JOURNAL OF THE IRISH LABOUR HISTORY SOCIETY

124 SAOTHAR 13James Connolly would deliver an address to them as a possible candidate. The minutes of23 Novemberreport back that 'J ames Connolly gave an outline of his own position as the selected candidate for WoodQuay Ward stating that the final understanding was that though he was running as the candidate of theUnited Labourers, this should not prevent him from giving expression to his views as a socialist duringthe contest' .17 Connoll y' s campaign mainly consisted of open-air meetings, 'the stance favoured beingin New Street' .18 Such public meetings would have brought Connolly into direct contact with Dublin'simmigrant Jewish population, since New Street was a direct continuation of Lower Clanbrassil Street,the principal thoroughfare of the South Circular Road area of Dublin which had become known as'Little Jerusalem'. The Jewish population of Dublin, while remaining relatively small even at itsmaximum, rapidly grew at the turn of the century as refugees fled from pogroms and persecution in theRussian Empire. Numbering only 352 in 1881, Dublin's Jewish population increased to 1,057 in 1891,to 2,169 in 1901 and to 2,965 in 1911. 19 When the future founder of Sinn Hin and first President ofthe Irish Free State, Arthur Griffith, gave full support to the anti-semitic campaign of the Redemptoristsin Limerick, he would denounce these refugees from Tsarist persecution in the following terms: 'Nothoughtful Irish man or Irish woman can view without apprehension the continuous influx of Jews iritoIreland ... strange people, alien to us in thought, alien to us in sympathy, from Russia, Poland ... ' etc. 2DSuch refugees, who hailed mainly from Lithuania, were among the electors of Wood Quay Ward.Connolly's approach was to reach out to them, particularly to the proletarian and semi-proletariannumbers among them. As the late Louis H yman noted, ' Among the Jews of foreign birth listed in Dublinin the Census of 1901 there were 261 drapers, 223 pedlars and hawkers, 200 students and scholars, 88commercial travellers, 72 tailors, 66 domestic servants and 64 general dealers' .21 In that year two suchJewish immigrant workers, Barnet and Abraham Volkes of Pleasant Street, would become membersof the ISRP, having been previously members of the SDF in Salford. 22During the years 1901 to 1911 Jews came to constitute a majority of the inhabitants in many of thestreets in the Wood Quay Ward. 23 The circumstances of the workers among them have been describedas follows by Maurice Levitas, the son of one such worker who emigrated to Dublin from the Lithuanianprovince of Kovno in 1911 but whose circumstances were similar to those of the Jewish -workers towhom Connolly had appealed in 1902:'i hail from the South Circular Road neighbourhood - and your researches into the Jewish input into tradeunions in Ireland reminds me of my father's part in the Tailors' and Pressers' Union ... My father, HarryLevitas, tried a number of ploys when we lived in Dublin in order to gain a living. Like some other Jewsin Dublin he tried 'travelling' around the countryside, collecting rags and metal etc. for sale to dealers inthese salvage commodities. Buthe was not successful at this. In the main he worked for a wage as a presserin the tailoring trade and since he was left-wing in his politics, he played a part in his trade union. Indeed·the main impression we all have of my father is his strong trade union principles. The origin of all this washis association in Lithuania, as a very young man, with the Poale Zion (or Labour Zionists) - a kind ofJewish socialist movement' .24Other Lithuanian Jewish immigrants in Dublin's 'Little Jerusalem' would have been influenced bythe ideas of the Jewish Social-Democratic Party known as the Bund which stood for Je'Yish nationalautonomy within Russia, Poland and Lithuania. It was in Vilna, known as 'the Jerusalem of Lithuania' ,that the Bund had been founded in 1897, its full name being 'The General Jewish Workers' Union(Bumf) in Russia and Poland' (Lithuania was added later). The following year the Bund itself hostedthe founding Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party (RSDWP), of which the Bundbecame an autonomous member. The Bund seceded from the RSDWP in 1903, rejoined itin 1906, andafter the Russian Party irrevocabl y split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, the B und affiliated to thelatter in 1912.25Connolly had been most impressed by the Bund and he greeted its development with particularenthusiasm. He wrote: 'The Socialist movement is developing at a remarkable rate amongst the J ewis,h