No one in the U.S. did more to spread the ideas of James Connolly after his execution than his former rival in the ISRP Cornelius ‘Con’ Lehane. Here he speaks to Boston’s Gaelic School in September, 1917 on the Irish Citizens Army, afterwards creating the James Connolly Literary Society with future leading Communist and Daily Worker columnist Thomas J. O’Flaherty. 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 ISRP nationally. Lehane clashed with Connolly over differences towards the ISRP’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. Immediately after James Connolly’s May 12, 1916 execution, his comrade Cornelius Lehane sought to grasp the opportunity to bring Connolly’s socialism to the Irish working class in the U.S. He produced a book, see below, and began an exhaustive tour of the country in support. Speaking to well over 150 audiences, he sought to create James Connolly Reading Clubs in Irish working class communities. While engaged in this project he 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.

‘The Irish Citizens Army’ from Labor Leader (Duluth). Vol. 1 No. 15. September 28, 1917.

Cornelius Lehane the Irish Lecturer and labor leader delivered an eloquent address under the auspices of the Boston Gaelic School society on Sept. 2 their headquarters, Deacon Building, 1651 Washington street, Boston. Lehane told his large audience of the Organization of the Irish Citizen Army, their purpose and their glorious fight for freedom during Easter week 1916. “The Citizens Army of Ireland” says Lehane, “was the military wing of the Irish Labor Forces. They fought the Capitalist Class behind three lines of trenches. First in order came the industrial union where they met the enemy at the point of production, next the Irish Labor Party, every member of which was pledged to vote for the interests of his class, because they did not see any sense in striking against the Capitalists three hundred and sixty four days in the year and voting him into power on the three hundred and sixty fifth. The Citizen army which constituted the third line had the proud distinction of being the first labor force in the history of the world to march under arms, behind their own drums through the streets of the Capital of the nation, pledged not to lay down their arms until a blow was struck for liberty.”

The speaker told about the work of James Connolly, the leader of the Irish labor, of his efforts in behalf of the Socialist movement, how he was abused and vilified by his own people on the ground that he introduced a foreign doctrine into Ireland, while his accusers had no objection at all to swallow Shoneenism lock, stock and barrel.

In comparing the reception offered to Socialism in Ireland when Connolly and himself first introduced it with that offered to the democratic ideas that were spread broadcast by the French Revolution, and introduced into Ireland by Wolfe Tone and others. Lehane related how after Tone returned from France after soliciting aid from the French Directory, Irish reactionaries asked if he returned as an Irishman or a democrat was new then an as much hated by the ruling class of that time as the word Socialist is today by the capitalist class, but Wolfe Tone answered “I come as an Irishman and as a democrat.” Lehane then laughingly remarked that after he came to America he was asked whether he came from Ireland as an Irishman or as a Socialist, and like Wolfe Tone he answered. “I come as an Irishman and a Socialist.”

The audience applauded enthusiastically several times during the evening, is was the heartiest reception he ever received from the Gaelic School, but when he sailed into Sir James Gerard roar after roar of laughter broke from the gathering.

“They have two coveted orders in England,” said Lehane, “one is the Order of the Bath, the other is the Order of the Garter. When the aristocracy is not in the Bath they are after the Garter, but they have another order now which is known unofficially as the Order of the Root and it is generally conferred on members of the working-class.”

Thomas J. O’Flaherty the President of the Society, made a few remarks, in the course of which he said, that the best Irishman was the Socialist Irishman, because he believed, not alone in cutting the England but also getting rid of the capitalist system of exploitation and establishing a co-operative Commonwealth for the benefit of all the people.

After the meeting a society was formed to carry on the work, of James Connolly in Boston. The name is the James Connolly Literary Society.

Truth emerged from the The Duluth Labor Leader, a weekly English language publication of the Scandinavian local of the Socialist Party in Duluth, Minnesota and began on May Day, 1917 as a Left Wing alternative to the Duluth Labor World. The paper was aligned to both the SP and the I.W.W. leading to the paper being closed down in the first big anti-I.W.W. raids in September, 1917. The paper was reborn as Truth, with the Duluth Scandinavian Socialists joining the Communist Labor Party of America in 1919. Shortly after the editor, Jack Carney, was arrested and convicted of espionage in 1920. Truth continued to publish with a new editor J.O. Bentall until 1923 as an unofficial paper of the C.P.

Access to PDF of full issue: https://www.mnhs.org/newspapers/lccn/sn89081141/1917-09-28/ed-1/seq-1