Discovering Connolly’s Real Birthplace
Discovering Connolly’s Real Birthplace
[Editor’s Note: In this article Desmond Greaves describes how he learned the true facts of Connolly’s birthplace from some of Connolly’s youthful contemporaries: that Connolly had been born in Edinburgh and not, as had previously been generally thought, in Co. Monaghan, Ireland. The article was carried with the headline below in a special 12-page issue of the “Irish Democrat” that was published in May 1968 to mark the centenary of Connolly’s birth. Greaves had earlier published a facsimile of Connolly’s birth certificate and an accompanying article in the March 1951 issue of the “Irish Democrat”, but this had been little noticed at the time.]
Rip-Roar Now With An Easy Conscience!
Connolly’ s birthday and the “impeccable authorities”
By C. Desmond Greaves
On August 3rd 1967 The Guardian published a column headed “Historians Cannot Spoil an Irish centenary.”
It did not purport to be written by a historian. Its author was Mr Robert Brown. Its manner was familiar enough; it was that of the master race condescending to notice the lesser breeds and finding them slightly amusing. But not the worst I ever saw from an English journalist on an Irish question.
The centenary of James Connolly’s birth was to be the occasion for “a proper pan-Celtic celebration on both sides of the water”.
“As Glasgow and Edinburgh Trades Council see it,” wrote Mr Brown, “prompted by last year’s Scottish TUC president Mr A. Kitson, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Belfast and Dublin socialists should make sure of a rip-roaring tribute to Connolly. Glasgow for instance has initial thoughts of using the city’s Unity Theatre and other artists for a night of rebel song and story in the heart of the Gorbals, a profoundly Irish quarter.”
But Mr Brown was able to unearth the snags. He looked up two “impeccable non-Irish authorities”, the Encyclopaedia Britannica and Chambers’s and found that they gave Connolly’s birthday in 1870, and his birthplace as Monaghan. He communicated this discovery to Mr Wyper of the Glasgow Trades Council and recorded that Mr Wyper was “startled” by it.
The authorities must be impeccable of course, being non-Irish. And Mr Brown is strengthened by his judgement of Irish character. In a previous paragraph he speaks of “careless Irish ways”.
The implication is clear. The careless Irish have decided on their rip-roaring pan-Celtic revelry two years before the proper date, because they have been too careless to consult the impeccable non-Irish authorities; but in any case they do not propose to allow these authorities to spoil the fun. “How very Irish,” one can almost hear Mr Brown comment.
So perhaps it is no harm to tell the story of how the impeccable authorities were proved wrong. But we’ll not entitle the article, “New facts cannot spoil English journalist’s complacency.” For we don’t think Mr Brown is really a bad fellow – but for his excessively careful ways.
First, where did the Encyclopaedias get their information from? Obviously from Desmond Ryan’s short life of Connolly published about 45 years ago. I have a copy in my possession that was given me by Sean O’Casey in 1949 or 1950.
Ryan told me how he came to write the book. The material was collected by his father, W.P. Ryan, chairman of the London Gaelic League and later Dublin correspondent of the Daily Herald. After the strain of the Rising, Black and Tans, Treaty and Civil War, Desmond Ryan, who have been devoted to Pearse, fell ill. A nervous breakdown was feared and he had to relinquish his job on the Freeman’s Journal, which anyway folded up. The father handed over his materials, which were not complete, in order to give Desmond something to occupy him. And a good competent job he made of them. This was the first Life of Connolly ever written. Ryan was in his early twenties.
In this book Connolly’s birthplace is given as near Clones, and the date is given as June 5th, 1870.
Years afterwards, after I had succeeded in establishing the correct date, Ryan told me how he got the wrong one. On May 18th, 1951, he wrote to me from Swords:
“The Lyng paragraph was written as publicity for Connolly’s first USA S.L.P. tour in 1902, either when Connolly went there or just before, before I think . . . His only comment on it was a terse sarcasm about the date of his date of birth given as 1870” *
He added that some of his contemporaries thought the date might be 1869.
As for the place, he wrote, “I think you have made your case for Edinburgh conclusively enough.”
And, of course, Ryan was a historian.
It was before I had the idea of writing a Life of Connolly that I went to Edinburgh to try and trace his early connections in that city. My object was to get material for an article in the Irish Democrat.
Others had made the attempt before me. William Paul spent days looking through Scottish newspapers trying to verify that Connolly was Edinburgh’s first Socialist candidate. He did not find the reference because he did not go far enough back.
Before I left for Edinburgh I looked through the material at the Marx Memorial Library, Clerkenwell Green.
The secretary was John Morgan, a Russian immigrant who had lived in Scotland as a young man and spoke with a Scottish accent, though in other ways he was a true continental, with a gift for sharp epigrammatic comment. He could not suffer fools.
He advised me to make contact with Len Cotton, secretary of the Socialist Labour Party. “Surely it doesn’t still exist,” said I incredulously. “It does,” he replied. “And he it.”
That was early in February 1951.
I went to Glasgow where Bob McIlhone placed a flat at my disposal near the Mitchell Library. Snow fell each night and melted each day. There was little about Connolly’s early life to be found in Glasgow.
I went to Edinburgh somewhat despondent.
The secretary of the Trades Council, Mr Lossen, showed me the minutes for the years 1891-96. There were many references to a J. Connolly. But was this James or a brother? The City Treasurer took me into the Corporation strong-room and we looked at the Council minutes for the same period. Here it was indicated that a John Connolly had been dismissed for political reasons from his job as a carter. There was nothing about James. Yet Ryan had said clearly that James was dismissed.
Cotton lived out at East Shiels. On the East coast the weather was dry and intensely frosty. As I sped outwards and upwards through the fine country that leads to Soutra I wondered if this was going to be a wild goose chase.
Cotton lived in the gatehouse of what had been a magnificent demesne, and still was indeed. He was in his early seventies and had preserved carefully all the records of the Socialist Labour Party. We looked through the files of the “Socialist”, but there was nothing about Connolly’s early life. I mentioned the dismissal of John Connolly and he replied: “I never heard that Connolly had a brother.”
Only that morning I had missed an opportunity to check this. A man named Monaghan, a painter, came into the Trades Council office. “Here’s a man who wants to know about James Connolly,” said Lossen. “I mind him,” said Monaghan. “Well, can you tell us anything about him?” “I mind him.” And that is all we got. Lossen suggested that he disapproved of Connolly, regarding him as something of a freethinker. Later I found the name of Monaghan among the list of assenters at Connolly’s election. I never found out if it was the same man.
Cotton sent me to Geddes at Barnton. He also expressed the view that Connolly had no brother. I suggested to the City Treasurer that perhaps the minutes were inaccurate. Labourers might not have been very carefully designated by gentlemen in those days. But he rightly insisted that we had no right to assume that. I went back to Glasgow, feeding that the Irish Democrat was not going to get its article.
I had scarcely sat down when there was a knock at the door. It was a telegram from Geddes: “Connolly had a brother. Important contact made. Return to Edinburgh at once.” I locked up the flat, got the key back to Bob McIlhone and took the next train back to Edinburgh.
There Geddes was waiting for me. “I want you to meet an old man who was a close friend of Connolly’s brother John. I’ll come with you as you may not understand his accent, or he yours. His name is John Conlon.”
He lived at the very top of a spiral staircase lit with dim gaslights which he said had been installed as a result of one of James Connolly’s campaigns. I could of course understand him quite easily and wondered about Geddes’s hesitation. He spoke about John Connolly, who enlisted and went to India under the name of John Reid, and about the Scottish Land and Labour League “that we all came from”. He explained that Leslie was a contemporary of John Connolly and closer to him than to James. He described the sessions to study Marx’s Capital, when the Rev. John Glasse translated from the German, and many other events now long forgotten.
At a certain point he referred to “that fellow that came here years ago asking about Connolly.” “You never told him this?” said Geddes. “We did not. We didn’t like the look of him, so we told him nothing.” “What was the matter with him? “He looked to me like a Labour faker.”
So Geddes had gone with me to assure Conlon that I wasn’t a “Labour faker”. Whether the suspected “Labour faker” was one of the two unfortunate Ryans or somebody else I did not dare to ask. I have my own opinion.
Suddenly, after speaking mainly to Geddes, Conlon leaned forward, all his dourness evaporated and asked me with a bright twinkle in his eye, “Did you ever hear where James Connolly was born?” I replied that some said Clones, others Ballybay, but I presumed it was somewhere between the two, in the country. “You never heard it was Cork?” I had not, though later I learned that an Edinburgh paper – probably prompted by Leslie who for reasons that seemed good to him was doing a bit of mystification – had given him a Cork birthplace.
Conlon turned to Geddes. “He was born in the Coog’t.” Where? This time I needed a translation. The Cowgate of Edinburgh. I left with Geddes and told him I didn’t believe it. “It will only cost you three and six to find out.” I had a search made and the birth entry was found. Later I was permitted to examine the original. The date was June 5th alright, but the year was 1868. Afterwards Mr H.A. Scott, an old friend of John Leslie’s who had been introduced to me by Robin Page Arnot, who wrote the History of the British Miners, searched the census records for me and established beyond a shadow of doubt that the entry referred to the right man.
As Ryan wrote to me: “The document must be genuine unless there was a most incredible coincidence, which seems absurd”. I had published a facsimile in the Irish Democrat of March 1951.
Later I started reading the early history of the Scottish Socialist movement more systematically, and in the British Museum I came across H.M. Lee’s reference to Connolly’s birth in Edinburgh. This had apparently been missed by the impeccable authorities, though in fairness to them, it was not they themselves but Mr Brown who advanced the claim to impeccability on their behalf.
The upshot therefore is that the pan-Celtic pandemonium can revel and rip- roar without fearing any restraint from Mr Robert Brown’s careful ways. And to show there’s no ill-feeling, why doesn’t Mr Brown drop in and join us?
*Actually the paragraph was signed Deering and gave the date 1869.