The Life and Times of James Connolly

Connolly was inclined to discount the value of “legislative independence”. He
ascribed the relative prosperity of Grattan’s epoch in Ireland to the influence of the
industrial revolution in England (not in Ireland, as Professor O’Brien seemed to think),
which created an exceptional demand for certain Irish products. The result was to
strengthen the hands of the Irish capitalists and lead them to demand greater
independence. When economic conditions became less favourable, came the Union.
“Industrial decline having set in, the Irish capitalist class was not able to combat the
influence of the corruption fund of the English Government.” But contemporary sources
do indicate a sharp increase in tillage and the production of certain home industries,
which, it should be noted, started at an extremely low level. Merchant capital was finding
its way into industry, and it would be wrong to deny the effect of the protectionist
measures adopted by Grattan’s parliament.
While Connolly was quite correct to trace the economic motivation of the Irish
capitalists, he was on less certain ground in denying progressive significance to their
political demands. Political power is the demiurge of economic revolution, while it is
itself always the product of economic development. Connolly overstressed one side of
this picture and Professor O’Brien restored the balance by stressing the other.
Connolly’s contempt for Grattan was only exceeded by his contempt for O’Connell,
whom he accused of obscuring the true reasons for the decay of Irish industry. O’Connell
attributed it to the removal of the Parliament and its hangers-on from Dublin to London,
Connolly to the invention of machinery and the use of steam-power in Britain.
In place of O’Connell, Connolly exalted the great democrats of Irish history, Tone,
Emmet and the Fenians, who saw a change in class relations as essential to the salvation
of Ireland.
Connolly was the first to insist on the continuity of Irish socialist tradition from the
time of William Thompson to his own day. Thompson he regarded as the first Irish
socialist, bearing the same relation to Marx as the pre-Darwinian evolutionists to Darwin.
That there was no special repugnancy to socialism in the Irish temperament he
showed by the illustration of Ralahine, an agricultural colony after the style of New
Lanark. The ease with which the ancient traditions of cooperation were revived was
demonstrated in practice. More important for the history of the socialist movement was
the identification of the Dublin trades with Chartism, which O’Connell resisted with all
his powers. The fusion of scientific socialist thought with the working-class and national
movements began when working-class Fenians began to join the First International.
Connolly’s reference to Devin Reilly perhaps requires some explanation. “We are
not Communists, “ wrote Reilly, “we abhor Communism for the same reason as we abhor
poor law systems, and systems founded on the absolute sovereignty of wealth.” Connolly
commented: “Students of socialism today will recognise that many who are earnest
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