I’ve seen this take a few different times now, do people believe this? I thought it was pretty common knowledge that bar Connolly they were all mad Conservative Catholics, it’s strange seeing them painted as Socialists quite often. They wanted to install Joachim of Prussia as our King for Gods sake
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Cut out the OPs name as it’s not him this is directed at more so the contents of the tweet. He’s not the only person I’ve seen say something along those lines
It’s not common knowledge they were mad catholic conservatives. It’s just one narrative that has dominated the discourse because history is written by the victors. In all of history wherever there has been social upheaval through a revolution it has always been followed by a counter-revolution. Catholic Ireland and its counter-revolutionaries won when Kevin O’Higgins and Arthur Cox wrestled power away from the progressive elements of the Civil War and turned the guns on their own people to cement the power and privilege of their own class in the new state. Before Connolly died he warned the Irish people about people like this when he said there were traitors within the Irish Republican movement that wanted nothing more than to hoist the tricolour flag where the British one once flew and to simply exchange British landlords for Irish ones i.e – them. Cumann na mBan, for example, was a female socialist organisation that participated in the War of Independence. You think of feminists like Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, Maud Gone and Constance Markievicz who fought for labour rights, womens suffrage, sexual emancipation. Many of the these were taken away by the counter-revolutionaries in the 1930s when they banned contraception, banned divorce, banned women working in the public sector, banned them participating on juries, and banned girls from working and earning a wage after they got married.
Michael Collins said he “would have followed James Connolly to hell” but his character has been retconned as well. They essentially re-wrote history and wiped the progressive elements of our War of Independence and Civil War from the history books.
The vast majority of the population were conservative devout Catholics, so I don’t see any way an independent Ireland could have been a democracy, and not been a conservative devoutly Catholic state. Let alone a socialist feminist utopia.
The issue is that there’s just enough radical social policy and progressive positions mixed up with devout Catholicism and ethno nationalist assumptions to cause confusion. It doesn’t map neatly onto current day issues at all, so it’s easier to pretend that the pure, progressive revolution was corrupted, instead of seeing the revolutionary generation as a really strange, but marvelous mix of ideologies and positions.
There’s also the fact that it’s easy to make heroes out of dead men, everyone loves Collins, but would he have followed his right-hand man O’Duffy into Fascism? Hard to say, but people don’t have to think about it. Dev had the misfortune of actually having to build and run a state.
The “mad conservative Catholic” part was always sort of invisible while “mad conservative Catholic” was essentially the norm in Ireland. Like the fish asking “what’s water?”
Even up to the early 90s the conservatism and religious bent wouldn’t have seemed odd or unusual.
The deep and painful irony is that idiots ~~like you~~ constantly exaggerate and over emphasise the level of support that people like Connolly had from the Irish people. In 1923 about 10% of people voted for the Labour Party that Connolly cofounded. The Farmers party got greater electoral support with 12%…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1923_Irish_general_election
~~Go read a history book sometime.~~
I think we’re also forgetting that after the Civil War, the Catholic Church was one thing the Free State and anti-treaty rebels could agree on for the most part, bar fringe elements like Connolly men, etc. It’s not like the church snuck in last minute and stole the revolutionary spirit or anything. It was a glue to keep post war society together and almost zealot like belief from the general population, which can be seen during the 1932 eucharistic congress. It’s no wonder it took decades to wriggle out of that kind of control or power structure when for many years the Church was almost another apperartus of the State.
Constance Markevicz leaned towards socialism but pretty much just stopped pursuing it when she was celebrated as nationalist hero after 1916 and the war of independence. It wasn’t just Connolly. It was Connolly and the ICA who were socialists/militant trade unionists. Other progressive/socialists that spring to mind that time were Francis Sheehy Skeffington and Liam Mellows.
Everybody back then was much more conservative and catholic than we are now AND they(Connolly etc) aspired to be much more socialist than we are now
The issue with this sentiment is that it assumes Dev and Cosgrave were the primary agents in moulding the state into a conservative catholic one, when in fact it was their mandate to do so being elected by a conservative catholic population that wanted conservative catholic values enshrined in the state’s makeup.
I mean you can do this for every country that gained independence in one way or another!
Social norms change over a 100 years
As the saying goes “A Catholic state for a Catholic people”.
It’s delusional to think after independence that the state would become some feminist socialist utopia. For many years the Church had been persecuted by the British state. Majority of people in the South were Catholic and to be irish was to be seen as Catholic. Alot of the people who survived the civil war like Cosgrave and Dev and others were very Catholic and were elected by a Catholic majority. It’s not very surprising what path the state was going down.
Well feminism wasn’t a thing in 1916 firstly. Suffragette, yes, but I don’t think any of the leaders were involved with it. Secondly, there were only two socialist leaders of the 1916 rebellion, Connolly and Markievicz. One of whom was executed and the other wasn’t.
So not only were all, or even most socialists and feminists, of the two that were socialists only one was executed.
Twitter loves to try and rewrite history to force ultra modern day left-leaning politics onto the past.
The thinking is very much “whoever controls the past controls the present and whoever controls the present controls the future”.
That’s why massively obvious things like the fact the vast bulk of the population were conservative Catholics is glossed over. Sure, if different leaders had died and others survived there may have been some changes but the implication that if they had that 1922 Ireland would’ve mirrored 2022 Ireland is just nonsense.
Jack White and Larkin were also socialists. The Citizen Army was a socialist movement.
The real irony is that all the moderates in the Irish Volunteers, those who might have gone along the route of Home Rule and a political settlement, ~~had gone off to fight in WW1~~ had sided with Redmond’s National Volunteers &/or had gone off to fight in WW1 leaving the more extremist, anti-British, advocates-of-violence, assorted loonies and IRB members in senior positions in the Irish Volunteer movement in Ireland.
For example, [Tom Kettle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Kettle), killed on the Somme in September 1916.
“Thomas Michael Kettle was perhaps the greatest example of that greatness of spirit which was so ill rewarded on both sides of the channel […] He was a wit, a scholar, an orator, a man ambitious in all the arts of peace; and he fell fighting the barbarians because he was too good a European to use the barbarians against England, as England a hundred years before has used the barbarians against Ireland”
1916 was always going to fail, it was military lunacy. The British response to 1916 and the planned imposition of conscription were the game changers.
Wasn’t Dev the big Catholic head and screwed use over till the 70s with Lemass and Co. Always thought Connolly was further left than just Socialist.
It was true. Home rule is Rome rule and we’re still living the consequences.
Fair question there.
Regardless of flavour, socialism of the kind Connolly wanted dilutes the moment a certain power level is achieved. It’s simple human nature, and somethingsocialists diehards refuse to accept. The struggle (for powe is socialism’s raison d’etre, particularly now, in an educated world.
Historical exceptions to this is are nothing more than that: exceptions.
nah that’s ridiculous nothing is ever that neat.
The reason we became reliant on the church was because of the massive vacuum in authority that existed shortly after independance. The Brits and centuries of oppressive rule vanished and the government did not have much legitimacy. We had to lean on the church for the structure and authority it had.
Nothing to do with the couple dozen of leaders killed in the rising.
Ngl this thread is actually very sensible! I’m impressed. Like I’m no fan of Dev but I hate this myth that he alone created the Conservative Catholic Ireland of Old! He was actually less clerical than WT or John A Costello
if you’re interested in learning , this [video](https://youtu.be/H7gKb5rfbX4) is pretty handy.
there’s also a more in-depth longer recorded [live stream](https://youtu.be/RCqyoscBCHs) that I’d reccomend :))
Is there not a fair chance that most of us would not be alive if the history of ireland changed one bit, everyone says if only this happened we wouldnt be in this situation, but in reality they might not be alive, first rule of time travel
When the entire reason that the Rising happened when it did is because they wanted to draw a parallel with Jesus rising from the dead it’s hard to argue that they weren’t at the least heavily influenced by Catholicism. Of course it’s impossible to say for sure but I think the Church becomes a major power in the state in every reality except one where Ireland doesn’t leave the UK
It was one of Europe’s first socialist uprisings. Predating the Russia Revolution.
They wanted an independent Ireland above all things.
Even if they were religious, I don’t think you can say they were conservative for their time. Pádraig Pearse for example is often derided for being a hardline Catholic but he was certainly left wing when it came to economic matters, as well as socially on issues of workers rights, women’s rights and son.
Asked about if he sided with the socialists and the striking workers during the Lockout, he said:
> My instinct is with the landless man against the lord of lands, and with the breadless man against the master of millions. I may be wrong but I hold it a most terrible sin that there should be landless men in this island of waste yet fertile valleys, and that there should be breadless men in this city where great fortunes are made and destroyed.
His education programme was extremely radical and liberal, and very much included an early form of environmentalism. (If you have a few hours around Dublin you should take the bus out to Rathfarnham and visit the Pearse Museum, it’s free). He was in no way sectarian, as he often spoke about uniting other religions and he even had Sikhs and Hindus over to the School to export his anti-colonial message.
Was he a man of faith? Absolutely. Was that unusual for the time? Absolutely not. In fact even James Connolly professed himself to be a Catholic because he knew that at the time to be an atheist would totally alienate you to a very religious people.
For example, Joost Augusteijn of Leiden University who wrote a study on Pearse’s life noted:
>His thinking was in no way conservative or retrograde. Apart from his extremist militarism and nationalism, which were widely shared, his ideas on educational and literary thinking were clearly modernist. They also concur with his radical ideas on workers’ and women’s rights. All this can only lead to one conclusion: that Pearse was an exponent of his time, and represented ideas widely held in Europe and beyond.
Connolly died a good Catholic death even extracting a promise from his protestant wife Lillie to convert to catholicism, which she did .
Markievicz also became a catholic convert and was a huge fan of the Rosary and went on to become a founder of Fianna Fail.
Even Peader O’Donnell was a devout catholic and the rosary was said nightly in his Dromcondra home .
Many of the 1916 leaders and personalities are rebranded and rewritten up with beliefs far different from those they held .
Sean MacBride, as a government minister from 1948 to 1951 reached out to the Pope with all the loyalty he could convey . Put the kaibosh on the Mother and Child Scheme too. No socialised medicine for Ireland.
I often point out that Sean South of Garryowen who died during the 1950’s Border War was an extreme right wing catholic anti semitic kind of guy .
Joachim of Prussia would have been a moderate beside them .
Edit I neglected to mention Sir Roger Casement.
Read it for yourself.
https://dublindiocese.ie/roger-casement/
It didn’t fail, it furthered the feeling in Westminster that Ireland was simply more trouble than it was worth. The statement about the feminine leaders isn’t true, Constance Markievicz wasn’t executed.