James Connolly: Scot admired by Martin Compston and Mick Lynch has a message for Yes

So what Connolly’s story tell us about the future of a politically progressive Scotland?

Quite a lot but first a bit of background. Connolly was born in a slum known as “Little Ireland” in Edinburgh’s Cowgate on June 5, 1868, and died on May 12, 1916, shot by the British Army in Dublin after helping to lead the Easter Uprising.

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Although his parents were Irish, he spoke with a Scottish accent throughout his life and before entering socialist politics served with the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Scots Regiment for nearly seven years in Ireland. After leaving the army, Connolly worked for the Scottish Socialist Federation and then campaigned in America, Britain and Ireland for those same political ends.

Returning to Ireland in 1910, he was heavily involved in the fight for not just Irish independence but a socialist Ireland. Following the violence and brutality of British troops during and after the 1913 Dublin Lockout, Connolly helped establish the Irish Citizen Army to protect workers’ rights to strike, picket and protest.

The Irish Citizen Army (members of which are shown above) was a key part of the forces of the Easter Uprising which began on April 24, 1916. Due to its role and his leadership of it, Connolly was commandant of the Dublin Brigade. As it had the most substantial role in the Rising, he was, therefore, its commander-in-chief.

Let’s turn now to the insights he can give us. On Palm Sunday, shortly before the Rising began, Connolly addressed the Irish Citizen Army and told them: “In the event of victory, hold on to your rifles as those with whom we are fighting may stop before our goal is reached. We are out for economic as well as political liberty.”

Although no one is envisaging any armed struggle to bring about independence for Scotland, there is a core of truth in what Connolly said. It is that while political activists have at certain points in time the same goals but for different reasons, come a change in the context, they then diverge.

England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers

Applied to Scotland, this means that while there any many campaigning for independence, they do not all do so for the same reasons. And then when that staging post is achieved, they will become more opponents than allies. In other words, alliances are temporary, based upon particular conjunctures, and radicals should never forget or give up on what the key goal is, namely, the creation of a socialist society.

Connolly also dealt with the nature of independence once achieved. In an article published in The Shan Van Vocht newsletter of January 1897. called Socialism and Nationalism, he wrote: “If you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the socialist republic your efforts would be in vain.

"England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs.

“England would still rule you to your ruin, even while your lips offered hypocritical homage at the shrine of that freedom whose cause you had betrayed. Nationalism without socialism – without a reorganisation of society on the basis of a broader and more developed form of that common property which underlay the social structure of Ancient Erin – is only national recreancy.”

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Recreancy is a now little-used term for shameful and deceitful cowardice, and Erin is an ancient Hibernian term for Ireland.

With that acknowledged, here Connolly argued that political freedom is nothing but window dressing without economic freedom. Both have to be freedoms from as well as freedoms for and freedoms to, where this means freedom from the diktats of capitalism and freedom to live a full life, unencumbered by poverty, disease and ignorance. A couple of years later, Connolly made the point all the more powerful when he wrote in the Workers’ Republic newspaper of the Socialist Party of Ireland in 1899: “After Ireland is free, says the patriot who won’t touch Socialism, we will protect all classes, and if you won’t pay your rent, you will be evicted same as now.

“But the evicting party, under command of the sheriff, will wear green uniforms and the Harp without the Crown, and the warrant turning you out on the roadside will be stamped with the arms of the Irish Republic.”

Again, and applied to Scotland, Connolly is warning that the very immediate cause of gaining national independence masks a much deeper divide – that of, class. In other words, even though parts of different social classes may seem united in their desire for a particular political outcome, they see it as the same means for different ends. Independence, therefore, means quite different things to different people.

It is the responsibility of every independence supporter to fully and properly think through what they want and mean by their support for independence as well as to also fully and properly think through what others want and mean by their support for independence. Only such political clarity can prevent powerful illusions being formed.

One such example is the widely available t-shirt on a Saltire background of the head of Nicola Sturgeon superimposed on to the head of Che Guevara. Such an image was also painted on to the wall of the Yes cafe in Edinburgh south side in 2015.

Professor Gregor Gall is an affiliate research associate at the University of Glasgow and editor of ‘A New Scotland: Building an Equal, Fair and Sustainable Society’ (Pluto Press, 2022, priced £14.99)