Biography :
BMD: So you’ve written quite a bit about anarchism, about politics and history in Ireland. In this context of struggles learning from each other across borders and finding that unity too, I want to step back in history, and wanted to ask if you could expand a little bit about who James Connolly was. For anyone who does not know, Connolly lived in exile in Troy, New York for a while. But, tell us about him and the movement he came out of. And tell us if there is anything important that came out of those struggles for those of us to learn today.
AF: So in the context of the Irish left, James Connolly is kind of everybody’s founding father figure. Everybody sort of claims to come from him. It’s a very interesting story. He was born in Scotland, had served in the British army and then arrived in Dublin as a union organizer. And with Jim Larkin he built a very successful General Workers Union that was very strongly based on direct action.
They fought a massive battle here in Dublin in 1913 when the bosses tried to break that union by locking everybody out. There was a nine month struggle of resistance to that. In the course of that struggle they formed something called the Irish Citizens Army which some people call the first workers militia in Europe. It was basically formed to defend picket lines against police attacks. And that went on to take part then in the 1916 insurrection in Dublin. He was executed after that so there is this whole history of the war of independence where there’s lots of general strikes. There were seventeen general strikes in the course of two years. There were train strikes that happened which meant that British troops couldn’t be transported around. So there is a whole hidden side for that kind of struggle for Irish independence which had very much to do with the left after Connely and the influence of what was a syndicalist union that he built in terms of its ability to then run these massive labor struggles against the ongoing British military presence at the time.
As I said, he’s interesting in that almost every political party claims some sort of connection to him. Some of that is a little more dubious than others. But for anarchists I think the key thing is the kind of syndicalist politics. The idea of workers self organizing and direct action was the way to win struggles. That’s probably what is key. Certainly, some of that was coming from his experience in the States and working with the IWW there.
From : BlackRoseFed.org.
Works :
Author of A Practical Guide to Anarchist Organisation (January 01, 1970)
Author of Bakunin's idea of revolution & revolutionary organisation (January 01, 1970)
Author of Bernadette: One women's journey from mass protest to hunger strikes to the peace process (January 01, 1970)
Author of Can you have an anarchist army? (January 01, 1970)
Author of Defending the Bolsheviks or defending the truth? (January 01, 1970)
Author of Do you want Geoengineering with your climate change? (January 01, 1970)
Author of Dreaming of a Reality where the Past & Future Meet the Present (January 01, 1970)
Author of First Nations in Canada: When Property Law Does Not Apply (January 01, 1970)
Author of Four October Myths (January 01, 1970)
Author of Haiti: a history of intervention, occupation and resistance (January 01, 1970)
Author of Is primitivism realistic? An anarchist reply to John Zerzan and others (January 01, 1970)
Author of It was always time to go (January 01, 1970)
Author of The left & social center ‘counter culture’ (January 01, 1970)
Author of The Left: Ashes to Phoenix (January 01, 1970)
Author of Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists (January 01, 1970)
Author of The politics and reality of the peak oil scare (January 01, 1970)
Author of Primitivism, anarcho-primitivism and anti-civilisationism: criticism (January 01, 1970)
Author of Review: The Militias in the Spanish Revolution (January 01, 1970)
Author of The German Revolution (January 01, 1970)
Author of The Russian Revolution (January 01, 1970)
Author of The Zapatistas, Anarchism and 'Direct democracy' (January 01, 1970)
Author of Towards an anarchist history of the Chinese revolution (January 01, 1970)
Author of Two weeks that shook Spain (January 01, 1970)
Author of Understanding the Zapatistas (January 01, 1970)
Author of Victor Serge & the Bolsheviks (January 01, 1970)
Author of What is it that is different about the Zapatistas? (January 01, 1970)
Author of Yes to peace and to an Ireland that is neither Orange nor Green (January 01, 1970)
Author of The Zapatista contribution to the new opposition (January 01, 1970)
Chronology :
January 23, 2021 : Andrew Flood's Added.
January 10, 2022 : Andrew Flood's Updated.
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