Review of Austen Morgan’s“James Connolly, a political biography”
[Editor’s Note: This review by Desmond Greaves was carried in the “Morning Star” on 7 July 1988, some six weeks before the writer’s death. The book was published by Manchester University Press and retailed originally for £27.50.]
Socialist internationalist from beginning to end
With a total of 892 references, this book certainly possesses the weightiness of scholarship.
It is, however, a self-proclaimed polemical work designed (as the blurb succinctly explains) to pose the “unanswered question” of “why a man who lived as a Socialist died an Irish nationalist”.
The question remains unanswered of course, because its premise is nonsense.
Connolly died as he lived, a Socialist internationalist.
What is presented for explanation, didn’t happen.
But, in the course of toying with the subject, Austen Morgan contrives to throw more than a peck of dirt on the principle of Irish national independence, from which the forces of transnational capital are in league to win the Irish people away.
His thesis is essentially that of 1919 Sean O’Casey. When at the outbreak of war Connolly contemplated an Irish national revolution, “Labour lost a leader.”
One would expect, from an author arguing such a case, a careful examination of Connolly’s statements, especially those from the period in which the transition is alleged to have taken place.
But, from cover to cover, there is scarcely one brief reproduction of what Connolly actually said, although we are well supplied with what Morgan thinks he meant.
The early chapters concentrate on Connolly’s Socialism, ignoring his consistent stand for Irish independence. The last chapters describe his “nationalism” during the “last 20 months of his life”.
The author seems completely unaware of the principle that the emancipation of a small nation is an act of internationalism, as it enables that nation to take its place in the world.
At the outbreak of war Connolly called for a revolution that would lead to the “dethronement of the vulture classes that rule and rob the world.” It was soon clear that that was not going to happen.
The fact that the working class required the experience of war to develop a revolutionary consciousness left Connolly with a need for fresh tactics.
A “one stage” revolution was not in sight. All the talk about “stages theory” is of course redundant. There is no absolute rule.
Under the conditions of the time Connolly outlined “two stages of Irish freedom”, which Austen Morgan refers to only to dismiss.
He strikes one as a man with little practical experience of political activity and seems to inhabit a world of abstractions where there is no such thing as adapting a consistent principle to transformed circumstances.
The selection of facts bolstered by the 892 preferences is vitiated by misunderstanding. Everything is filtered through an eclectic ideology, a kind of establishment Socialism, Marxism without commitment, that petit-bourgeois student enfants terribles assume on their way to becoming academic Meistersingers.
There are few gross errors of fact, although some material is presented out of chronology. Poor old Mullery is consistently called Mulray.
And there are some queer words. I should love to know what a “problematic” is.
Some queer sentences too. Of the Irish Socialist Republican Party he writes: “When it propagandised on the streets of Dublin it was social revolution that was proselytised.” Perhaps he engaged Mrs Malaprop as consultant.
At the same time he is capable of the odd lively phrase, and the book is impeccably produced as it should be at the price. At the outset he describes it as “a personal project, fundamentally political”.
That is fair enough. But though I can eat crow, I don’t like it.