"When you talk of freeing Ireland, do you only mean the chemical elements which compose the soil of Ireland? Or is it the Irish people you mean? "

#irishpeople #soul #chemical #elements #Ireland

"As long as it was a question of Celt versus Saxon in Ireland the Celt (considering the enormous odds against him) held his own fairly well for six hundred years, without much deterioration in his national character – held his own so well that one hundred years ago many districts were as un-English as at the Norman Invasion.

But with the advent of capitalism all that was changed; the cheapness of its wares opened a way for English capitalism into districts where the political power of England had only excited aversion; the use of the English product paved the way for the use of the English speech, which in its turn made possible the debasing floods of cheap literary garbage.

Thus capitalism has done more in one hundred years to corrupt the Celt, and destroy his spirituality, than the previous six hundred were able to accomplish."

#celtic #norman

"...we [Socialist Republicans] cannot work up any enthusiasm for things spiritual while lacking things material, and we cannot forget that there are thousands of our brother and sister Celts so poor to-day that if they could barter their spiritual inheritance for a loaf of bread and a ‘rasher’ it would be a profitable exchange."

#celtic #family

These quotes are taken from Home Thrusts (1900).

This is a polemic against "every public speaker who finds himself too densely destitute of the faintest traces of originality to evoke the applause of his audience, or is too ignorant of the question under discussion to speak even tolerably upon it, falls back as a last and never failing resort upon an appeal to the spiritual inheritance of the Celt." In other words, opportunistic and superficial use of our heritage and identity in order to gain easy support for unrelated causes.

The quotes I have taken are Connolly's analysis that Capitalism is the most corrosive factor in the destruction of "the spiritual inheritance of the Celt", i.e. our distinct identity and character.

This is consistent with another recently posted quote:

"The chief enemy of a Celtic revival today is the crushing force of capitalism which irresistibly destroys all national or racial characteristics"

"We desire to preserve with the English people the same political relations as with the people of France, or Germany, or of any other country; the greatest possible friendship, but also the strictest independence. Brothers, but not bedfellows. Thus, inspired by another ideal, conducted by reason not by tradition, following a different course, the Socialist Republican Party of Ireland arrives at the same conclusion as the most irreconcilable Nationalist."

#nationalism #borders #immigration

"The interests of Labour all the world over are identical, it is true, but it is also true that each country had better work out its own salvation on the lines most congenial to its own people."

#borders #immigration

"The national and racial characteristics of the English and Irish people are different, their political history and traditions are antagonistic, the economic development of the one is not on a par with the other, and, finally, although they have been in the closest contact for seven hundred years, yet the Celtic Irishman is to-day as much of an insoluble problem to even the most friendly English as on the day when the two countries were first joined in unholy wedlock."

#irishrace #celtic #national #racial #irishman #political #tradition

"... brand as enemies of Ireland all who believe in the subjection of labour to capital – brand as traitors to his country all who live by skinning Irish labour"

#borders #immigration #capitalists #exploiters

Looking for some input. Should I leave this whole, which would make the text quite small, or edit it down? Some samples below but any other edit suggestions are welcome.

"The conquest of Ireland is founded upon the dispossession of her people from all right to the soil, and from all right to life except upon terms dictated by the possessing class, in field, farms, or workshop owned and possessed by that class. That is to say, that the subjection of Ireland, like all other such subjection, is based upon the economic dependence of the oppressed upon the oppressor. The army, navy, and police are but the instruments with which this class enforces its domination, and the political subjection of Ireland to England means nothing more than that the possessing class were astute enough to place the control of those instruments of domination beyond the reach of the Irish people."

#irishpeople #conquest #dispossession