James Connolly and Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee

Posted by Jim on June 24, 2018

 

This week in 1897, James Connolly was arrested and detained for
organising a series of protests in Dublin over Queen Victoria’s diamond
jubilee, soem of which resulted in riots.

James Connolly called the Jubilee a “feast of flunkyism” and wrote:
“Join your voice with ours in protesting against the base assumption
that we owe to this empire any other debt than that of hatred of all its
plundering institutions.”

One march was held across the city, with a mock coffin draped in a black
cloth with the words British Empire embroidered on it. Maud Gonne
organised the production of a series of black flags, on which were
written statistics of the famines/starvations, evictions and other
social disasters that had taken place in Ireland during the long reign
of Queen Victoria.

The coffin was eventually thrown into the River Liffey, with Connolly
reportedly shouting as it entered the water, “Here goes the coffin of
the British Empire.”

The following is a speech delivered by Connolly, as transcribed by the
James Connolly Society in 1997.
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“The great appear great to us, only because we are on our knees: LET US
RISE.”

 

Fellow Workers,

The loyal subjects of Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland,
Empress of India, etc., celebrate this year the longest reign on record.
Already the air is laden with rumours of preparations for a wholesale
manufacture of sham ‘popular rejoicings’ at this glorious (?)
commemoration.

Home Rule orators and Nationalist Lord Mayors, Whig politicians and
Parnellite pressmen, have ere now lent their prestige and influence to
the attempt to arouse public interest in the sickening details of this
Feast of Flunkeyism. It is time then that some organised party in
Ireland – other than those in whose mouths Patriotism means Compromise,
and Freedom, High Dividends – should speak out bravely and honestly the
sentiments awakened in the breast of every lover of freedom by this
ghastly farce now being played out before our eyes. Hence the Irish
Socialist Republican Party – which, from its inception, has never
hesitated to proclaim its unswerving hostility to the British Crown, and
to the political and social order of which in these islands that Crown
is but the symbol – takes this opportunity of hurling at the heads of
all the courtly mummers who grovel at the shrine of royalty the contempt
and hatred of the Irish Revolutionary Democracy. We, at least, are not
loyal men; we confess to having more respect and honour for the
raggedest child of the poorest labourer in Ireland today than for any,
even the most virtuous, descendant of the long array of murderers,
adulterers and madmen who have sat upon the throne of England.

During this glorious reign Ireland has seen 1,225,000 of her children
die of famine, starved to death whilst the produce of her soil and their
labour was eaten up by a vulture aristocracy, enforcing their rents by
the bayonets of a hired assassin army in the pay of the -best of the
English Queens’; the eviction of 3,668,000, a multitude greater than the
entire population of Switzerland; and the reluctant emigration of
4,186,000 of our kindred, a greater host than the entire people of
Greece. At the present moment 78 percent of our wage-earners receive
less than #1 per week, our streets are thronged by starving crowds of
the unemployed, cattle graze on our tenantless farms and around the
ruins of our battered homesteads, our ports are crowded with departing
emigrants, and our poorhouses are full of paupers. Such are the
constituent elements out of which we are bade to construct a National
Festival of rejoicing!

Working-class of Ireland: We appeal to you not to allow your opinions to
be misrepresented on this occasion. Join your voice with ours in
protesting against the base assumption that we owe to this Empire any
other debt than that of hatred of all its plundering institutions. Let
this year be indeed a memorable one as marking the date when the Irish
workers at last flung off that slavish dependence on the lead of ‘the
gentry,’ which has paralysed the arm of every soldier of freedom in the
past.

The Irish landlords, now as ever the enemy’s garrison, instinctively
support every institution which, like monarchy, degrades the manhood of
the people and weakens the moral fibre of the oppressed; the
middle-class, absorbed in the pursuit of gold, have pawned their souls
for the prostitute glories of commercialism and remain openly or
secretly hostile to every movement which would imperil the sanctity of
their dividends. The working class alone have nothing to hope for save
in a revolutionary reconstruction of society; they, and they alone, are
capable of that revolutionary initiative which, with all the political
and economic development of the time to aid it, can carry us forward
into the promised land of perfect Freedom, the reward of the age-long
travail of the people.

To you, workers of Ireland, we address ourselves. AGITATE in the
workshop, in the field, in the factory, until you arouse your brothers
to hatred of the slavery of which we are all the victims. EDUCATE, that
the people may no longer be deluded by illusory hopes of prosperity
under any system of society of which monarchs or noblemen, capitalists
or landlords form an integral part. ORGANISE, that a solid, compact and
intelligent force, conscious of your historic mission as a class, you
may seize the reins of political power whenever possible and, by
intelligent application of the working-class ballot, clear the field of
action for the revolutionary forces of the future. Let the ‘canting, fed
classes’ bow the knee as they may, be you true to your own manhood, and
to the cause of freedom, whose hope is in you, and, pressing unweariedly
onward in pursuit of the high destiny to which the Socialist Republic
invites you, let the words which the poet puts into the mouth of Mazeppa
console you amid the orgies of the tyrants of today:

But time at last makes all things even,
And if we do but watch the hour,
There never yet was human power
That could evade, if unforgiven,
The patient hate and vigil long,
Of those who treasure up a wrong.