French and German armies fighting side by side against Paris, so today we have witnessed in Ireland a scene in which John Redmond on behalf of the Irish bourgeoisie supported the British army in crushing Dublin The historical parallel is almost complete, with this difference: The Dublin revolution partook more of the character of a class conscious rising than did the Commune.

The first shot for the Irish Republic was fired by the Irish Citizen army, the first labor army in the world, and the last man to be executed by the British was James Connolly, the socialist pioneer. The Co-operative Commonwealth had been for some years the guiding idea of Dublin, it was the objective of the Irish Trades Union Congress and Labor Party, of the Dublin Trades Council, of the Transport Workers Union, of the Citizen Army, all labor organizations; and in literary, art and scientific circles, in the universities and colleges of various religious denominations it had hundreds of supporters of the highest order of intellect. The rising was neither Catholic nor Protestant, it was an industrial revolt which speedily drew on itself the fierce hatred of the Dublin society and business man’s clubs, the rallying points of privilege and corruption in Ireland. The Kildare Street Clubs knew the danger to capitalism of the Dublin revolution, and that is why their members rallied to the support of the British army encircling the revolted city. The Dublin revolt did not fail. On the contrary we have Asquith’s public statement that the executive government of Ireland has broken down. Another result of the revolt is the breakdown of the capitalist Home Rule or Nationalist party in Ireland.

The Irish democracy was never anti-English. The democracy of Ireland is not against the democracy of England: it is against the British capitalist government and class, and there will be no peace either in Ireland or England until the British capitalist government is destroyed and the pirate flag of the robber Empire hauled down. The Irish are not Chauvinistic. Throughout their history they have been and are to-day broadly human with a brotherly interest in and love for all mankind. They were never insular or exclusive, nor have they desired the conquest of other peoples, as is shown by the attitude of Wolfe Tone, the international revolutionist of ’98, Lalor the international prophet of universal revolution of ’48, and Connolly the international socialist organizer of 1916. But every movement for social readjustment in Ireland has been invariably fought down by British bayonets in the past and to-day, and it would be surprising if the liberty loving people of Ireland did not use every means in their power to remove the one obstacle to their freedom in the shape of the British government.

Every revolution the world has seen has borne the imprint of the place and time of its occurrence. It is only to be expected that the revolution in Ireland bore traces of the country and period of its manifestation. The social revolt in Dublin produced by the economic forces of the time, forces similar to those at work in other countries. was Gaelic in its tone and manner. The Gaelic League, a society for the advancement of the Irish language and literature made its influence felt in the labor movement. It was in line with the labor movement because it happens that in Ireland the ideal of both· the labor movement and the literary revival was the same. The Gaelic tongue which was at its zenith when common ownership of the lands with education and entertainment as public services formed the main features of Irish society, naturally led its students to an investigation of the kind of civilization that produced the Irish language, and the result of that investigation showed that common ownership of the means of life formed the basis of Gaelic civilization. The labor movement aiming at the Co-operative Commonwealth had the same ideal of civilization as the Gaels of old because the labor movement of the world has as its objective the collective ownership of the instruments of production.

The combined effect of the Gaelic literary revival and the modern labor movement in Ireland was to leaven the entire Irish community with a new purpose. That purpose was national in its aspirations and social in character, and the old struggle for political independence found itself furnished with new material for carrying on its work. The Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Fenian secret society which for a half a century had kept the republican principle alive in Ireland and always propagated the idea of the Irish Republic, became more and more tinged with the ideals of the Gaelic League and labor democracy.

These were the active forces working in Ireland for the last quarter of a century. The bourgeois Home Rule party had occupied the front of the stage in Ireland, but decay had set in under the leadership of John Redmond an Imperialist in politics who disguised his imperialism so as to present to the people the external appearance of an Irish patriot. Most of the Irish Home Rule members of the English parliament were never elected, as the constituencies under the Redmond machine returned them to parliament unopposed and without an appeal to the electorate. The political machine that, without facing the ballot, could control dozens of seats in the English parliament, continued through inertia since the days of Parnell, and in Redmond’s hands it led to the political and social corruption of his nominees in parliament. His recruiting campaign in Ireland on behalf of the British, and his support of Asquith in the shooting of Irish revolutionary leaders in Dublin, have completely exposed him for what he is. Redmond will go down in history as the greatest traitor the Irish nation ever produced. ·

Opinions are as free as the air we breathe, but the real test is not the theories and opinions men hold as what they do when confronted with a crisis. The war in Europe has put many theories and opinions to the test. Let us examine the men and movements in Ireland in the period of crisis brought about by the war of the European nations. Long before Kier Hardie in England or Carl Liebknecht in Germany had denounced the war, the Executive of the Irish Trades Union Congress and Labor Party had by public manifesto exhibited on the walls of Dublin and throughout Ireland told the laboring people of Ireland that the war was not their war, and that they should concern themselves not with the work of organizing to fight their brothers on the continent of Europe but with the problem of feeding the Irish people, of keeping the nation’s food at home, and resisting by physical force if necessary the taking by the government for the armies in Europe the food required for the sustenance of the people at home. That manifesto bore the signatures of eleven labor union chiefs, and it struck the true note of international labor. Not alone did the national labor movement of Ireland thus warn the people early in the war (as a matter of fact. the manifesto was actually issued a day or two before England declared war on Germany) but ever since the war broke out it has in various ways resisted the recruiting campaign in a successful effort to keep the people at home in spite of Redmond’s treachery. It wanted the Irish workers to stay at home minding their own business. After the war one live Irishman at home in Ireland is worth more than a thousand dead Irishmen in Belgium or anywhere else. The Irish labor movement has passed through the world test of the war. It has stood the test.

The rise of the Irish working class is one of the most extraordinary features of the recent history of Ireland. Labor in Ireland is organized in three ways, i.e. on the industrial, political and military fields. In other words labor in Ireland fights behind three trenches. For industrial fighting the unions are ready, for political fighting the labor party is ready, and for any other kind of fighting the Citizen Army is ready. It went into action on Easter Monday in the battle of Dublin. The labor movement in Ireland is the first movement in the world that added to its regular economic and political weapons a third permanent wing in the shape of an armed and drilled force. The unions are headed by the Transport and General Workers’ Union, a sort of industrial union in which are enrolled some fifty different classes of labor. The old craft unions were not abolished, but the secretary of the Transport Union, James Larkin, was elected Chairman of the national Congress of the Irish Trades Unions so that the industrialism of the Transport Union was impressed upon the entire union movement in Ireland. Although for over 20 years with varying results a socialist propaganda had been conducted in Ireland and although in some places local labor parties had sprung up for the purpose of obtaining the representation of labor on the municipal and rural councils and public boards generally, it was only within the last few years that the unions agreed to take political action on a national scale by forming the Irish labor party. The party is in existence for too short a period to contest parliamentary elections, but it has already elected several· Socialist Aldermen and Councillors to the municipal council of Dublin and other places in Ireland. This new Irish labor party is organically connected with the national union movement of labor, as both the unions and the labor party have one common national convention, and the official name of the labor movement, industrial and political, is the Irish Trades Union Congress and Labor Party. The Citizen Army is really the armed Transport Union, which formed the first military companies of labor union men, but the other unions are falling into line also on the military field. The Citizen Army is not organically connected with the Trades Union Congress and Labor Party, but is closely identified with the labor movement insofar as the first elected head of the labor army was Chairman of the Trades Union Congress and Labor Party.

James Finton Lalor, the Irish revolutionist of 1848 has exercised a profound influence on the modern labor movement in Ireland. His writings in the Irish Felon were reprinted in Dublin some 20 years ago by James Connolly, and in pamphlet form these reprints from Lalor have been circulated widely in various parts of Ireland. Lalor knew that the so called famine of ’45, ’46 and ’47 was due not to the shortage of food in Ireland but due to the existence of the landlord class. The potato crop certainly failed, but the grain crops did not. And there was more grain in Ireland than would feed the entire population. Why then did the people starve? Because they were not allowed to eat the grain. The entire crop all over the island was collected by the landlords at the points of British bayonets, taken away from Ireland, and sold in order that the landlords might get money for rent. There was hunger in Ireland not because the potato crop failed but because the landlords supported by the British army forcibly took away the grain crop.

After the arrest and conviction of John Mitchell in 1848, Lalo stepped into the gap and through the Felon spoke to the people. What did he advocate? Let Lalor speak for himself:

“The principle I state and mean to stand upon is this, that the entire ownership of Ireland, moral and material, up to the sun and down to the center, is vested of right in the people of Ireland; that they, and none but they, are the landowners and law-makers of this island; that all laws are null and void not made by them, and titles to land invalid not conferred or confirmed by them…I hold and maintain that the entire soil of a country belongs of right to the entire people of that country, and is the rightful property, not of any one class, but of the nation at large.”

This is as clear a statement of the principle of collective ownership as is found in the writings of anyone before or since Lalor’s time, and it was accepted by the late Patrick Ford, by Michael Davitt, and by every man calling himself a Socialist in Ireland. In fact Socialism in Ireland today, the guiding spirit of the labor movement, is inspired by Lalor.

Every real revolutionist in Ireland from Tone to Connolly sided with the working people and if Ireland in ’98 found her soldiers in the men who came’ out from many a mudwall cabin” to take part in the nightly pike drill “at the rising of the moon” so she found in 1916 the Connollys of the labor army rising for industrial freedom. Tone stated in ’98 that in the struggle for national freedom “If the men of property will not help us they must fall; we will free ourselves by the aid of that large and respectable class of the community-the men of no property.” And in line with Tone’s reference to the working class or “men of no property” is John Mitchell’s statement that what Ireland wanted was ‘a complete revolution social as well as political.” Tone, Mitchell and Lalor, and Connolly the Lalor of 1916, all believed in industrial freedom, and every Irishman worth his salt stands for the social revolution today. Socialism has long since ceased to have any terrors for the real men and women of Ireland.

It would be surprising if with such revolutionary traditions in the country of its origin, the Irish labor movement did not become inspired by the example of the men who went before. The first Irish Trades Union Congress met in 1894, and seven years later the first member of an Irish Socialist organization was sent as delegate. I was that delegate, and the Congress was held in Sligo in 1901. The labor movement was about to take a revolutionary turn. But it was the Transport Union organized by Larkin that provided the first effective force in the new development. The Belfast strike of 1907 brought the Catholic and Protestant workmen together, and the world is familiar with the Dublin strike and lockout of 1913 one of the most spectacular and bitterly fought battles that took place at any time in any country between organized labor and organized capital. Both these strikes were connected with the operations of the Transport Union, and it was in the course of the Dublin conflict that the Countess Markievicz and Captain White first became prominently identified with the labor and Socialist movement of Ireland.

The work of George Russell the pioneer of the agricultural cooperative movement in Ireland, was lined up with the new labor movement, and the farmers’ cooperatives were shown to have the same end in view as the labor movement. Labor cooperatives promoted mainly by the Transport Union sprang into existence, including the purchase by the union of Croydon Park a co-operative playground for union men and the camping ground of their Citizen army, a cooperative farm where union men were taught scientific agriculture and arboriculture by the intellectual proletariat of the colleges, a cooperative hostel where union men and their families could go from their homes for week-ends, the co-operative clothing factory operated by the women of the Transport Union making clothing for sale to the other members of the union, and many other useful productive enterprises making for the betterment by their own efforts of the working class. All these and other activities were designed to enable the workers to teach themselves habits of sobriety, self-control and self-imposed discipline.

Liberty Hall, Dublin, the first building shelled by a British warship during the revolution, is the headquarters of the Transport Union and the Citizen army its military section. It is one of the most interesting buildings in Dublin, not so much because of its architectural features, but because it housed so many activities. Formerly the meeting place of the Irish confederation of 1849, it became in the hands of the union the centre of the most revolutionary labor movement in the world, It was the military headquarters of the recent revolt until, owing to the shells from the gunbbat in the Liffey river, the revolutionists had to transfer their centre to the General Post Office. It was there that Connolly had his thigh broken by a. shell. It was there that Comrade Markievicz superintended in 1913 the feeding of the women and children faced with starvation when Dublin’s 400 industrial barons headed by Martin Murphy tried to smash once and for all the Transport Union. It was there that hung the sign, torn down in the night by the British soldiers, which read “We fight neither for King nor Kaiser” and showed that Irish labor was neither anti-British nor pro-German. Here was the social center of the unions, its place of education and amusement. Here were the class rooms where the union men were taught various languages, including Gaelic, French and German. Here was the Workers Theatre where plays were given before union audiences by the Workers’ Dramatic Company. Here the Council of the Irish Citizen army met. Before the building was wrecked by the shells, plans were in hand for the rebuilding- of Liberty Hall by co-operative labor without the intervention of the capitalist contractor, and a children’s clinic was to have been a feature of the work to be done in the new building.

The Irish Citizen army is a strictly union army, Every man in the ranks must have a union card. It is not a militia or national army taking orders from the local or national authorities, it takes its orders only from the secretary of the Transport union. It was Connolly who in the military course of the revolution commanded not alone the Citizen army but also the Irish Volunteers. The latter force was not a union army strictly, though many members were union men, but it stood for the republic without being committed to any definite views on socialism. The Volunteers were not opposed to socialism, but agreed to let the settlement of the economic and political structure of the republic to the decision of the whole people. The first companies of the Citizen army were drilled in Cork, but it was in Dublin that the drilling and arming of this labor army made the first real progress, and Captain White, who was awarded the Distinguished Service Order by the British army in the South African war, was prominent as its military instructor. White, was sentenced to prison for endeavoring to organize in Great Britain a strike of workmen to aid the Irish revolutionists in Dublin. The Citizen army first came into conflict with the royal troops when an officer of the British army visited Liberty Hall to suppress the Worker’s Republic, a socialist newspaper edited by Connolly. The military had suppressed many anti-war newspapers, without resistance, but when they came to Liberty Hall, containing the offices of the Worker’s Republic, they found the building protected by a detachment of the Citizen Army armed with loaded rifles and fixed bayonets. The conflict was a bloodless one, as the royal troops retired without attempting to break through the guard of the Citizen Army. Afterwards, Liberty Hall was guarded night and day by the Citizen Army, and the Workers Republic continued to be published. The army is a uniformed force and its members a.re pledged to work for and if necessary die for the rights of labor. Lately in Minneapolis, Minnesota, America’s Citizen Army has been started and the extension of the movement is being discussed by the labor unions of other cities.

The Dublin revolt was in a measure a transference to the military field of the industrial struggle of labor which culminated in the lockout of 1913. The lineup of the forces was much the same on the industrial battlefield in 1913 as it was on the military battlefield of 1916. The Transport Union fought the Dublin employers in the former year, while the Citizen Army led the fight against the capitalist army in the latter. So that practically the same men were in action on both occasions. But the old fight for political independence for Ireland represented by the Irish Volunteers was now allied with the armed labor movement, and the Volunteers accepted as their military commander the head of the labor army. The revolution was precipitated by the knowledge that had fallen into the possession of the revolutionists that a coup had been prepared by the Government for the seizure by the military of Liberty Hall, the Trade Council Hall, the Volunteer’s Headquarters, and the arrest of the leaders. The revolutionists decided to act while they had the power of initiative, and they seized and occupied the heart of the city of Dublin. It is a matter of history how less than a thousand citizen riflemen held Dublin for a whole week against 20,000 British troops. Such an example of courage and military skill is without parallel in military annals of the world.

Superficial thinkers have said: The Irish Revolution had no chance of success and so it was a mistake to fight against such odds. They forgot that the workingmen of Dublin by their action exploded the lies cabled to this country that Ireland was rallying to the support of the British flag in the war, and what is more they have killed conscription in Ireland. Yes, it is true these men died in the battle of Dublin, and that 15 of the best lives in Ireland were taken by the bloodthirsty Government of Britain when they shot the surrendered rebel leaders. But if they had taken the advice of the traitor Redmond they would have gone to Flanders to die by the tens of thousands in the trenches of a foreign land fighting people with whom they had no quarrel. If the liberty of Belgium was worth the shedding of Irish blood, surely the liberty of Ireland was worth fighting for. Ireland has been a Belgium for over 700 years, but the Irish arch traitor invited his countrymen to throw their lives away in fighting the battles of the British empire, the foe to the world’s peace, the robber of the people of India, the thief of Egypt’s liberty, the exterminator of the Irish people. In about half a century Ireland under British rule lost half her entire population and in 1845-1848 a million and a quarter people died by the roadsides from starvation in the midst of plenty because British bayonets stood between the famishing people and the grain they had harvested. The Dublin revolutionists struck hard and well, and they struck at the right time because a blow for freedom is right at any time. The socialists of the world are with the Irish revolution. They are with the common people in every country when they strike against the capitalist government that holds them down, just as they are with the workers in every strike because the workers are always right. The people are always right. Instead of the Irish revolution having broken down, it is the capitalist government that has broken down as admitted by Asquith. The democracy of Ireland is saved from the war. The Irish proletariat will be alive in Ireland after the war to help the proletariat of the world in the work of social reconstruction. Redmond tried to discredit the revolutionary movement by stating it was financed by Germany, but the testimony of Major Price at the commission of enquiry showed that no German money reached Ireland and the arms used in the Dublin fighting had been provided by the revolutionists before the war between England and Germany was declared.

On the last page (Appendix B) will be found the proclamation issued by the Dublin revolutionists when they established the Republic. For literary beauty, historical truth and economic soundness the document will long be treasured by friends of freedom in all nations: “We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland” it states. How remarkably like the language of Lalor it sounds: “The entire ownership of Ireland is vested of right in the people of Ireland.” Yes, Lalor from his grave spoke in 1916 through Connolly, because the economics of the proclamation declared for national ownership of the island by the people. The signers of the Irish proclamation endorsed Lalor’s principle and so brought the Irish revolution into line with the International Socialist Movement. Connolly was the only recognized economist among the seven signers, and his lifelong devotion to the cause of socialism in Ireland, in America and throughout the world is the surest guarantee that the idea of the Co-operative Commonwealth for Ireland was to the forefront when the proclamation was drawn up, but the actual wording of the document itself puts the matter beyond dispute. The phrase Sinn Fein has been much used in describing the revolutionists, but Arthur Griffiths the economist of the Sinn Fein movement was not among the signers of the proclamation, and there is no trace in it of Griffiths’ Sinn Fein economics or his nonsense about restoring the ”King, Lords and Commons of Ireland or the constitution of’ 82.” The revolutionists declared a republic without King or Lords, and the bourgeois conceptions of Liszt which Griffiths unsuccessfully tried to import into Ireland from Hungary had no place in the declaration of the Irish Republic. The socialist economics of Connolly were accepted by the Republic, and the bourgeois economics of Liszt the prophet of the Magyar oligarchy of Hungary had no place in the revolution. The Irish people are to own the nation, and the declaration goes on to state that people meant the “the whole people of Ireland” and that the government of Ireland was to be “elected by the suffrages of all her men and women.” The Irish Republic is therefore the first republic in the world to give women the vote. This republic guarantees equal rights, civil and religious liberty and “equal opportunities to all its citizens.” Equality of opportunity in the industrial and political sense has been the demand of the socialist movement throughout the world, but the Irish Republic was the first in history to admit and guarantee that equality. When wealth and the tools of labor are in the hands of one class, and the other class have no property and must sell their labor power for wages, the children of the former have opportunities for health, wealth, education and happiness denied to the children of the wage workers. The Irish Republic struck at that inequality. By declaring for national ownership, it struck at private ownership. It aimed at the abolition of classes to enable it to carry out its work of “cherishing all the children of the nation equally.” The seven signers of the proclamation sealed their faith with their life’s blood.

The battle of Dublin is over, but the conditions that produced it remain. The fight will go on in the future as in the past. Connolly with shattered thigh propped up on crutches by the British soldiers to face the firing squad, Skeffington who refusing to be blindfolded put to his face his hand through which a bullet entered bis brain, the Countess Markievicz at the head of the detachment that attacked Dublin castle the government headquarters, the spectacle of these socialists fighting and dying for human liberty, will live for ages in the memory of mankind.

The hypocrisy and cant of John Redmond and “Tay Pay” (called “Take Pay” since he turned recruiting sergeant for the British government) now have been exposed to the world. The Dublin revolt finally killed the Redmonite lie that the Irish democracy were rolling up in hundreds of thousands to fight for the British allies, even if Redmond had not previously been a liar convicted out of his own mouth.

Compare these two statements by Redmond: “Thus it becomes apparent that we have with the colors to-day at least 350,000 Irishmen, and if to these are added the 25 per cent., or even 20 per cent. of Irishmen there can be no exaggeration in the statement that Ireland has given to the service of the Allies a full half-million men.” From Statement of John Redmond in New York “Sun,” March I9, I9I6.

“The latest official figures published give the number of recruits from Ireland to the army and navy as 105,181, and the total from Ireland direct at present serving with the colors, 155,227. Up to date reinforcements for the Irish battalions at the front to the number of nearly 50,000 had been sent from Ireland to make good the wastage of war.” From Statement of John Redmond in “New York World,” April 16, 1916.

In March he claimed 350,000 Irishmen joined the British colors, but the next month he was compelled to reduce the number 150,000 but as a matter of fact he is still more than 50,000 above the official figures given out by the British government. But at the royal commission of inquiry into the Dublin revolt, it was stated that only 40,000 Irish catholics were in the army. Redmond’s day is over, and the Labor party of Ireland is one of the factors making for the destruction of the bourgeois politics of this exponent of British Imperialism.

Connolly will as time goes on loom larger and larger as the central figure of the Irish insurrection of 1916 and his life and work will ever be present in the minds of the people. Men and women of the Irish race are turning to the writings of James Connolly, the socialist commander of the Army of the Irish Republic for information on the movement of which Connolly was a high ornament. His “Labor in Irish History” is a book that should be in the hands of every Irishman. Many other books and pamphlets by James Connolly are available. Connolly knew that the future of the labor movement lay along the lines of the industrial formation of the unions, and that political action by the working class was an essential weapon in the fight for freedom. He not alone believed in industrial and political action but also in military and every other kind of action rendered necessary by the character of the struggle and the conditions surrounding it.

Connolly’s personal history is like the history of many another workingman. Connolly was a proletarian of the proletarians. In Dublin some 20 years ago he was in receipt of three dollars a week as editor of the Workers’ Republic the first socialist newspaper in Ireland. Once a cart on which some advertisements of his paper were displayed was thrown into the Liffey by those who said socialism was unIrish. Connolly lived to see the day when the very people who threw his advertising cart into the river were glad to accept him and his socialism and make him military commander of the Army of the Irish Republic. I brought Connolly to lecture in Cork about 16 years ago, and the Trades Council refused to allow him to speak in the labor hall. I have lived to see the day when Connolly could deliver his message in any labor hall in Ireland.

While in America, Connolly worked as an ordinary insurance canvasser, and had to borrow $100 from an American socialist comrade to hand to the Insurance company as a cash guarantee. No surety company would issue a. bond on this workingman as he had not been 12 months in America, and the insurance company wanted references as well as cash. He could not make a living as an insurance collector though he worked hard in a tough quarter of Troy, N.Y., and be was compelled to try other work which be eventually found at Elizabeth, N.J., where be was employed running a lathe in a sewing machine factory. Connolly the class conscious workingman doomed during life to the perpetual poverty which always haunts the working class will in death be honored by those who used their influence to boycott him when alive. Connolly was a Catholic and a socialist all his life. His life of poverty and his heroic death will be remembered in Ireland when the hypocrites who whisper “a Catholic can’t be a socialist” are forgotten.

James Connolly, Francis Sheehy Skeffington and other socialists of Dublin, well you taught and fought for freedom. You faced the ruling class on your own sod, you showed how socialists should live and bow they should die. You have redeemed your nation and your race. You were true even unto death, and greater faith than this no man hath for you gave your lives for your fellow man. The carnage in Europe brought about by the fear and greed of the master-class called to you in vain. You preferred to stand for freedom in your native land. Through the smoke of battle you saw the vision of the day that is to come. The golden dome of the Co-operative commonwealth is being raised in Europe, and among the federated republics destined to arise from the ashes of monarchy and class rule in Europe you placed the republic of Ireland as the first manifestation of the new social order. With heads uncovered the world social democracy salutes your hallowed shades.

Cornelius ‘Con’ Lehane (1877–1919) was born in County Cork, Ireland and was a founding member of the Irish Socialist Republican Party. Also known as O’Lyhane, he was the ISRP’s Cork branch, called the Fintan Lalor Club, leading figure and a major figure in the IRSP nationally. Lehane clashed with Connolly over differences towards the IRSP’s posture towards religion and the Catholic Church. While in Cork, Lehane led protests against Queen Victoria’s Jubilee and a militant gas workers’ strike. His atheism lost him his job as a clerk, and he resettled in England where he joined the Social Democratic Federation. He soon left the SDF to become a founding member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain in 1904, and its first General Secretary. Expelled from the SPGB in 1906 along with his branch over their support of industrial unionism, he moved to the United States by 1913. He settled in Connecticut and was active with James Larkin in the left wing of the Socialist Party and the IWW. A paid SP organizer and speaker, he toured the country with a focus on organizing Irish workers, including for Debs 1916 congressional campaign in Indiana. While engaged in the project to spread Connolly’s message and this pamphlet projet, comrade Lehane was jailed in 1917, along with so many other foreign-born radicals, for opposing US entry into World War One. While there, his health declined and he died in New York City on December 31, 1919 shortly after being released from prison.

Access to original pamphlet: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/umn.31951p00996597f