Lehane reports on his project to bring the ideas of James Connolly to the Irish-American working class. 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. 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.

‘Great Irish Opportunity’ by Cornelius Lehane from The Co-operative News. No. 372. March 14, 1918.

Over a year ago, when the events connected with the death of James Connolly and others, after the battle of Dublin, were fresh in the minds of the American Socialists, I ventured to call the attention of the Socialist movement in this country to the unexampled opportunity which had arisen for reaching the American Irish with the message of Socialism.

In that article I emphasized the labor character of the Dublin revolt against British militarism, and showed that Connolly, the veteran Marxism Socialist who commanded in the revolution the Irish Citizen Army, the first labor army in the world, would not have thrown his force into action and sacrifice his own life and the lives of his Comrades, were it not that he conceived that his duty to the international Socialist movement, of which he was a life long member and exponent, demanded that course of action. Connolly and his gallant Comrades are dead, but so is conscription in Ireland. They did not die in vain. They saved the workers of Ireland from conscription, as, they proved to the government that the people of Ireland preferred death to conscription in the ranks of the capitalist army.

I then invited the Irish Socialists of America to take steps to put into the hands of the American Irish at large the writings of James Connolly, whose heroic death had endeared him in the minds and hearts of the Gaelic race. I pointed out that his writings would not be read by people who before his death may have shunned him. His death in the deathless fight for freedom changed all. Connolly dead is more powerful than Connolly living. The wonderful literature which he left after him as a heritage to the working class of the world is today revolutionizing the minds of the Irish people at home in Ireland and here in America.

My words were listened to, and as a result, clubs and study classes have arisen all over America having for their object the popularizing amongst the American Irish of the writings of James Connolly, great martyr of the international. These Connolly clubs and classes are already in vogue at Boston, St. Louis, Buffalo, San Francisco, and in other places. In Baltimore, Butte, New Orleans, New York and other centers similar Irish Socialist study groups are being organized and trained. In addition to this, hundreds of individual Irishmen all over America have written to me for the literature of the Irish revolution, and I have before me as I write thousands of applications for further information on the subject from labor union officers and members, officers and members of

Irish fraternal orders, and working people of practically every race represented in America.

Thus, some progress has been made in the direction I indicated over a year ago. I have to thank all Comrades for the co-operation I received in arousing interest in the works of James Connolly, but especially I must thank John J. Lyng, of Yonkers and Denis F. Dwyer of St. Louis, both old colleagues of James Connolly, also Thomas O’Flaherty of Boston, president of the Boston Gaelic school. It would be perhaps unnecessary for me to mention the great assistance that Nora Connolly, daughter of James Connolly, has given in helping the American Irish to an appreciation of the cause for which her father died, and that given by Mrs. Sheehy Skeffington, and Padraic Colum.

The work of bringing the Socialist message to the Irish in America has, however, not developed as fast as could be desired, and this mainly for the reason that, being continually on the move, I had not always the time to attend promptly to the heavy correspondence that reached me. Now, however, the work can be speeded up, as I have taken up permanent residence in the East near New York. I should like now to assist Irish Socialists everywhere in America in the task of reaching the non-Socialist Irish with the glorious message of Socialism. Today even more than ever it is necessary that we should pursue the Irish with Connolly’s message. From Dublin to Petrograd the open revolt against capitalism and militarism has spread. England and Italy may soon follow the example of the Russian Bolsheviki. Then the rest of Europe for Socialism all round. In contemplating the splendid turn of events in Europe, where Socialism is now at last in the saddle in at least one great country, let us not forget that the Bolsheviki Red Guards, which helped Lenine to consolidate the power of the Russian Socialist republic, are modeled on the pattern of the Irish Citizen Army, and that the Irish workers were the first in the world to put into the field a drilled and armed force composed exclusively of labor union men and pledged to the co-operative commonwealth. The dead Connolly is vindicated by the living Lenine.

Now, to facilitate the work of spreading the light amongst the Irish in this country, I have asked for the formation of a nationwide committee of Irish Socialist party members as a preparatory step to a serious and intensive drive amongst the non-Socialist Irish. I should like to have this article read out at the next meeting of every Socialist local. Do not wait for your local secretary to hear about it. Cut this out and hand or mail it to the secretary of your local and ask him to bring it up at the next meeting. Then write to me yourself, and send me the names and addresses of any active Irish Socialists in your locality. I shall go after them for you through the mail. In a short while we shall get results. Once we get the Irish moving, something will soon be happening. When we get the Irish for Socialism, we will also get the labor unions. Write to me today at Ansonia, Conn.

The Washington Socialist was a weekly newspaper of the Socialist Party of Snohomish County published in Everett, Washington and edited by Maynard Shipley. Closely aligned with the Industrial Workers of the World, who were strong in the Pacific Northwest’s lumber industry, the paper ran for only 18 months when it was renamed The Northwest Worker with Henry Watts as editor in June, 1915, and again Co-Operative News with Perter Husby as editor in October, 1917. Like virtually all of the left press, the Co-Operative News was suppressed in June 1918 under the Federal Espionage Act.