The Daily Worker Newspaper, May 14, 1927, Page 5

—— THE NEw MAGAZINE | Section of The DAILY WORKER SATURDAY, MAY 14, 1927 The Murder of a Revolutionist - T is now eleven years since James Connolly, mili- tary leader of the Easter Week rebellion of 1916 was taken out on a stretcher from a prison hos- pital, propped up against a wall and pumped full of lead from the guns of a British firing squad. James Connolly, commander of the Irish Citizen Army, the military arm of the Dublin trade union movement, was the dynamic force behind the revolt that shook the mighty empire to her base at a time when her mercenaries were scurrying in retreat be- fore the gray hosts of the Kaiser in Belgium and Flanders. James Connolly could see no distinction between the two brands of democracy purveyed by the Bri- tish and German governments and when the mili- tarists sounded the war bugles in 1914, instead of burying his principles and deserting his socialist program as was done by the renegades in England and on the continent, he called on the workers to fight neither for British king nor German Kaiser but to fight—if they must fight—to.save their own firesides from their historical enemy, to keep the food they produced for the use of their own people and to prevent the flower of their manhood from being turned into dust on the battlefields of Europe, so that a putrid empire, bloated with the blood of millions of subject peoples might survive the gruelling strain of war. James Connolly, the son of a proletarian father, was born in the County Monaghan, Ireland. He was obliged to work at such an early age that he had to lie his way past the authorities charged with the enforcement of a child labor law. He was a rebel by inheritance and by nature. From the time he was old enough to make a public speech he was an active rebel and took an active part in the class s#Buggle in Scotland, England, Wales and in the United States, But his heart was always drawn towards Ireland, the land of his birth and to the people whose moods he best understood. During the years of his exile in the United States he never lost touch with the revolutionary Nationalist and labor movements in Ireland. Always a practical revolutionist in the truest sense of the word he did not permit his knowledge of Marxist economics to excuse him from participating in the Nationalist struggle against the British Empire, as was done by others, who looked on the great rebel founder of modern socialism as a dried-up research worker interested only in facts, figures and theories and not the untiring warrior who never let slip an op- portunity to put in a blow for the workers or to find some way of rousing them to struggle against the capitalist enemy. Connolly labored effectively in the socialist move- ment in the United States. He was in at the found- ing of the I. W. W. and served that organization in the capacity of organizer. A tireless propagandist, he was constantly on the platform. His pen was always at the service of the cause. The extreme poverty in which his family lived did not swerve him from the only purpose in life that he considered worth a wrinkle of his brow. | Connolly was invited to return to Ireland by some of his old comrades shortly after the Irish Trans- port and General Workers’ Union was organized under the leadership of Jim Larkin, When Larkin left for his speaking tour in the United States, which was prolonged beyond his expectations—he was eight and a half years here, part of the time 4s a guest of Governor Alfred E. Smith in the Sing Sing penitentiary for his association with the Com- munist movement—Connolly took active charge of the affairs of the Transport Union and from then on the headquarters of that organization became »also the headquarters of the revolutionary prepara- tions against British rule in Ireland. In 1916 the Nationalist movement, split by the traitor John Redmond, who played the same role in Ireland that Chiang Kai Shek is now playing in China, was deplorably weak for the task that con- fronted it. Outside of Connolly and his associates in the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the petty bourgeois Nationalist leaders who spouted about Home Rule in the British House of Commons never had any intention of resorting to physical force. The arming and drilling that went on from the This Magazine Section Appears Every Saturday in The DAILY WORKER. time Sir Edward Carson and the present Lord Birkenhead imported atms from Germany to equip their cohorts to fight Home Rule, was to those playboys a chance to show off their excessive pa- triotism to the voters but when the time for action arrived they withdrew into the caverns of constitu- tionalism, This is a good place to draw attention to the monumental hypocrisy of the British,government of the day—a liberal government under the premier- ship of that arch-fraud Asquith. The Irish Home Rule bill was on the statute book and signed by the king. But the Ulster reactionaries backed by the Tory party in England bluntly told the British gov- ernment to go to hell and with arms imported from Germany proceeded to make good their threat. And the British government which is so mightily exor- cised over the revolts of its subject peoples in India, Egypt and Africa permitted Carson and Birkenhead to go their rebellious ways flouting the government. CAPITALIST JUSTICE When human life is placed in the capitalist scale of justice on the opposite side of profits it is human life that takes the upward flight. HEADS HIGH Stone, steel, and dungeon, Thus the workers paid. You who build for the ages Face them unafraid. Cross, rope, and fagot, Water, rack, and wheel, Well the heroes faced them— Let your nerves be steel. Now the day is nearing, The workers’ kingdom nigh, Who strikes a blow for freédom? Who lives tho he may die? The rebels from the circus, The prophets old and grey, Arena victims bleeding —H. G. WEISS. ALEX BITTELMAN, Editor By T. J. OFLAHERTY For raising the banner of revolt against British im- perialism two years later James Connolly, Padraic Pearse and many other Nationalist leaders were brutally murdered by the same government that honored Carson and Birkenhead with positions among the highest in the land. When the shipload of arms sent by the German government to Ireland was seized off the coast of Kerry by a British cruiser, as a result of in- formation supplied to the British government by the United States secret service, several of the leaders of the Irish revolutionary organization planning the revolt were in favor of calling off the rising. Connolly was determined that a blow would be struck; that even tho the attempt was doomed to temporary failure the time was ripe and the consequences of the event would have reper- cussions on an international scale. “ Connolly’s de- termination carried the day and the forces of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the Irish Citizen Army, a mere handful, hoisted the flag of re- bellion on Easter Sunday and challenged the power of the mightiest empire that the history of the human was able to record until ‘then. One thou- sand volunteer soldiers against millions! The battle was short and swift. British gun- boats shelled Liberty Hall, the headquarters of the revolutionists, British troops were brought from concentration camps, the city was bombarded and partially destroyed and after a heroic struggle that lasted seven days the survivors of the revolution- ary army made terms with the perfidious enemy who violated his word as soon as the rebels laid down their arms. Connolly was the last of the seven signers of the proclamation of the Irish Republic to be executed. And the Irish workers will not forget that an Irish capitalist newspaper, The Irish Independent, a “supporter” of the nationalist cause, reminded the British government two days before the execution that Connolly and, Seam MacDermot were still living. Neither will they forget that Arthur Hen- derson, secretary of the British Labor Party, then a member of the Asquith coalition government, never protested against the reign of terror that was let loose by his government in Ireland and particularly against the execution of James Con- nolly, who, with Henderson, was a member of the Second International, that putrid fraud which to- day as in 1914 is busily engaged betraying the workers and stiffening the backbone of world im- perialism. The Irish labor movement for which Connolly shed his heart’s blood has not followed the path he mapped out for it. It is caught in the net of reformism like the labor movements of the rest of the world. Men who fought with Connolly in the early days of the socialist movement in Ire- land have grown old and weary and are content to leave the political leadership of the official labor movement in the hands of men who would feet more at home in the company of the British Mac- Donalds. Thomases and Snowdens than in the com- pany of the Connollys, Lenins, Liebknechts and Luxembergs. A virile and militant minority movement such as has been thrown up in England due to the rapid decline of British imperialism and to the guidance and encouragement of the Communist Party, has not yet made its appearance in Ireland. Only a few scattered and disunited groups swear allegiance to the Communist cause. The defeat of the nationalist movement thru the treachery of those who accepted a fake Free State in lieu of a republic and because of the overwhelming power of Great Britain spread demoralization in the ranks of the labor movement. But there are signs of an awakening. And on the eleventh anniversary of the execution of Ireland’s greatest proletarian son, James Connolly, we permit ourselves the luxury of predicting that before the next anniversary comes around that the radical wing of Irish labor will. get together under the leadership of the Communist International and in conjunction with the progres- sive elements in the republican nationalist move- ment, organize for the final overthrow of British imperialism in Ireland and the abolition of Irish capitalism as well, SORRY HUGO! By error the eplendid drawing titled “Strike!” in the last issue of the magazine was credited to Maurice Becker. This fine job was the work of Hugo Gellert—more of whose unusual work you will see in future issues.