Neil Young and James Connolly

 I have brought two books with me to read whilst on holiday here in Fuerteventura (literally and metaphorically translates to, "Strong Winds" and it lives up to its name). In addition it more clearly resembles the surface of the moon than any other place that I have visited on this earth. Nothing grows, no animals, except for the odd scraggy goat herd, are apparent and most of the grass that one sees in the few towns scattered around is made of AstroTurf. Rows of empty villas abound their, "SE VENDE" signs lie dirty and torn and half completed, but abandoned, holiday flats and houses are testament both to the deterioration of the island (a victim of climate change which was once a verdant paradise more than twenty years ago) and the recession that grips Spain. I shall not be returning.
 However, dear reader I deviate from my subject so let's get on with a review of Neil Young's autobiography , "Waging Heavy Peace". I gave up half way through, on the advice of Young himself who, at the end of a chapter wrote that he was not into format in a book and if the reader wasn't content with this then to give the book away, which I will. The book appears to have been written on an iPad or something similar, as and when Young ( whose singing I admire greatly ) had ten minutes to spare. There is no continuity and the book covers Young's musical tastes, his recording sessions, his car and train hobbies and he is open and frank about his personal life but meanders back and forwards, in "Back to the Future" style. If you have little concentration span or like to browse a book for ten minutes or so and then put it down then, this may be for you, but for sitting and reading for an hour or more then it grates.
 Although his undying love for his wife of 36 years, Peggi, is repeated throughout, it is badly in need of an update, as since its publication in 2012 he has filed for divorce against her and according to the press was quick to start a new romance with Darryl Hannah. If I had paid £25 for the book then I would have been very miffed, but fortunately I brought a second hand copy for £2.50 from http://www.abebooks.co.

James Connolly 

"Our aims are modest -

we only want the world."

 Consolation however has come in the form of my second choice, now sadly out of print, but still available, at a price,  from the above bookseller. It is a biography of the towering figure of international socialism James Connolly, shot by firing squad, in Dublin, following the Easter Rising in 1916. The book is, "The Life and Times of James Connolly"  brilliantly written in superb English, something which is sadly lacking today, in 1961 by C. Desmond Greaves.  Connolly was one of the pioneers of the labour movement in Edinburgh, enduring, like today, much discrimination and many hardships as an unskilled labourer because of his political beliefs before moving to Dublin, where he founded the Irish Socialist a Republican Party. Then came a period of seven years in the U.S.A. where he became one of the founders of the Industrial Workers of the World. In 1910 he returned to Ireland and played a leading part in the working class struggles in Belfast and Dublin.
 I was bought up in the years of the Atlee government and remember the pride of my parents in his creation of The National Health Service and the privitasation of the mines and the railways. Despite the dreadful post war economic situation Nye Bevan masterminded not only the creation of the NHS but the building of more houses in the lifetime of a single government than any other since. Most of these were model estates comprising a decent house and garden and green spaces for play and relaxation.
 My socialist leanings were later cemented when I read Jack London's "People of the Abyss" which recounted his period of living amongst the deprived and starving of London in Victorian times, at the height of The British Empire. Those people were forced to live in disgusting conditions within a mile or two of all of the pomp and elegance of Buckingham Palace.
 In 1964 I celebrated the return to power of a proper Labour government under Harold Wilson, who amongst other achievements despite American pressure kept us out of the Vietnam war, introduced equality legislation and equal pay for women, formed The Open University, abolished censorship, introduced  legislation to legalise homosexuality, ended hanging, and  reformed comprehensive education. Andrew Marr showed his bias and lack of historical education in describing Wilson as a squalid man, much  to his everlasting shame.
 I have now , late in my life, discovered the writings and speeches of James Connolly who through his own diligent reading and apprenticeship became one of the greatest contributors to the formation of internationalist socialist ideals and principles which simply put are an end to wars, poverty, exploitation and oppression.

Life at seventy.

So after all these years of working tirelessly, with a small band of brothers and sisters, to create a nicer world for those that will follow us nothing has changed. War, exploitation, hunger, poverty, the bombs ( dropped by drones these days) and capitalism and neo-liberal economics are triumphant and one of the few consolations is laughing at the lies of the politicians and the media.
 We may have lost most of the battles but the war for peace and an end to poverty and exploitation will continue and those that follow, I hope will know, that we tried and tried and that they can step over our graves knowing that they point them towards Jerusalem.
 Carpe deum while you can. And always. enjoy the ride of uncertainty which is, "The Blues"

James Connolly, the Royals and the System you vote for.

 In 1902 James Connolly, who was subsequently shot during the Easter rising of 2016 in Dublin, made this speech about the forthcoming coronation of Edward VII. It would seem that little has changed in the last hundred years only nowadays the vast majority of the electorate don't understand the machinations of the system and continue being brainwashed into worshipping the Saxe-Coburgs and Phil the Greek.

 Connolly was a socialist, born in Edinburgh and was active in politics and Trades Unions in Scotland and the USA as well as Ireland. He was a huge figure in historical terms but has become one of the disappeared of our age, because it is not fashionable or profitable to publish biographies of left wing socialists.

"Fellow-Workers,

Unless unforseen accidents intervene to prevent this consummation, His Majesty, Edward VII, King and Emperor, will be crowned on June 26th. Were we able to follow our own inclinations in the matter we would be inclined to treat it with contempt as being of but little importance to the cause for which we stand, or to the workers with whose interests we are concerned. To us, as Socialists, it is but of little moment who may for the time being wear the trappings of royalty; that we are compelled to acquiesce in his rule by the bayonets of his hireling soldiery and police is for us sufficient; and to us, as workers, the personality of the head of the Capitalist system in these islands is of small concern when we realise that our exploitation by the master class would proceed apace even if King Edward VII were a Christian gentleman instead of a –

But although we would rather treat the matter thus philosophically, we find that the machinations of those in power do not leave us that possibility; with them, and because of them, the festivities attending the Coronation have taken on the aspect not merely of a huge parade of pomp and magnificence – cloaking the festering sores of that slave society on which it is built – but have also become an elaborately contrived and astutely worked piece of Royalist and Capitalist propaganda, designed to captivate the imagination of the unthinking multitude, and thus lead them to look askance upon every movement which would set up as an ideal to work for something less gorgeously spectacular, even if more solidly real. The evil effects of private ownership of industries is thus illustrated once more in a manner that ought to appeal to those patriots in our midst who still dread the innovating effects of Socialism on the National spirit of the Irish people.

Because of this private ownership and control of our newspapers, of our shops, of our manufactures, we find our Home Rule press devoting columns to descriptions of all the preparations for the Coronation, nauseating the thinking portion of its readers, but insidiously sapping the manhood of the weak and vulgar, and preparing their minds for the worship of the foul gods of Imperialism. We find our shops stocked with every kind of article, from the toy of the babe in arms to the dress patterns of our womankind dedicated by name to the Coronation; and we find our manufacturers able by their economic power over the bread and butter of their employees, to enforce observance of this saturnalia of tyranny, even upon those workers whose whole beings are hot with revolt against it. Hence we are compelled to speak, lest by those who have trusted us by their adherence, or by those who have honoured us by their hatred for our unflinching championship of the workers’ cause, our silence should be construed either into an approval or even into weakness in front of this demonstration of the power of the enemy, or the imbecility of its slaves.

We are Socialist Republicans; we work for the realisation of that time when kings and emperors will be no more, when they will be remembered by mankind as the strong man awakened remembers the hideous nightmare which oppressed him as he slept. As Socialist Republicans we desire the application to society in all its relations, industrial and political, of the freest republican principles. We unceasingly devote our energies to awakening in the minds of the workers consciousness of the sufficiency of their own manhood and of the dignity of their class; and we hope and believe in the rapid approach of that time when those ideas and that consciousness will have so far leavened the minds of the workers as to justify us in calling upon them to rally up for that final struggle, the issue of which will assuredly usher in the era of free and enfranchised labour, instead of the barbaric splendour of military and financial castes. Meanwhile, animated by such hopes, inspired by such principles, looking forward impatiently to that time of glorious struggle, when the eyes of the world are turned upon that City of London, when Capital and its cringing slaves are united in adoration of the monarch who has been successful in uniting in his person, all the baser attributes of the mediaeval monarch and the modern stockjobbing capitalist; we also in imagination hasten thither in order to offer to King Edward, in the name of ourselves and our class, the only homage we owe him – OUR HATRED.

We are neither awed by the magnificence of the robbers, daunted by the bayonets of their hired assassins, nor dismayed by the plaudits of the multitude. The magnificence of the robbers but serves to fire our hearts with a greater hatred when we think of the squalid surroundings and miserable homes of our class. The glitter of the sunlight on the bayonets of its hired assassins reveals to the vision of the humanist the moral hideousness of a society propped by such means, and the plaudits of the multitude are but useful to him who desires to sound the depths to which such a system can degrade a people.

Let those who are pleased, and those who are dismayed, by the pressure of gaping, cheering crowds of witless ones, remember the pregnant words of Cromwell in the same city on a similar occasion, “My Lord Protector,” said one of his attendants, as Cromwell rode through London, “how the people crowd to see you.” “Yes,” replied Cromwell, “but how many thousands more would crowd to see me hanged!”