JOURNAL OF THE IRISH LABOUR HISTORY SOCIETY

Document StudyConnolIy Socialism and the Jewish WorkerThe establishment of an Irish Jewish Museum in Dublin in 1985 has ensured the preservation ofmuch valuable historical material which might otherwise have been lost. One such item was broughtto the attention of this writer in late 1986, by the Irish Jewish Museum's archivist Asher Benson. It isa roughly-typed document entitled 'The Municipal Elections January 15th 1902' and is addressed toJewish workers of Dublin by the 'East London Jewish Branch of the Socialist Federation' (sic) on behalfof J ames Connolly, 26 Fishamble Street, Dublin. The awkward English of this document reads in partas follows:'Friends, January 15th the elections are coming on, and you will have to thinkfor whom you will give yourvote. But before you come to a decision we want, Jewish Social Democrats to say afew words ... Whichof the candidates will you votefor ... ? The Home Ruler, the candidate of the bourgeois? No ... you can'tand must not do it ... The bourgeois are those that rise the people against one another with hate for warlikereasons ... The bourgeois is the cause of anti-semitism, they and their press encourage hate and cast allthe caluminies [sic] on the Jew to hoodwink and cloak their own faults to their followers '" No! you cannotvote for the Home Ruler the bourgeois candidate, who is walking in step with the English Capitalists ...No matter how nice the Home Ruler talks, no matter how democratic and friendly they are or how theycry about oppressed Ireland ... they are bourgeois ... And you Jews what guarantee have you that one fineday they come your way? ... you have to vote for the Socialist candidate, and only for the socialist candidate.The Socialists are the only ones with the oppressed national minorities ... In conclusion a word to you,Jewish workers of Dublin, on you lies the responsibility to help with all your resources· ... The Councilof the Irish Socialist Republican Party need you near them. This is in your own interest, the interest forwhich every right minded worker must campaign... The party want to abolish private ownership undt;rwhich the working class is condemned to slavery, working for the capitalists of the world and the workerhimself gets damn all... Jewish workers how few you are you can do a lot... Work hand in hand withyour Irish brothers ... go canvassing and talk to others and your friends to vote on the 15th January forthe Irish Socialist candidate James Connoliy ... '1From the language style of the above it seemed likely that this document had been translated fromYiddish by a member of Dublin's Jewish community whose own mama-loshen (mother-tongue) wasYiddish and who was still experiencing some difficulty in wrestling with the English language. Hadthe translation been provided by the author of the original document he would correctly have namedthe issuing body as the East London Jewish Branch of the Social Democratic Federation and not the'Socialist Federation'. But where was the original Yiddish document to be found, who had authoredit and why had Connolly issued it?No such document exists in the archives of the Irish Jewish Museum itself. An investigation of thecatalogue of the William 0' Brien Papers in the National Library of Ireland, however, revealed an entryentitled' James Connolly EleCtion Manifesto [in Hebrew?]'. This turned out to be a photo-copy of apartially-torn election leaflet on behalf of Connolly. 2 Asher Benson of the Irish Museum subsequentlyconfirmed that the language was not Hebrew but Yiddish - the German-related lingua franca of Russianand Polish Jews which is written with the Hebrew alphabet. In turn, Sid Resnick of the YiddishlanguageAmerican socialist newspaper, Morning Freiheit, provided this writer with the modernEnglish-language translation of the leaflet which is carried at the end of this article. 3If Jewish workers of Dublin were being asked to vote for James ConnoUy in January 1902, wherehad he himself stood on Jewish issues? A few years previously Connolly had published an article inthe Workers' Republic favourable to Zionism which he himself introduced as 'the political ideal of thatsection of the Jewish race who are at present advocating the establishment of an Israelitish nation in120