She Could See the Revolution Itself

Democracy. Nora Connolly O’Brien, daughter of James Connolly, died recently. Throughout her long life she remained true to her father’s ideal of a 32 county Worker’s Republic. She is most recently remembered for her defence of the hunger strikers and her support for their five just demands. Below we publish a tribute to her in the form of an interview with Raynor Lysaght, historian and member of Peoples What were the political ideas of Nora Connolly O’Brien? One of the conversations | remember having with her was when she asked me was I a ‘Connolly Socialist’ or a ‘Lenin Socialist’. Her differentiation of this is the key to her successes and her weaknesses politically. She was the only consistent follower of her father to survive. She inherited from him his socialism, his recognition of the key role of the National Question in the Irish socialist revolution; but also his belief that the workers could be expected to make the national and socialist revolutions through their spontaneous consciousness. In her life she worked as hard as anyone since her father’s death to achieve his aims yet she did so in keeping loyal to the limitations that had helped destroy him and that handicapped and prevented the realisation of his dream in the revolutionary conditions after 1916.

You mean she didn’t understand the importance of a revolutionary party for continuity in the Yes. Unlike her brother Roddy she never accepted the need for a vanguard revolutionary party of the Bolshevik model. It must be added that Roddy’s subsequent career could only have justified her initial refusal. Her own career reached its nadir when she became the left cover for Fianna Fail in the Seanad from 1951 to 1954 and from 1957 to 1969. This was widely seen at the time as betrayel. In fact it was consistent with her whole political philosophy. Seeking the independent unstimulated action of the people and failing to find it she had to rely on herself and could just as well work as a Fianna Fail nominated the Emergency. senator as in a completely isolated position outside any party. Certainly as a senator she never stooped to Roddy’s depths as when he brought the name of Connolly to support the most repressive government since Was her isolation the almost inevitable consequence of the sell-out of the national question by the Labour Party?

Before she entered the Seanad her belief in the spontaneity of the workers had caused her to reject the organisational Bolshevism of her brother, Roddy, the revolutionary syndicalism of Jim Larkin and the reformism of William O'Brien and Thomas Foran. For years after the crushing defeat of the anti-imperialists in the Civil War she was an isolated figure but re-entered organised politics with the Republican Congress in the early 1930s. Here she found herself in a loose alliance with her brother in their demand for a Worker’s Republic as distinct from the popular front manoeuvres of Gilmore and O’Donnell. However, she and Roddy allied with them against the demand for a new party by Michael Price.

When she was defeated on this in the Republican Congress she joined the Irish Labour Party which, for a brief period, seemed both loose enough and radical enough for her. In 1940 William Norton capitulated to the bishops and removed the Worker’s Republic from the party’s aims. She and her husband left the party. Roddy remained to become a coalitionist TD and later chairman of the Labour Party in its most pro-imperialist phase. Nora. What of her later political career? By 1951, after the betrayels of the Labour Party, there seemed nowhere to go but Fianna Fail, particularly with the Republican Movement in a militarist and anti political period But she never actually joined the party, In 1969 Jack Lynch decided that he could no longer allow his senate to include anyone who was not a 400% Fianna Fail hack. Nora had opposed his party’s line on trade union restrictions and on gerrymandering. She had to go and it seemed like the end of her career, But she hadn’t given up the fight? She certainly hadn’t. The last twelve years of her life were probly her finest. Despite crippling arthritis and steadily failing eyesight she travelled Ireland and the world giving her name and her support to the revived anti-imperialist movement. In this she did as much, and probably more, than many so-called anti-imperialists half her age. Yet she continued to do it alone. She remained as she always had been, an independent anti-imperialist working by herself for the working class revolution.

She remained distrustful of building anything through the medium of which the revolution could be lead to victory. Nonetheless, unlike many who could see the need for such a weapon, she could see the revolution itself. It is unlikely that we will see anyone to follow her as she followed her father. But it must be understood in what way we who come after her must differ from her. Isolated and, yes, heroic interventions for the revolution can achieve much. Only a party can bring victory. But equally, a party must be as revolutionary as were James Connolly and his daughter