The Life and Times of James Connolly

The routing of Job Bone was accomplished with the aid of a native of Little Ireland,
John Leslie, a former scholar of St. Patrick’s School. For his first speech in the Meadows
he chose as his subject “the Irish famine”. He became a popular speaker at the Irish
National League, which had recruited nine-tenths of the membership of the Young Men’s
Catholic Institute. When a delegate conference of Scottish Socialist Societies met at the
end of 1888 to establish the Scottish Socialist Federation, Leslie became the first
secretary. It was decided to “work alongside” Keir Hardie’s Independent Labour Party 3
and try to “imbue it with socialist principles”. Leslie joined the new party, and later
became its Edinburgh Secretary.
Born in Edinburgh of a Scottish father and an Irish mother, Leslie regarded himself
as an Irishman. There is however no basis for Quinlan’s fanciful story that he was from
Waterford and ten years secretary of a ribbon lodge. Perhaps Quinlan fell foul of the
long memories of Irish exiles who cherished their ancestors’ exploits as their own.
Leslie was a fluent and witty speaker, an omnivorous reader and a capable and
pointed writer in poetry as well as prose. More flamboyant than Connolly, he had a touch
of the bohemian of later days, which sprang from a gifted and artistic nature hemmed in
by poverty and lacking the training or the discipline fully to express itself. He rapidly
became the embodiment of socialist influence among the Edinburgh Irish.
The S.D.F. won so much support that it could hold meetings in the Grassmarket itself,
where every window held an Irish face and even the most apathetic would at least listen.
Unity of these forces grew during the period of the crofter trials in 1888 and could not
be shaken even by the Papal rescript, as an incident will show.
In August 1888 the Archbishop of Edinburgh deposed Mr Flanagan from presidency
of the Young Men’s Catholic Institute. He had been a member for twenty-three years,
but had expressed his support, in his capacity as a leader of the Irish National League,
for the “Plan of Campaign” against which the rescript was directed. A furore followed in
which the entire nationalist press took his part, and The Nation was full of the arguments
which Connolly used years later and developed in Labour, Nationality and Religion.
“The result has been to enhance his worth, “ said The Nation and added, “an
Irishman may even be an active worker for social reform”, which was a concession from
The Nation.
Then followed a sentence which will have a familiar ring to those who have read
Connolly’s writings in The Harp: “They will be all the better Irishmen and none the worse
3 Keir Hardie advocated the establishment of an independent “Labour Party” and set up preparatory
committees for the purpose. After the “Scottish Labour Party” was founded some of its constituent
bodies retained the old descriptive title for local purpose. Thus the Edinburgh group which sent
James Connolly to the fifth conference of the Scottish Labour Party in Glasgow seems always to
have been known in Edinburgh as the “Independent Labour Party”. This title became general only
after the foundation of the British I.L.P. in 1894.
20 | The Life and Times of James Connolly