PRESIDENT’S COLUMN

President’s column In ‘Songs of Freedom’ (1907), the Irish patriot and revolutionary socialist, James Connolly wrote: Some men, faint-hearted, ever seek Our programme to retouch, And will insist, whene’er they speak That we demand too much. ’Tis passing strange, yet I declare Such statements give me mirth, For our demands most moderate are, We only want the earth. Connolly was born in 1868 to Irish Catholic immigrant parents in Cowgate, Edinburgh. He followed his two brothers into the British Army, which sent him to serve in Ireland where he met his wife Lillie Reynolds, a Protestant domestic servant from Wicklow who married him in 1890. After army discharge Connolly found work as a carter - the catch-all term for a freight logistics worker - and threw himself into the new trade unionism of the 1890s. He became a socialist and despite lack of formal education as a child, read widely on marxism, history, socialism and economics. In the 1900s Connolly worked and travelled in Scotland, Ireland and the USA preaching revolutionary trade unionism. Back in Dublin in 1910, Connolly became a trade union organiser for the Irish Transport & General Workers’ Union, established by James Larkin during the 1909 Belfast Dockers’ strike. In 1913 following defeat for the ITGWU in the Dublin Lockout, Larkin left for the USA and Connolly became General Secretary of the union in Ireland. During the Easter Uprising in April 1916, Connolly commanded the Republican forces in Dublin from the General Post Office where he was injured and taken prisoner. He was court martialled, strapped to a chair and executed by British Army firing squad in Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin on 12 May 1916. When the news of his execution reached MPs in the House of Commons, they applauded and Labour MPs joined in. James Connolly’s life story and writings are relevant today. He was a child of immigrant parents who married across religious lines. He was a highly principled and modern thinker, who rejected sectarianism in religion, politics and life in general and who worked for maximum unity of working class people to win the full fruits of their labour. He recognised that modern capitalism had created a new system of imperialism where British landlords, banks and industrialists could extract super-profits from workers not only in Britain, but around the world. He understood that in order to challenge this new super-exploitation it was necessary for the workers to mobilise and take control of their industries, societies and nations. He was one of the first socialists from Britain to grasp that the right of national independence for people who are dominated by colonialism and imperialism is a pre-requisite to build socialism. When he was executed in 1916 Britain was in the midst of World War 1, a slaughter that lasted another two and half years and cost the lives of around 40 million soldiers and civilians. In the following 50 years, the Empire Britain had amassed in James Connolly’s lifetime began to disintegrate with successful struggles for independence of the peoples of India from 1947, Ghana in 1957 the first country in west Africa to win freedom from the British Empire, followed by Nigeria in 1960 and Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Guyana from 1962. Today, as the war fever is ramped up by media and politicians, we should take inspiration from Connolly’s words: We need not kneel, our cause is high Of true men there's no dearth And our victorious rallying cry Shall be we want the earth! Alex Gordon, RMT National President ‘OUR DEMANDS MOST MODERATE ARE’ RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: march 2022 :: RMTnews 25 Copies of RMT - 150 Years of Trade Unionism are available from your branch or the RMT website. rmt.org.uk/shop/miscellaneous A new pictorial history of the union from 1871 to 2021