MONUMENTS are big news. The toppling of Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol and calls for the removal of that of Rhodes from Oxford University remind us of the legacy of empire and a built landscape that, all too often, commemorates, celebrates and perpetuates injustice, the pursuit of power and a language of cruelty and racism.

But there are other monuments, more often than not raised by working people, that tell a different story.

One such is on the crossroads at Crossakiel, in County Meath, where red flags flutter beside the Irish Tricolour. It was here in 1918 that Jim Connell (pictured) addressed his last meeting in Ireland. Since 1998, it has been the site of an imposing memorial in carved stone and bronze to Connell and it’s where an annual commemoration of his life and work brings together British and Irish trade unionists.

Connell is a figure who unites people. Charismatic, flamboyant, and idealistic, he is a far cry from the stereotypical trade union bureaucrat. He was a true revolutionary who thought, wrote and dreamed but who also acted.

He instinctively knew that the people required both bread and roses. His career bridged the divide between rural and urban activists, taking the hard lessons learned during the Irish Land War and grafting them onto British socialism and trade union struggles.

He went against the grain in almost every area of Victorian life, from his rejection of empire and racism, to his modes of thought, dress, and lifestyle.

Yet, if he knew the full force of the blacklist that cost him his job on the Dublin docks and the scorn and hatred directed at him personally by landlords, the church and the industrialists in east London for his politics and championing of free thought, then he was never soured or brought low by the experience of want and electoral defeat.

Poet and poacher, friend to Keir Hardie and James Connolly, his writings on Marxism, popular science, animal rights and ecology breathe hopeful passion and remain strikingly original and pertinent to our concerns today.

His best-known songs were set to jaunty tunes borrowed from the earlier Jacobite or Fenian movements, while his Red Flag — written over the course of a 15-minute train ride across London in tribute to the 1889 dock strike  — remains unsurpassed as a rousing call to socialist internationalism.

Within days of its publication, the song became a recognisable “hit” and was heard on the streets of Liverpool, London and Glasgow. Marking both our triumphs and our tragedies, it greeted the election of Attlee’s Labour government in 1945 and the deaths of striking South African miners.
 
The monument at Crossakiel has, since its unveiling, taken on new layers of meaning. It reminds of us those, like Bob Crow, Tommy Grimes and the GMB union’s own Mary Turner, who are no longer with us but who helped to realise its creation, marched in its shade and spoke on its steps.

But monuments do not have to be only of metal and stone. They can be fashioned through our shared ideas and ideals, our love for humanity and desire to do what is right. That is why the left is a movement of optimism and of grand projects. It lends hope to the hopeless, and delivers practical help through its achievements, not least of which is our NHS.

That is why every exercise in cynicism, hypocrisy and realpolitik on the part of those who would lead and represent us — whether in the unions or in the parliamentary Labour Party — needs to be resisted or called out for the betrayal that it is.

The cleaner who forgoes a night out, buying a magazine for the journey into work or a toy for a child in order to pay their monthly union subs puts an enormous trust in us. We should remember that and that we act and exist for them, not they for us. Connell understood that with every fibre of his being.

If, today, we are downhearted at the scale of the challenges facing us and the defeats suffered then we should look at the even greater obstacles faced and surmounted by him and the small band of fellow socialists in Victorian and Edwardian Britain and Ireland.

Not for them the fight for momentary gain or the shoddy, careerist compromise. Rather, the ability to question everything, the adherence to principle and the belief in socialism that would elevate everyone, rather than just a chosen few. In this way, their fight laid the foundations for a mass movement, the welfare state and the National Health Service.

Socialism, Connell wrote in 1908, “will come. The reader may stand on the sea-shore when the tide is rising and watch the waves as they roll in. He may watch each wave recede apparently to the point from which it started. He may watch a long time without being able to perceive that any advance has been made.

“But let him wait a little longer, let him wait long enough, and he will see the tide infallibly reach its mark ... We know what is coming. Today capitalist individualism seems firmly rooted and strongly knit ... It may hold its ground for many years yet, but the time is coming when the waves of the evolutionary tide will break and roar far, very far above it.”

That change of the tide is the true monument that we should all celebrate.  

For more information on Jim Connell, visit the Jim Connell Society's Facebook page at facebook.com/JimConnellSociety. Paul McCarthy is regional secretary, GMB North West & Irish Region.