Six days that shook the world: how the Easter Rising changed everything

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Commemorating Connolly: contexts, comparisons and Celtic connections

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Six days that shook the world: how the Easter Rising changed everything

No abstract available

"The Agitator’s Wife" (1894): the story behind James Connolly’s lost play?

The centenary of the Easter Rising in 2016 and the 150th anniversary of James Connolly’s birth in 2018 afford an ideal opportunity to reappraise this unique figure. Rightly renowned for his polemical journalism and political theory, Connolly is less celebrated for his creative writing. His 1916 play, Under Which Flag?, long considered lost, resurfaced fifty years ago without causing significant ripples in Irish literary circles, but interest in Connolly’s role in the struggle for Irish independence continues to grow, and critics are becoming increasingly aware of the fusion of feminist and socialist thought that shaped his particular anti-imperialist agenda. In this context his creative writing takes on new significance. A second lost play of Connolly’s, The Agitator’s Wife, has never been found, but its discovery would surely deepen our understanding of this gifted radical thinker. In this essay we suggest that an anonymous short story bearing that very title, published in a short-lived Christian socialist journal of the 1890s, may be a crucial missing piece in solving the puzzle of Connolly’s forgotten drama

“Did that play of mine …?”: James Connolly, Cathleen Ni Houlihan and staging revolution

Despite the crucial position he occupies in Irish history as one of the leaders of the Easter Rising, and the political – and emotional – impact of his subsequent execution, while wounded, by the British Army on 12 May 1916, the writings of Edinburgh-born James Connolly have often been overlooked in both Irish and Scottish studies, and not just in accounts of the Rising but also in the wider context of cultural connections, including cultures of commemoration. In particular, Connolly’s surviving literary work, including Under Which Flag?, the drama staged on the eve of Easter 1916, as well as poems and songs, has had limited attention. This article reconsiders Under Which Flag? in comparison with Yeats and Gregory’s Cathleen ni Houlihan in order to demonstrate the central place the drama holds as a continuation – and complication – of Connolly’s political and journalistic writings. If Connolly is a neglected figure as a writer – as opposed to a political leader and martyr – then the play he left behind (once thought to have been lost, like another of his dramas, The Agitator’s Wife) affords us an opportunity to reassess his contribution to the struggle for independence as part of its literary wing

Short skirts, strong boots and a revolver: Scotland and the women of 1916

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Short skirts, strong boots and a revolver: Scotland and the women of 1916

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Parnell to Partition: Irish-Scottish Connections, 1889-1921

This thesis focuses on Irish-Scottish connections, from Charles Stewart Parnell’s 1889 visit to the city of Edinburgh at the same time as James Connolly’s return to Edinburgh and the beginning of the latter’s career as an agitator, to the Government of Ireland Act of 1921 and the imposition of partition. It aims to provide greater understanding of the unique relationship between Scotland and Ireland by concentrating on a range of Irish and Scottish literature across time and genres. This is a crucial period in history and literature, with long lasting impact which has yet to be explored fully from a comparative perspective, particularly through exploration of the act of commemoration. The first chapter concentrates on the figure of Parnell as a focal point for cultural nationalism and the Irish-Scottish perspective. This opening section provides a foundation for the turning point of militant nationalism and anti-imperialism that is explored through the remaining chapters. Chapters two and three concentrate on James Connolly’s writings within an Irish-Scottish context and the multiple revolutionary strands that were woven through the conflict, in feminism, anti-imperialism, socialism, and the movement for Irish Independence, challenging existing criticism by demonstrating how vital this work was to our understanding of this major cross-border figure, of First World War literature as a source of counter-narratives to that of the Easter Rising, and to wider Irish-Scottish cultural links. From Connolly’s corpus, the thesis moves on to Connolly’s corpse in chapters four and five, using fellow working-class hero and martyr, John Maclean, as a comparative figure, to underscore the extensive rewritings of their characters and intentions that have occurred through literature of the preceding century in the act of literary commemoration, and the measures that have been taken to exhume the core work of the men themselves, shrouded in memory and myth and a story of sacrifice. Through this comparison, tensions between nationalism and socialism, peaceful protest and armed struggle, become apparent. These chapters raise the question of the representation of women, both politically and in literature, and this is addressed directly in chapter six, which specifically explores the representation of revolutionary women in literature and the challenges faced in making their voices heard, as well as just how vital this is for understanding how acts of commemoration can be a way of forgetting as well as a means of remembrance. In reading Ireland and Scotland comparatively through this period and acknowledging the bonds shared, positive or negative, and the existing contrasts, it becomes evident that struggles of Irish and Scottish independence are bound up together and that our contemporary misunderstandings and anxieties stem from an often fractious history. Our experiences of that history come primarily through literature and commemorative acts, often tied to a specific idea of nationhood. By exploring the complex dynamic of Irish-Scottish relations in this period we can gain a deeper awareness of Ireland, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and of their shared histories and futures

We need to talk about the Easter Rising

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Scotland and the Easter Rising: Fresh Perspectives on 1916

On Easter Monday 1916, leaders of a rebellion against British rule over Ireland proclaimed the establishment of an Irish Republic. Lasting only six days before surrender to the British, this landmark event nevertheless laid the foundations for Ireland’s violent path to Independence. It is little known that James Connolly, one of the rebellion’s leaders, was born in Edinburgh’s Cowgate, at the time nicknamed ‘Little Ireland’, or that another key figure in the events of Easter 1916 was a young woman from Coatbridge, Margaret Skinnider. These and other surprising Scottish connections are explored in Scotland and the Easter Rising, as Kirsty Lusk and Willy Maley gather together a rich grouping of writers, journalists and academics to examine, for the first time, the Scottish dimension to the events of 1916 and its continued resonance in Scotland today