"The first is a picture of a country in which the people of the island were owners of the land upon which they lived, masters of their own lives and liberties, freely electing their rulers, and shaping their castes and conventions to permit of the closest approximation to their ideals of justice as between man and man. It is a picture of a system of society in which all were knit together as in a family, in which all were members having their definite place, and in which the highest could not infringe upon the rights of the lowest – those rights being as firmly fixed and assured as the powers of the highest, and fixed and assured by the same legal code and social convention. It is a system evolved through centuries of development out of the genius of the Irish race, safeguarded by the swords of Irishmen, and treasured in the domestic affections of Irish women."
#family
#family
"The second picture is a picture of the destruction by force of the native system and the dispersion and enslavement of the natives.
...transplanting to Connacht, gangs of soldiery were despatched throughout Ireland to kidnap young boys and girls of tender years to be sold into slavery in the West Indies... the native Irish were then being hunted to death, or transported in slave-gangs to Barbadoes,"
#native
...transplanting to Connacht, gangs of soldiery were despatched throughout Ireland to kidnap young boys and girls of tender years to be sold into slavery in the West Indies... the native Irish were then being hunted to death, or transported in slave-gangs to Barbadoes,"
#native
"Here then is the conquest. Fix it clearly before your eyes. National liberty, personal liberty, social security all gone; the country ruled from its highest down to its meanest officer by foreigners; the Irish race landless, homeless, living by sufferance upon the mercy of their masters, or trusting alone to the greed of their conquerors to gain that toleration which even a conqueror must give to the slaves whose labour he requires to sate his avarice or minister to his wants.
This, then, is the second picture. Mastery of the lives and liberties of the people of Ireland by forces outside of and irresponsible and unresponsive to the people of Ireland – social and political slavery."
#irishrace
This, then, is the second picture. Mastery of the lives and liberties of the people of Ireland by forces outside of and irresponsible and unresponsive to the people of Ireland – social and political slavery."
#irishrace
"The third picture must be drawn by each, as it suits his or her fancy, who wishes to visualise to the mind’s eye the complete reversal of all that was embodied in the second. As they construct that picture of the future so they will shape their public actions."
"Catholic women were within the forbidden territory as wives of Protestant officers or soldiers, and by rearing up their children in their own faith, whispering old legends into their ears by day, or crooning old Gaelic songs to them at night helped, consciously or unconsciously, to re-create an Irish atmosphere in the very heart of the ascendancy. Ere long, by one of those silent movements of which the superficial historian takes no account, the proscribed people were once more back from the province into which they had been hunted, heartbroken and subdued, it is true, but nevertheless back upon their own lands."
#gaelic
#gaelic
"...in Ulster the Celt returned to his ancient tribelands, but to its hills and stony fastnesses, from which with tear-dimmed eyes he could look down upon the fertile plains of his fathers..."
#celtic
#celtic
"...the philosophy of Irish freedom will probably, for the great multitude, follow the lines of battle rather than precede them. The thinking few may, and should, understand the line of march; the many will fight from day to day, and battle to battle, as their class instincts and immediate needs compel them.
For the writer, our inspiration, we confess, comes largely from the mental contemplation of these two pictures. The dispossessed Irish race dragging itself painfully along through roads, mountains and morasses, footsore and bleeding, at the behest of a merciless conqueror, and the same race in the near future marching confidently and serenely, aided by all the political and social machinery they can wrest from the hands of their masters, to the re-conquest of Ireland."
#irishrace
For the writer, our inspiration, we confess, comes largely from the mental contemplation of these two pictures. The dispossessed Irish race dragging itself painfully along through roads, mountains and morasses, footsore and bleeding, at the behest of a merciless conqueror, and the same race in the near future marching confidently and serenely, aided by all the political and social machinery they can wrest from the hands of their masters, to the re-conquest of Ireland."
#irishrace
"In the foregoing chapter we have dwelt with the consequence of the Conquest of Ireland as it affected the Celtic or Catholic Irish and endeavoured to demonstrate to readers that the duty that now lies upon the Irish working-class democracy is in the nature of a reversal of that Conquest and all that it implies. That, in short, every step taken towards making the wealth-producing powers of the country the common property of the Irish people, though it may be decried in the name of patriotism by the spokesmen of the privileged classes, is yet in effect a step towards the reversal of the Conquest and the re-establishment of the ancient freedom upon a modern basis."
#celtic #irishpeople
#celtic #irishpeople
"In the reign of James I the English Government essayed to solve the Irish problem, which then, as now, was their chief trouble, by settling Ireland with planters from Scotland and England...
...the Plantation succeeded from the point of view of the Government in placing in the heart of Ulster a body of people who, whatever their disaffection to that Government, were still bound by fears of their own safety to defend it against the natives,"
#plantation
...the Plantation succeeded from the point of view of the Government in placing in the heart of Ulster a body of people who, whatever their disaffection to that Government, were still bound by fears of their own safety to defend it against the natives,"
#plantation
Taken from The Re-Conquest of Ireland Chapter II Ulster and the Conquest.
This chapter discusses religious persecution but shows that Connolly did not hold any animosity towards the descendants of the planters, viewing them as "important because the children of these men of the rank and file are now an integral part of the Irish nation".
This chapter discusses religious persecution but shows that Connolly did not hold any animosity towards the descendants of the planters, viewing them as "important because the children of these men of the rank and file are now an integral part of the Irish nation".
www.marxists.org
James Connolly: The Re-Conquest of Ireland - Chap. 2
"Someone has said that the most deplorable feature of Irish life is the apparent lack of civic consciousness. It is, indeed, strange that the people of a nation, which has shown indomitable determination in its struggle for the possession of the mere machinery of government, should exhibit so little capacity to breathe a civic soul into such portions of the machinery as they had already brought under their control. That this phenomenon is explicable in a manner not at all to the discredit of the citizens of the towns and cities of Ireland is quite true, but true also is it that a full and generous admission of the adverse influences that have hindered or retarded the development of a civic or municipal, as distinguished from an aggressive or even selfsacrificing national patriotism, does not absolve those citizens from the duty of labouring to overcome our national failing in this respect. An Irish municipality elected by the male and female voters under the present suffrage ought to be, in its public activities, breadth of outlook, and comprehensiveness of ambition for the social well-being and mental enrichment of its inhabitants, a centre of pride to the Irish race, and a shining example of the possibilities of the future of Ireland under free and self-governing institutions.
Its failure to do so, if it does fail, will not, indeed, vitiate the strength of the claim for national independence, but it will unquestionably weaken the powers making in that direction, as well as sadden the hearts of those who, amidst the struggles of to-day, require the mental aid to be derived from an idealising of the human elements with whom they are allied, and upon whom they hope to build the future."
#nation #irishrace
Its failure to do so, if it does fail, will not, indeed, vitiate the strength of the claim for national independence, but it will unquestionably weaken the powers making in that direction, as well as sadden the hearts of those who, amidst the struggles of to-day, require the mental aid to be derived from an idealising of the human elements with whom they are allied, and upon whom they hope to build the future."
#nation #irishrace
"An almost complete change in the intellectual view-point of the mass of the Irish people would be required to establish, in its proper place and relative importance, the modern conception of the function of public bodies as a governing factor in Irish municipal politics. It would necessitate such a change as would impel the public to regard such public bodies, not so much as offensive weapons to be won from a political enemy in order that he may be silenced, but rather as effective tools to be used in the up-building of a healthier social edifice in which to give effect to the needs of the citizens for associative aids to their individual development and culture."
#irishpeople
#irishpeople
"We require in Ireland to grasp the fact that the act of voting at the ballot-box is the one act in which we get the opportunity to give expression to the soul of the race; the act in which we give a tangible body to our public spirit. The ballot-box is the vehicle of expression of our social consciousness; by means of it we collect all the passions, all the ideals, all the desires, all the ambitions, all the strengths, all the weaknesses, all the integrity, all the corruption, all the elevating aspirations, and all the debasing interests of the population, and make of them a composite whole which henceforth takes its place in history as the embodied soul of the race at that period of its development."
#irishrace
#irishrace
"A truer standard by which the spiritual and mental measurement of a people can be taken in modern times, is by the picture drawn of itself by itself when at the ballot-box, it surrenders the care of its collective destiny into the hands of its elected representatives...
...It is not by its power to realise high ideals a people will and must be judged, but by the standard of the ideals themselves. A people with high ideals of collective responsibility and public virtues it is politically impotent to realise, will necessarily rank higher in the scale of humanity than a people in full possession of political power, but destitute of public spirit and civic virtue."
#irishpeople #collective
...It is not by its power to realise high ideals a people will and must be judged, but by the standard of the ideals themselves. A people with high ideals of collective responsibility and public virtues it is politically impotent to realise, will necessarily rank higher in the scale of humanity than a people in full possession of political power, but destitute of public spirit and civic virtue."
#irishpeople #collective
"a people suffering under the smart of intolerable conditions caused by a misuse of political power and social privilege should, at the first opportunity, set itself to the task of sweeping away such conditions by a public-spirited use of their newly-acquired control of municipal powers. The concept of the Irish nation as an organic whole, each part of which throbs in fullest sympathy with every other, and feels in the movements of its public administrative bodies, the pulsations of its own intellectual heart-beats, a concept vaguely outlined in the dreams of patriotic enthusiasts, poets and martyrs of the past, might reasonably have been expected to take form and substance in miniature, with the establishment of popular control over cities in which hundreds of thousands of Irish men, women and children passed their lives."
#nation #martyrs
#nation #martyrs
"If it has not taken form; if to-day the cities and towns of Ireland are a reproach to the land and a glaring evidence of the incapacity of the municipal rulers of the country, the responsibility for the failure lies largely with those who, in the past, had control of the political education of the Irish masses, and failed to prepare them for the intelligent exercise of those public powers for which they were taught to clamour."
#country
#country
"The thoughtful reader cannot but be impressed and saddened by the comparison drawn, in the above extract, between Dublin and such cities as Moscow and Calcutta. That it should be possible to draw such a comparison, or any comparison but a favourable one, between the capital of Ireland governed by its citizens and a city ruled autocratically by the liberty-hating officials of Russian Czardom is bad enough, but that an even more unfavourable comparison could truthfully be drawn between Dublin and an Asiatic city inhabited by a population destitute of civic power or political responsibility, and unacquainted with the first laws of hygienic teaching, is surely so much a humiliation that it should fire every Irishman and woman with a fierce eagerness to remove such a stigma."
#irishpeople
#irishpeople
"Now, what is the cause of this terrible state of matters, this hideous blot upon the Irish name? The original causes are many, but the one cause of its continuance is the lack of public spirit amongst the municipal rulers, and that again is only possible because of the want of proper training in democratic ideas amongst the mass of the electors. Democracy, as a reasoned-out faith, has not had in Ireland yet the proper political or social environment in which to grow; whatever democracy there is is instinctive and spontaneous, and is not the result of sound political teachings or the outcome of deep reflections upon the growth and development of social or political institutions."
#irishpeople
#irishpeople
"In awakening the working class to a realisation of the necessity of using their votes for the purpose of social regeneration, to make the city in which they live be an aid to their individual uplifting and to their physical and moral strength, it should ever be borne in mind that the representative institutions of that city should, as we have already said, be an expression of the soul of the race, and that, as the soul directs the activities of the body in a clean or unclean direction, so shall our representative governing bodies make for or against clean living in clean habitations in a clean city."
#irishrace
#irishrace
"It is well to remember that the Conquest never interfered with the right or power of the individual in Ireland to grow rich by betraying or surrendering the nation; it was only against the nation and those who had identified themselves with it that that Conquest was directed. Hence the reversal of the Conquest implies the assertion of the rights and powers of the community (city or nation) over against those of the individual. The Conquest was, in Irish politics, the victory of the capitalist conception of law and the functions of law – the Re-Conquest will be the victory of the working-class conception, the re-establishment of the power of the community over the conditions of life that assist or retard the development of the individual."
#nation #community #individual #collective
#nation #community #individual #collective