Im just about sick of this west Brit now!

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Connolly is set for a heroic makeover on silver screen

By Kevin Myers

Friday November 23 2007


WITH the sinking heart of a schoolboy who sees his drunken mother flirting with a Cardinal-Archbishop, I hear that a biopic is being made about James Connolly. The beauty of this project is that the film is to be made in Gdansk, where the fall of Connolly's beloved Marxism began. This is rather like filming the biography of the founder of the flat earth society on the moon.


I am presuming here, but actually, it is quite easy to presume accurately when it comes to films about Ireland; in these the Irish have always to be victims of heartless and ignoble British oppressors, long since stereotyped within virtually all film-makers' imaginations, while the Irish resistance fighters are invariably portrayed as noble, upright heroes.

Now, I know what happens whenever I touch on this topic: I am showered with foam-flecked emanations of disbelieving hatred.

So: Phlegm nice and ready? Good. Let us begin, and we start with a Dublin Metropolitan Police raid, just one month before the Rising, on Connolly's little shop beside Liberty Hall, which itself had secretly been turned into an arsenal and arms-factory for James Connolly's Irish Citizens Army.

When a DMP man started looking through some documents, Connolly drew a pistol and said: "Drop those or I'll drop you." The unarmed officer obligingly put the papers down and explained he was looking for outlawed publications. When Connolly asked him for his warrant, he replied that he didn't have one.

Connolly then ordered the DMP contingent out, and they left. Later, an Inspector Bannon arrived with four men and a warrant, which Connolly made him read out aloud.

Connolly said the warrant applied to the shop, but not to Liberty Hall where the illegal publications had now joined the secret arsenal of guns, so the DMP men again left.

Now, you know the reality of unarmed, law-abiding Catholic policemen acting strictly according to the law when confronted by a Marxist gunman is the last thing that a film-maker would want to show. No, no: in the film, Connolly will almost certainly be arrested and tortured by a gang of cruel English secret service-men. Indeed, he might even be portrayed as a pacifist, as if he had never uttered these words in 1915: " ... Ireland may yet set the torch to a European conflagration that will not burn out until the last throne and the last capitalist bond and debenture will be shrivelled on the funeral pyre of the last warlord." In other words, Connolly was a war-mongering totalitarian-in-waiting, an Irish Lenin: unsurprisingly, therefore, the Kaiser supported them both. And in return, the leaders of the 1916 Rising acclaimed the butchers of Belgium as "gallant allies".

However, the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union was already tired of Connolly's capers. Ten days before the Rising, it evicted him and his Irish Citizen Army from Liberty Hall, to which he undertook never to return.

All in all, mere confirmation of his unpopularity. After all, he had twice failed to be elected to Dublin Corporation for the Wood Quay Ward.

And how decent a man was he? His paternal urges were so slight that he even allowed his 15-year-old son to join the Rising, and as an officer, no less. This is cultish, Moonie-like conduct.

Labour did not back Connolly's unmandated use of the Citizens' Army in the Rising during which, incidentally, he even ordered his men to shoot looters.

Very socialist indeed: but of course, Connolly's intention was not actually for the Rising to improve the conditions of the poor (unless that includes putting them out of their misery by killing them) but to start a European-wide upheaval of the kind that would soon bring ruin and anarchy to Russia.

And you've probably never heard any of the foregoing, largely because neither Irish national nor Labour myths admit of such uncomfortable truths. But all this will probably make no difference to the forthcoming film.

Cut to the character playing Connolly: Mel Gibson, perhaps, brooding sorrowfully, poor peasants toiling on English-owned farms. Then we'll see Irishmen being imprisoned for their beliefs by English judges, (though the majority of judges were Irish Catholics). Come the Rising, and we'll see Connolly, aka Gibson, after delivering some rousing Braveheart-type speech about frrrreedom, leading his gallant volunteers against cowardly, brutish English soldiery (though, like the police, all the "British" troops in Dublin in April 1916 were in fact Irish). Then, strapped to his chair, we'll see him going bravely to his death (as indeed he did).

But oh, if only Inspector Bannon had arrested and charged James Connolly with firearms offences when he had the chance. To be sure, it would have made uninteresting history, and a bad film: but not, I bet, as bad as the biopic ahead -- shot, of course, in Poland, the country which finally began to kill the evil cause of communism that Connolly had so murderously espoused.

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- Kevin Myers

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Some of the replies to the abovr article ;D


Actually I imagine the film might start with the 1913 Lockout and the events of Bloody Sunday, carried out by those "unarmed, law-abiding Catholic policemen" no less, or maybe even with the death of his daughter Mona in a Dublin slum.

And one has to wonder what point you're trying to make when you can't even get simply facts right. Connolly and the ICA were never put out of Liberty Hall. As was stated above, the Green Flag was raised over Liberty Hall by the Citizen Army on 16 April 1916. On the eve of the Rising, the Proclamation of the Irish Republic was printed in the basement of Liberty Hall, and on the morning of 24 April the joint forces of ICA and Irish Volunteers left from Liberty Hall.

There was indeed something of a falling out in 1917 between the ICA and the ITGWU leaders, but that was due to them being worried that the Union would be proscribed, as even the Conradh na Gaeilge had been. Connolly was long dead by then, but maybe you can find a way to blame him nonetheless.

Posted by Ciarán Ó Brolcháin | 24.11.07, 13:49 GMT

I had no idea that the Irish Countrywomen's Association was also founded by James Connolly!!

Posted by Frank Einstein | 23.11.07, 21:31 GMT

This is the problem with Myers. He seems to believe that, by adopting the posture of a Cassandra-like figure, telling home truths and being martyred under a wall of critical phlegm, he therefore does not have to address the points made contradicting his words of wisdom, the mere existence of said phlegm proving how intelligent and unimpeachable his argument is. This smacks of the infallible contrariness of Conor Cruise O'Brien and others, constantly needing to be on the other side of the fence from the mere peasantry and their ignorant and simplistic views. All of which is a pity, because it takes from the many occasions when Myers truly is on the ball, as instanced by his wonderful article on our hypocrisy and cowardice as a nation in our relationship with the barbarism of Saudi Arabian society. That article did a wonderful job of exposing the rotten compromises that moral relativism, geographical and temporal, allows to happen.

Posted by Thomas Gilmartin | 23.11.07, 17:30 GMT

I do not know if a film on James Connolly is planned, or to star Mel Gibson, etc., but I do know many statements made by Kevin Myers in his 23 November column are incorrect.

For example, Mr. Myers writes ‘However, the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union was already tired of Connolly's capers. Ten days before the Rising, it evicted him and his Irish Citizen Army from Liberty Hall, to which he undertook never to return.

On 16 April 1916 the Irish Republic Flag was first raised over the Hall; Miss Molly O’Reilly, age 15, unfurled it. Connolly handed the flag to her and said: ‘I hand you this flag as the sacred emblem of Ireland's unconquered soul’.

From 26 March to 16 April James Connolly’s play, Under Which Flag, was performed at Liberty Hall

On 16 April, in his final lecture on tactics at Liberty Hall, Connolly warned: ‘The odds against us are a thousand to one. If we win, we’ll be great heroes; but if we lose we’ll be the greatest scoundrels the country has ever produced. In the event of victory, hold onto your rifles because the Volunteers may have a different goal, and may stop before our goal is reached. Remember, we’re out not only for political liberty, but for economic liberty as well. So hold onto your rifles’.

On 23 April The Proclamation of the Irish Republic was printed in Liberty Hall.

No doubt a movie on Connolly is long overdue. Not the least of reasons for which is so Mr. Myers can get a needed history lesson.



Posted by joseph connell | 23.11.07, 14:32 GMT

There's very little meat on those bones.

Connolly pulled on a gun on some police and he said "Ireland may yet set the torch to a European conflagration that will not burn out until the last throne and the last capitalist bond and debenture will be shrivelled on the funeral pyre of the last warlord". Does predicting war and the defeat of ones enemies make one a "war-mongering totalitarian-in-waiting"?

Is that it?


Posted by Brian | 23.11.07, 11:28 GMT

I concur with Mr Nagle,a disgrace of an article

Posted by Damo Dillon | 23.11.07, 11:23 GMT

Dear Kevin.

As you expected, here is the response to your smart article on James Connolly.
It is despicable that writers such as yourself have the neck to sit at your desks, do a small bit of research on an Irish hero, of whom you obviously have the ignorance not to have studied in depth as I have, merely to fill the pages of your daily newspaper.
Your writings could not be more incorrect.

In the passage you refer to the raid of the Dublin Metro on the premises of James Connolly beside Liberty Hall, and you refer to Connolly as "war mongering totalitarian-in-waiting".
How incorrect.
Contrary to the philosophical and poetic writings of Pearse, who can justifiably be called a war monger, Connolly realistically saw military action as a means out of hostilities. A means to end the British rule which was damaging the Irish economy for the benefit of London. A means to achieving Irish independence. The very independence which has you comfortably sitting at your desk this morning with the Irish traffic probably being your foremost concern.

The "law abiding Catholic policemen" of the Dublin Metro are the same force for which the ICA was established in the wake of the 1913 lockout to combat, to protect your ancestors in worker's rights demonstrations from their sheer brutality.
Need I remind you that it was the 250 man ICA and Connolly who are ultimately responsible for the commencement of action in 1916?

I think you need the history lesson.

25,000 of MacNeill's Volunteers were embarrassingly outshone by these men of Connolly's ICA. If it had not been for their pro-activeness, the country would have lain in hesitation and never achieved independence in 1922. So I suppose I am the war monger now?

The order of Connolly to shoot looters is justifiable. You refer to him as a bidder for anarchy. So you contradict yourself. Would you have been in favour of a city-wide loot, leaving the entire city in ruins?

Not a hundred years has passed since Connolly's death. It is sad to think that the Commandant General of the Dublin Brigade died for "Irishmen" like you, who are so short of journalistic ideas that they have to slur the name of Ireland's most influential figure of the twentieth century.

And you were also wrong about one other thing Kevin.

Your article is not worthy of phlegm.


Yours sincerely,

Chris Nagle




Posted by Chris Nagle | 23.11.07, 09:33 GMT

What an ******** Myers is. ;D ;D

Posted by Brian O Cinneide | 23.11.07, 07:46 GMT

[Stallit 2 de Halfo]

OMG, what a complete ignoramus he is.

How these people get their jobs I dont know. I would love to see a debate between him and people like Ciaran OB there - theyed walk rings around the moron.

This is a real exmple of "free speech" in action. He gets to publish an article like this in one of Irelands leading papers distributed to hundreds of thousands, and by doing so influences the opinion of others in the process. While those with the more accurate and informed understanding will not or cannot get that sort of platform, maybe a few lines in the censored comments section the next week.

Its fuckers like this that keep people confused and ignorant about this system. Never do we hear a flat Dublin, inner city, accent in the media, on TV or radio - only the voices of the chattering middle classes and their reactionary fucked up view of the world.

It says something when it sounds wierd or unusual to hear the sound of a working class accent in the media.

[Papa C.]

Is this the same guy who wrote about, a hypothetical situation not doubt, of what life would be like having Sinn Fein in GOvernment as a dark cruel country where people are constantly looking over their shoulder for fear of being shot, not talking about politics in case someone finds out they've been talking down the Sinn Fein rule etcetera etcetera. Never have I read such a pile of, and I apologise for my language, complete shite in all my life. The following week, the Irish Independent were haling Sinn Fein as 'modern Irish heroes' as they signed up to British rule. The paper this guy writes or were calling for the excecution of the leaders of the rising when it happened. They obviously haven't changed a bit. Nothing has changed since then, perhaps if Connolly had succeeded in a working class revolution, we'd be able to beat people like Kevin Myers with a stick! ;D
It sounds to me as if Myers hasn't even seen the film yet, although he's writing a preview of what it will be like? What a spanner!

On the case of shooting looters, Connolly never ordered his men to shoot looters. In fact he told the ICA men not to shoot looters as 'the working class have the right to take back what belongs to them'. I believe it was Connolly's second in command who made that order, yet Connolly overruled him. Although Myers' allies across the pond (the US state) most definitely shot many impoverished looters during hurricane Katrina and blanked it out of existence - very Democratic!

The Indo have always been anti-revolution/ pro-capitalism, even under British rule. Just look at what they wrote about the rising:

"No terms of denunciation that pen could indict would be too strong to apply to those responsible for the insane and criminal rising of last week. Around us in the centre of Ireland’s capital, is a scene of ruin which it is heartrending to behold. Some of the proudest structures in what was one of the finest streets in Europe are now reduced to shapeless heaps of smouldering ashes. It is as if foreign invaders, as ruthless as those who have devastated Belgium and Poland had wrought their evil will upon the erstwhile peaceful city of Dublin. In one sense indeed it is too true that the ruin around us is the work of the common enemy, but Irishmen have been the agents for the commission of the crime, from the consequences of which it will take us many years to recover. The events of last week in Dublin and in certain other parts of the country would have quenched our hopes for at least a quarter of a century to come, were it not for the splendid part which Ireland has played since the beginning of the war. On the battlefields of France and Flanders on the blood stained heights of the Gallipoli Peninsula and in the more distant lands wherever the fight raged hottest the outpouring of Irish blood is as expiation for the acts of unfilial ingrates who have besmirched the honour of their native land. Were it not for the glory which has irradiated the Irish arms in the fields where the battle for human freedom is being fought, our heads might now hang low in shame for the misdeeds of those who have been the willing dupes of Prussian intrigue.

the ruin around us is the work of the common enemy...

When we come to think of what the incendiaries have accomplished the result is pitifully meagre. They set out to establish an Irish Republic. They held a few strong positions in certain parts of the metropolis for about 28 hours. From that time onwards they were surrounded many of them surrendering, others escaping and many of them being shot. A good many of the military fell beneath the insurgent fire, and so did large numbers of civilians, including innocent women and children. The net result of the outbreak is, in brief, the loss of many valuable lives and a large toll of wounded extending to many hundreds, perhaps thousands; the wholesale surrender of the Sinn Feiners; the monetary loss to Dublin and to Ireland of many millions of pounds, the ruin of some of the finest business districts and the destruction of many buildings, the beauty of whose architecture was a legitimate source of pride to the citizens of the capital. The men who fomented the outbreak, and all who were responsible for the devastation surrounding us have to bear a heavy moral and legal responsibility from which they cannot hope to escape. They were out, not to free Ireland, but to help Germany.

Doing the enemy’s work they looked for succour and support from that quarter and doubtless they received subsidies in money and kind. Other assistance for which they hoped never arrived for all arms and warlike material which were consigned to them are now at the bottom of the Atlantic. With sinister complacency Germany could look on at the useless sacrifice of Irish lives and the possible enshrouding of Ireland’s true national aspirations. So long as she could create a diversion in her favour which might affect neutral and particularly American opinion, it was nothing to Germany that the name of Ireland should be made a byword among the nations. Her diplomacy on the whole business was characteristically sordid and there may well have been much self-gratification in the Foreign Office in Berlin that Irishmen could be got to sell themselves for so paltry a price.

we confess that we care little what is to become of the leaders...

For some months past there was a good deal of anxiety about the trend of events in Ireland. There was a genuine fear that disturbances would ensue, but against that there was the natural inclination to hope that by some means trouble would be averted. Dublin and Ireland however have been denied this good fortune. On Easter Monday at noon when Dublin business houses, Government offices and departments were closed and thousands of holiday makers were in the streets the powers of anarchy were unloosed with the dire consequences which we are now constrained to record. The men who took the initiative in disturbing the peace of the country have not, and had not, a shred of public sympathy. Whilst they held certain strongholds the military were being called for and longed for by the citizens. These men are now held prisoners in England and the leaders who organised and the prominently active spirits in this "rising" deserve little consideration or compassion. So far as we are concerned when we think of the many valuable lives lost, the hundreds of innocent victims – many of them buried in unknown graves because their friends could not be discovered, when we think of the enormous material damage which has already been done and the huge loss of trade and employment which must be the consequence, we confess that we care little what is to become of the leaders who are morally responsible for this terrible mischief. The young fellows who went out however, many of them from 15 to 19 years of age, innocent, ignorant, misguided and irresponsible, knowing little of what they were committed to or its consequences, deserve to be placed upon a different footing, and we trust they will be treated with leniency. Others, we hear were induced to go out in the belief that they were going on a long march and found themselves in a trap. These also deserve special consideration and separate treatment.

Condemning root and branch, as we do, the iniquitous conduct of the fomenters of this outbreak we, at the same time, deem it our bounden duty to declare that there are others more highly placed who have an indirect responsibility which is not less grave. Sir Edward Carson’s movement in Ulster, with its threat of civil war, not only encouraged Germany to launch hostilities, but it practically set the example which other disaffected elements in the country took as an invitation to arm and drill for their own objects. If there had been no Ulster Volunteers, encouraged and protected by Sir Edward Carson and many others occupying high positions, there would have been no armed Sinn Feiners or Irish Volunteers. But responsibility must be extended beyond and above Sir Edward Carson and his fellow Covenanters to Mr Birrell and the Government who permitted them to form an armed body of men for the avowed purpose of rebellion. The Chief Secretary countenanced the Ulster parade of defiance to the authority of the state and treated it as bluff. For his handling of the whole situation which developed from the Covenanting movement until the whole country became an armed camp of irresponsible bodies of men, Mr Birrell is primarily responsible. It was mainly due to his untimely levity that matters took the turn which has led to the result we now behold. Once or twice the authorities seemed to wake up to the danger of the situation and issued proclamations against the importation of arms. These were defied by the Ulster gun runners whose offences were condoned by the Government. Again when the Sinn Fein gun running took place, Mr Harrel, the acting head of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, believing in his simplicity that the government were in earnest in their desire to check the importation of arms attempted to capture the rifles landed at Howth, and was dismissed for his pains. Yet those were some of the weapons used last week in shooting down soldiers and innocent citizens who pay taxes to a Government who failed to protect them. In Ireland the Chief Secretary plays a part which is without parallel in any other part of the Empire. He is de facto the Government of Ireland, and no amount of quip or cracks will free him from the responsibility for the state of affairs which led up to the events of last week.

responsibility must be extended beyond and above Sir Edward Carson...

To come back to the matter of most urgent importance to the citizens of Dublin, several of the business parts of Dublin are ruined for the present and there is little chance in many instances of rebuilding and resuming business. As this damage is as much the result of acts of war as in the case of the Hartlepool or Scarborough raids, it is the duty of the Government to indemnify the sufferers, most, if not all, of whom had not the slightest tinge of sympathy with the "rising". It is also the duty of the Government to see that no such deplorable occurrences shall ever again blot the fair fame of this country, whether in Dublin or in Ulster. There is surely enough bloodshed in the foreign fields, whereon the destinies of Europe are being shaped, without bringing the grisly tragedy to our own doors. Many widows and orphans and many innocent victims represent the toll of a week of anarchy in Dublin. Circumstances favoured the incendiaries, inasmuch as they were fairly well armed and supplied with ammunition and England’s military resources were taxed to the uttermost by the demands of a war of unprecedented magnitude. Yet the "rising" was a mere matter of hours, a miserable fiasco leaving behind its trail of woe and horror. Let the moral not be lost upon us or upon our rulers. Let us, in God’s name be done with revolution or thought of revolution in Ireland, whatever be its guise or pretext.

So worry not about what the Irish Independent say. If the next revolutionary attempt get as good a review, I'll be happy! ;D

[Stallit 2 de Halfo]

Thanks PC for that.

If only the dimwit who wrote that could see a couple of years into the future....hed swallow his words looking at statues and murals being erected left right and centre for them.

Thats a perfect example of how the media protect the status quo and denounce those who are brave enough to change it through force, or unorthodox means.

They havnt a clue.

[Papa C.]

Aye, although once the right wing are in power they couldn't care less. It's when us lefties get in that they'll be cr***ing their trousers!