Tom Johnson and James Connolly           [1963]

[The first two paragraphs below were written by Desmond Greaves on the Irish Labour leader Tom Johnson (1872 -1963),  probably around the time of Johnson’s death. They were in a hand-written note in the Greaves papers. He seems to have been envisaged them as the commencement of an article on the relation between nationalism and socialism that was discontinued. The remainder of the note follows the first two paragraphs below.]

When I was preparing my biography of James Connolly I used very frequently visit Tom Johnson at “Ralahine”, his bungalow in Clontarf. He was then over eighty and the “grand old man” of the Irish Labour Movement. It was he who salvaged what was left of that movement after the white terror that followed the defeat of the 1916 insurrection and started its upward progress. He had always regarded himself as a Marxist, but he told me on one occasion that only in his old age had he come to understand what Connolly meant by the class struggle. It was an inescapable conflict of interest, basically economic, but extending to every aspect of social action and consciousness, even the most abstract and remote.

This is roughly what he said, and it was a useful caution against the enthronement of economics as the sole determinant. Yet Johnson held the opinion that the Partition of Ireland was irrelevant to the class struggle. It is one thing to grasp a principle, another to apply it. And if you asked him about his much-criticised attitude to republicanism in the revolutionary and counter-revolutionary years, he would always explain, “I was not brought up in that tradition.” He was completely unaware that in effectively dismissing the national question he was contradicting his own definition of the class struggle, for he was a man of complete honesty and integrity, aware of his achievements, but modest and self-critical in all things. To understand this, we must invoke the concept of “ideology”, in which thought subdues itself and has escaped from dependence on reality.

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I trust that those whose ideological meanderings I have ventured to criticise in this essay will accept my assurance that I have nothing to say against their integrity. I am not quite sure of their modesty or capacity for self-criticism.

On April 24th 1916 something under a thousand members of the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army seized positions in the city of Dublin and proclaimed an independent Republic. A plan for a wider national uprising miscarried at the last moment, but the insurgents fought bravely against vastly superior British forces and held positions in Dublin for a week. There were also risings in the counties of Galway, Wexford  and Meath and lesser actions elsewhere.

In their Proclamation the insurgents explained the purpose for which they were trying to seize power.  They intended to establish a democratic Republic which would guarantee civil and religious liberty  – which did not exist in colonial Ireland – provide “equal rights and equal opportunities for all citizens” and  “pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally”.

This was of course not socialism. Why then did Connolly the Marxian socialist support it?  Why did Lenin welcome the revolution of March 1917? 

I will deal later with the social implications of this programme. It was of course some time before it was widely publicised. What was known to the world was that there had been an armed struggle for Irish independence. That British imperialism regarded this as a serious blow is shown by the hysterical condemnations, the executions, deportations and imprisonments without trial, and the conversion of an already repressive regime into a virtual military dictatorship which was only slowly relaxed.

To cherish all the children of the nation equally was of course impossible while they were divided into antagonistic classes. Read in one sense the Proclamation pointed in the direction of socialism. Of its seven signatories the Marxian socialist James Connolly  – with twenty-five years of continuous political campaigning behind him – was best equipped to evaluate social change.

But world socialist opinion, which one would have expected to welcome any blow against imperialism, was deeply divided and has remained divided to this day. A British Labour leadership that was openly supporting the war, to the extent of accepting positions in the government, was naturally condemnatory. But the involvement of James Connolly had to be explained. Since 1889 he had occupied one position of socialist leadership after another. Some of his old colleagues, for example Jeanneret, wondered how he had “got mixed up in” a  “Sinn Fein” Rising. Others like T. A. Jackson understood the reason and protested all the more vehemently at his execution. And the Fabian G.B. Shaw wrote to the Daily News, “ I am bound to contradict any implication that I can regard as a traitor any Irishman taken in a fight for Irish independence against the British Government, which was a fair fight in everything except the enormous odds my countrymen had to face.” Shaw went further. He gave financial help to Connolly’s family . . .