The Life and Times of James Connolly

scheme, for the water scheme and the amalgamation of Edinburgh parishes. His principal
plank was housing. He demanded the end of one-roomed houses in St. Giles. New houses
should be built at rents based on building costs and upkeep only. There should be
taxation of unlet property to keep rents down, and while high-salaried officials should
receive no pensions, city employees should have a superannuation scheme.
At first the Liberals were contemptuous of the Socialists whom they described as “a
few noisy fanatics”. Mr Gardner hoity-toitily described Connolly as a “young man of no
business ability advocating ideas repugnant to all right-thinking men”. Even the
Scotsman reported his meetings in a tone of good-humoured curiosity. But his election
campaign went with such a swing that they grew alarmed. Five hundred attended the
first indoor meeting after his adoption. Pavements were chalked white with his name by
enthusiastic supporters He held an open-air meeting for the carters at Kingstables Road,
and since his chairman was too tongue-tied to speak, allowed him to preside silently
while he addressed his fellow-employees from a cart.
The success of Connolly’s campaign brought a new candidate into the field, the
Conservative MacLaren. “Why did the Tories not Oppose Mr Mitchell before Mr
Connolly was in the field?” asked R. Ascal, and answered his own question: “Because
they knew that Mr Mitchell was as great a Tory as any one they could bring forward.”
They opposed him in order to strengthen his hands by a display of Tory opposition.
In this the unfortunate Mr Gardiner was the principal loser, for the Irish National
League held a special meeting at the Moulders Hall, presided over by Mr Francis
McAweeny, who declared: “There is not the least doubt that Mr Gardiner and Mr
Connolly are serving the Unionist interest by what they are doing.”
Connolly’s appeal to the Irish was a direct attack on the two capitalist parties as “two
sections of one party – the party of property”. “Perhaps they will learn, “ he told them,
“how foolish it is to denounce tyranny in Ireland and then to vote for tyrants and
instruments of tyrants at their own door. Perhaps they will see that the landlord who
grinds his peasants on a Connemara estate, and the landlord who rack-rents them in a
Cowgate slum, are brethren in fact and deed. Perhaps they will realise that the Irish
Worker who starves in an Irish cabin and the Scots worker who is poisoned in an
Edinburgh garret are brothers with one hope and destiny. Perhaps they will see that the
same Liberal Government which supplies police to Irish landlords to aid them in the
work of exterminating their Irish peasantry, also imports police into Scotland to aid Scots
mine owners in their work of starving the Scottish miners.”
But though Connolly’s outdoor meetings were large and enthusiastic he had
difficulties from which his opponents were free. Quite apart from the political conduct
of the campaign, which went on the principle of “catch as catch can”, the S.S.F. was
denied the use of church halls and was up against the peculiar stumbling block that
36 | The Life and Times of James Connolly