This well-appointed Public Exhibition hosted in the Ideas Space on the third floor of the Arts and Humanities Research Institute, TCD, and better known as the Long Room Hub from December 2013 to February 2014 is well worth a visit. It is funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Glucksman Ireland House.
The exhibition explores the time which James Connolly, spent in the United States between 1903 and 1910, where he witnessed the waxing and waning of labor radicalism and unionization as well as seeing at first hand the conditions in which working class people existed in an unregulated corporate expansion.
When Connolly arrived in Ireland in 1902 he found that employers still enjoyed an advantage, (which they still do today). During his period in America he was among an influential second generation of, Irish American Labor leaders who attempted to rally immigrants from across Europe to press for the dignity of labour. In later years his time in America was translated into a Nationalistic fervour which ran along with his work on behalf of workers from factories to farm workers.
Connolly’s experience in the US influenced his actions during the period of the Dublin Lockout of 1913, which can be looked as the larger transatlantic effort to better the rights of the working poor in the time leading up to the Great War of 1914-1918.
This fine exhibition curated by Professor Marion R Casey, a faculty member at Glucksman Ireland House, & Daphne Dyer Wolf, a PhD candidate in History and Culture at Drew University, and was designed by Hilary J Sweeney.
On Wednesday 15th January 2014 Ms Dyer Wolf gave a talk on the concept and research underpinning the exhibition at a very well attended function. The patrons for the project are Eamon Gilmore, Tánaiste and John J Sweeney President Emeritus of the AFL-CIO and was facilitated by the Connolly Commemoration Committee (New York).
James Connolly made three extensive tours of the United States stopping in big cities and small towns. Travelling by train and stagecoach he spoke to crowds in union halls and on street corners often two and three times a day, Connolly’s first tour September to December 1902 was sponsored by the American Socialist Labor Party. He advocated for the value of strikes and the importance of ethnic alliances among workers under the socialist umbrella.
On his second tour July to October 1908 Connolly trumpeted the newly formed Irish Socialist Federation, and its newspaper, The Harp, of which he was the editor and chief writer, While in America Connolly also campaigned for Eugene Debs, the presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America.
On his third tour May 1909 to April 1910 Connolly was a national organiser for the Socialist party of America with a mission of softening the prejudices against socialism among Irish Americans.
New York City (1908) On Mayday 1908 nearly 8,000 people assembled in Union Square just north of Greenwich Village for an IWW rally. Connolly was among the scheduled speakers that day and was captured in a rare photograph of the event taken by George Bain.
While in America Connolly had contact with John Devoy the leader of Clan na Gael. Devoy republished an article from the Harp in the Clan newspaper The Gaelic American , and brought Jeremiah O’ Donovan Rossa to speak at an ISF meeting. This collaboration of labor, socialism and republicanism was to have far reaching consequences back in Ireland a decade later.
In America Connolly witnessed breadlines, starving children, and police brutalising the unemployed and striking workers. During his time in America Connolly honed his radical ideas which were to sustain him in the fights ahead in Dublin during the Lockout in 1913 and the Insurrection of 1916 where he was brutally executed.
The Springfield Republican (Mass) October 9, 1902 refers to Connolly’s presence in Graves Hall, as a representative of the socialist party of Ireland, He is described as “a clear interesting speaker without the excessive ire of the socialist orator and was able to tell last night in an instructive way of the conditions of the present time f the little country from which he came”
Connolly is reported to quote from statistics showing the suffering in Ireland caused by starvation, eviction and forced immigration and in discussing the social and political conditions prevailing ”showed how his country would be benefited under the socialistic plan”
The exhibition continues till the end of February 2014.
