Madam, - Kevin Myers presents a charge sheet against James Connolly that is demonstrably untrue (An Irishman's Diary, July 4th).
The first charge is that "he was not opposed to a world war, merely the grounds on which it was being fought". Not so. Connolly was unequivocally opposed to the outbreak of war, but since Britain had insisted that such a war should envelop the whole of Europe, he would have regarded an insurrection by workers against the warmongering rulers of the various belligerents as preferable to the mutual slaughter of those same workers as the helpless cannon fodder of their respective ruling classes.
Kevin Myers further charges that Connolly "sought an international conflagration to destroy capitalism and impose totalitarian communism". Again, not so. War had been made the be-all and end-all condition of daily existence by the same ruling classes and he hoped that peace might be brought about by their overthrow.
Connolly's explicit objective was Social Democracy (his capitals), which in an independent country at peace should be advanced only by the suffrage of the majority of the adult population and by exclusively peaceful means. Force would be justified only if needed to confront a right-wing rebellion against that majority will.
As far as Connolly was concerned, a 1916 Rising was exceptionally justified because Britain, in embarking on a world war, had also suspended democracy.
Having already ensured heartbreak for countless Irish families, including my own, with the cannon fodder slaughter of tens of thousands of Irishmen, Britain was at that point on the eve of imposing conscription on Ireland in order to guarantee still more slaughter on an ever increasing scale.
In his 1916 Programme Connolly proclaimed that "in times of war we should act as in war", while adding in the next breath that "we despise, entirely despise and loathe, all the mouthings and mouthers about war who infest Ireland in time of peace".
All a far cry from the "bloodthirsty" caricature of Connolly that Kevin Myers continues to conjure up ad nauseam. - Yours, etc.,
MANUS O'RIORDAN,
Head of Research,
SIPTU,
Liberty Hall, Dublin 1.