“No revolutionary movement is complete without its poetical expression.” - James Connolly, 1907.1
Isn’t it funny how it’s often easier to start our own essays and articles with the words of another? I sat staring at my notebook for what seemed to be so long, too long, trying to come up with a smart introduction. A catchy way of saying, “Hello, I’m a socialist and History grad who wishes they’d studied Literature as well.” So, a quote from James Connolly, an Irish socialist, on poetry - how typical!
This quote that I have chosen to open this post, and entire blog, with is not accidental. Coming across it for the first time, in the pits of my MA research, jolted into me a new perspective on the relationship between working-class politics and literature.2
Amongst left circles, there can be a certain dogma and misconception that claims the arts represent some kind of ‘distraction’ from the real work at hand. That claims only upper-middle-class people have time to create and consume art. This was always disorientating as someone from a working-class family who grew up consuming books like they were oxygen. Yet, as early as 1907, here was James Connolly standing in art’s defence. In the short article that I’ve quoted from, Connolly explains that if ever a movement were to fill working-class people with the hope that an alternative world was possible, then inevitably, it must also be marked by their creative expression; the outpouring of emotions and dreams of the working-class and oppressed.
As I delved deeper into my research, Connolly’s perspective was repeatedly confirmed. One of my favourite examples is found in a newspaper. In the heat of trade union militancy and the suffrage movement of the early twentieth century, Mary MacArthur launched the iconic, ‘The Woman Worker’. This publication was aimed to agitate, explain and popularise socialist ideas, and create community amongst working-class women. Within its pages, you could find compelling arguments for workers’ power, alongside short stories, poems, and serialised novels. (As well as, it has to be said, ‘home tips’ for mothers and wives… a sign of its time).
Here is an extract from ‘The Poet’s Corner’ section in the October 1907 edition (P.28). For no reason, other than it still sticking with me years later.
A Twentieth Century Song by Edith Carnie"...Arise! Life's fairest things are yours,Its beauty, melody and light;The flower that springeth from the seedBy Labour sown is Labour's right.Behold the peasant, as he toilsFrom pearly morn to day’s last blush,Has scarcely time to pause and listUnto the card of the thrush.Beneath the burning noonday sun,Wearily pacing, till the nightBrings a short draught of peace and rest,To vanish with the break of light.But Freedom, footsore though she be,Still presses on to meet mankind;And Justice, with the scales in hand,With every hour becomes less blind.…”
This process of realisation was so freeing, of the fact that enjoying and engaging with literature does not have to be contained within the formal houses of the Academy, or kept for those with more money and free time as me.
Yet, the world of literary studies is intimidatingly large. Over recent months I have - as a self-professed, life-long student with few other hobbies - attempted to grapple with the basics of literary criticism, theory, and the close reading of fictional texts. Every time I’m confident that I’ve ‘definitely worked out what’s going on this time’, the next page throws me a curveball. Admittedly, those curveballs are harder to strike without a formal institution behind you, an over-worked PhD student to gently push you in the right direction.
So what else is there that can fill that tired academic-shaped void, than publicly floundering and waffling on Substack? Expect amateur attempts to apply Marxist literary criticism to contemporary and classic pieces. Maybe even my own creative writing attempts. Regardless of the form, I hope to explore the themes of the current era of capitalist polycrisis and disorder; oppression, exploitation, the climate, imperialism, war… And also it’s antidote, the struggles of ordinary people to fight for a better world, and the hope that fuels us.
See ya shortly x
First published as the introduction to ‘Songs of Freedom by Irish Authors’, Dublin, 1907. Found here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1907/xx/revsong.htm
The topic was, ‘The Role of Women Workers in the Development of New [Trade] Unionism in Ulster’, for those as nosey as me.
October 1907 edition of The Woman Worker. Found here: https://lse-atom.arkivum.net/uklse-dl1wr030120010002-uklse-dl1-wr03-012-001-0002-0001-pdf