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Friday's Labor Folklore
Con Carbon, Minstrel of the Mine Patch
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Irish Yeast
in the
Trade Unions
James Connolly
(1868-1916)
***Born into an Irish working-class family in Edinburgh, Scotland he emigrated to the United States in 1903, already a well known Irish republican and socialist leader.
***He became active in the American labor and political movement. Returning to Ireland in 1910, he joined James Larkin in establishing the Irish Transport and General Workers Union. In 1912 he founded the Irish Labour Party as the political wing of the Irish Trade Union Congress.
***Connolly commanded the Dublin Brigade during the Easter Rising of 1916. He was captured and sentenced to death by firing squad but was so badly injured during the rebellion he was unable
to stand. So the British troops tied him to a chair and shot him.
Struggle and lose, struggle and win.
It is the story
of the ages.
The only people whose names are recorded in history are those
who did something.
The peaceful
and indifferent
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In the Bronx, at an outdoor rally on a warm summer evening in 1908, James Connolly and his neighbors - Elizabeth Flynn and her husband - gathered to hear a fiery old Irishwoman scold her audience for failing to help the Western miners in their strike.
The speaker was Mary Harris "Mother" Jones and her tongue was so sharp, and she described the bloodshed and violence so vividly that Flynn - then pregnant - fainted. Luckily Connolly caught her as she was about to fall.
Mother Jones interrupted herself to command "somebody get that poor girl some water." Then she continued her scold.
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"Irish immigrants escaping to the United States from famine and oppression in their native land came, not only to nourish their hunger, but also out of thirst for freedom and independence. Mostly poor, they filled the ranks of unskilled labor but quickly began organizing to protect their rights as workers and advance their wages and working conditions."
Story & quote by L.A. O'Donnell in
Talkin' Union, no. 16, Sept. 1987, "Irish Yeast in the Trade Unions."
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1916
Easter
Rising
During Easter week - 1916 - an armed insurrection was mounted by Irish republicans to end British rule in Ireland and establish a free and independent
Ireland.
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Irish Rebel Song
by
Margo O'Donnell
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Kilmainham
Execution Yard
Dublin
w
here James Connally and
13 Irish republicans
were executed.
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It is not those who can inflict the most
but those who can endure the most
who will prevail.
-- Terence MacSwiney, a playwright and IRA member who, while interred by the British, died following a 74-day hunger strike, 1920.
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American labor organizations became important conduits for Irish-American support for the fight back home. It is estimated that between 1850 and 1900 Irish workers sent $260 million back to Ireland to support their families, as well as anti-British activists. Organizations such as the Ancient Order of Hibernians, the Knights of Labor and Clan na Gael funneled money to rebels and, from the 1880s on, smuggled guns to equip their fledgling armies.
-- Terry O'Sullivan, President
Laborers' International Union of North America
in Irish America, Feb./Mar. 2016
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Fridays Labor Folklore
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