James Connolly was probably the most charismatic of the executed 1916 Easter Rising leaders.
A signatory to the Proclamation of Independence, he was foremost a labour leader, had spent a lifetime of struggle on behalf of the ordinary man, woman and child. His loss to the nation is unquantifiable – had he lived, who knows where we’d be today but certainly, he would have ensured that Ireland took a very different direction to that taken by what became the Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael duopoly.
One wonders also what Connolly would think of the current Labour Party, and of its current leader, Alan Kelly. Do you think Connolly would have wished to see those of us who protested the regressive water-charges power-hosed with slurry??? On a more political level, d’you think he’d have embraced neoliberalism and its diabolical twin austerity, as Labour did so enthusiastically when in government from 2011 to 2016?
Answers on a postcard please to…
On a more personal level, this is one of my brother Paddy’s songs. He’s in lockdown in his home in Montange, near St Emilion in the heart of the Bordeaux wine region where he has a shop, The Wine Buff – an Irishman selling wine to the French, in France!
He’s with his wife, Pilar, and his two young very lively young sons Paddy Jack and Tito, been through a tough time medically over the last couple of years, and today is his 59th birthday. So Happy Birthday Paddy, sorry I stole your song, but it’s one of mine also!