REVOLUTIONARY QUOTES OF THE DAY:1896 Connolly accepted an invitation to work in Dublin for the Dublin Socialist Club. Shortly after his arrival he established the Irish Socialist Republican Party, which had branches in Belfast, Cork, and Dublin. In his first public statement on behalf of the ISRP, Connolly wrote: The struggle for Irish freedom has two aspects: it is national and it is social. The national ideal can never be realised until Ireland stands forth before the world as a nation, free and independent. It is social and economic, because no matter what the form of government may be, as long as one class owns as private property the land and the instruments of labour from which mankind derive their substance, that class will always have it in their power to plunder and enslave the remainder of their fellow-creatures. Connolly put forward the thesis that the two strands of revolutionary thought in Ireland, national liberation and socialism, were not antagonistic but complementary, that the Irish socialist was in reality the best patriot, but in order to convince the Irish people of this fact he must learn to look inward upon Ireland for his justification, rest his arguments upon the fact of Irish history, and be a champion against the subjection of Ireland and all that implies. That the Irish question was at bottom an economic question and that the economic struggle must first be able to function nationally before it could function internationally; and as the socialists were opposed to all oppression, so should they ever be foremost in the daily battle against all its manifestations, social and political. In another article he wrote: The subjection of one nation to another, as of Ireland to the authority of the British Crown, is a barrier to the free political and economic development of the subject nation, and can only serve the exploiting classes of both nations.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Jul 2013 23:58:45 +0000
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