A Beautiful Life
Watching
the articulate and intelligent Mick Lynch, General Secretary or the RMT,
comprehensively school some of the lightweight, minor celebrities who pass as
journalists these days has been both gratifying and amusing. Mick, the son of
Irish parents, who left school as a sixteen- year-old to work in the building
trade, knows his stuff. He also knows the historical and cultural context the
trade union movement. When asked by one hapless interviewer who his hero was he
replied…
‘James
Connolly. Do you know who James Connolly is? He is an Irish, Socialist
Republican and he educated himself and started non-sectarian trade unionism, in
Ireland and was a hero of the Irish revolution.’
Mick
Lynch is being lauded by those on the left in the UK for speaking truth to
power in a way the Labour Party has avoided for 30 years. The smug elites are
not fond of articulate advocates for the working class and we can expect the right-wing
press to try and discredit Lynch in the same scurrilous manner they destroyed
Jeremy Corbyn. Mr Lynch is unlikely to be cowed though by the childish
comparison to a Thunderbirds puppet ‘evil mastermind’ but the fact the tabloids
are trawling his Facebook page and looking through his bins is a sign that the
usual suspects are looking to distract from the message by attacking the
messenger.
James
Connolly would have recognised these tactics from the more conservative forces
in his day. His time living off the Falls Road in Belfast demonstrated clearly
to him how carefully fostered sectarian divisions were used to keep the working
class at each other’s throats; rather than seeing the real enemy which was
exploiting both communities. When he saw the social and housing conditions both
communities lived in, he described it as, ‘tuppence against tuppence ha’penny.’
He also witnessed a cynical Tory Party ‘play the Orange card’ in order to
support their own selfish party-political interests in Westminster. In the end,
the partition of Ireland which Connolly warned against became reality and his
words spoken in the years before partition became prophetic…
‘Here in Ireland the proposal of the Government to consent to the partition of Ireland – the exclusion of certain counties in Ulster is causing a new line of cleavage. No one of the supporters of Home Rule accepts this proposal with anything like equanimity, but rather we are already hearing in Ulster rumours of a determination to resist it by all means. It is felt that the proposal to leave the Home-Rule minority at the mercy of an ignorant majority with the evil record of the orange party is a proposal that should never have been made, and that the establishment of such a scheme should be resisted with armed force if necessary. I entirely agree with those who think so; Belfast is bad enough as it is; what it would be under such rule the wildest imagination cannot conceive. Filled with the belief that they were after defeating the Imperial Government and the Nationalists combined, the Orangemen would have scant regards for the rights of the minority left at their mercy.’
Connolly
did not live to see Ireland divided into two states. In the north, a ‘Protestant
state for a Protestant people’ was proclaimed despite a third of the citizens
being Catholics in 1922. There was intimidation, discrimination and blatant
electoral Gerrymandering to maintain Unionist hegemony in places like Derry
where 75% of the population was nationalist. In the south, the Catholic church
was given influence and power far beyond what was healthy in any land. Connolly
would have despaired. The working-class solidarity he so badly tried to foster
was ripped apart and has yet to recover.
His
revolution, based on the socialist principles he espoused all his life, died
with him in the stonebreakers yard at Kilmainham jail. The conservative forces
of church and commerce guided the Irish Free State in a different direction and
perhaps reminds us of one of his more famous quotations…
James
Connolly would approve of Mick Lynch’s articulate defence of the interests of
his union’s membership. He may also concede that the average worker today lives
in far better social conditions than those he would have seen in the slums of
the Cowgate, Dublin or Belfast but I’m sure he would echo the point that most
of the gains made by ordinary people in areas such as the NHS, welfare, workers’
rights and housing, was made possible by ordinary people organising and
fighting for them. We should not forget that Churchill’s Tory Party fought
against the establishment of the NHS and voted against it 21 times, but the
Labour landslide at the 1945 election saw the Bill passed in Parliament.
We
may face a summer of discontent as inflation spirals and various workers groups
strike to protect their standard of living. Mick Lynch pointed out the hypocrisy
of bosses telling workers to tighten their belts while they rake it in with
bloated salaries and huge bonuses. We live in an era where the rich are getting
richer and many of the poorer folk in society are struggling. Who can blame
them for demanding a fairer system? The traditional link between the trade
unions and the Labour Party may not be what it once was, but the fact that many
ordinary people support the railway workers and see the obvious bias in media
reporting of the dispute is telling.
Mick
Lynch’s hero, James Connolly paid the ultimate price for trying to change
society for the better. His daughter Nora went to see him on the evening before
he was shot and reported this exchange between Connolly and his wife Lilly…
‘When
we got into see my father he said, ‘well Lilly, I suppose you know what this
means?’ She said, ‘oh no, oh no not that.’ He said ‘yes, Lilly.’ She broke down
then and she said, ‘what a beautiful life James, such a beautiful life.’ He
said, ‘wasn’t it a full life Lilly and isn’t this a good end?’
James
Connolly gave his life trying to create a fairer society and better conditions
for those crushed by poverty. The sectarianism he despised so much means that even
today, some in the land of his birth refuse to recognise him as the champion of
the poor he was. He sought to bring about change by revolution rather than
evolution and was in that regard, a man of his time, but his courage and
self-sacrifice are undeniable, even to those who refute his politics.
Mick
Lynch chose his political hero with the same intelligence and understanding he
uses to demolish the journalists who interview him. Connolly was clear what he
wanted to see in Ireland and indeed around the world, when he said…
‘The
Irish people will only be free when they own everything from the plough to the
stars.’
That
dream may never become reality but it won’t stop many fighting for a fairer,
more equal society.
Makes starmer so inconsequential
ReplyDeleteLove the sentiment but it seems the masses prefer a Stalin a Hitler a Putin to rule them.
ReplyDeleteConnelly was scottish
ReplyDeleteConnolly
DeleteYes, born to Irish parents in Edinburgh, hence the mention of the Cowgate & not being recognised as a champion of the poor in the land of his birth - Scotland.
DeleteWonderful man
Delete