Revolutionary whose great contribution to democracy was overlooked

I WATCHED with anticipation this week’s RTÉ programme in the series ‘Ireland’s Greatest’ because it was about James Connolly, the founder of the Labour Party.

Connolly’s ideas about Irish society and the values he believed should underpin our politics and economy are as relevant today as they were when he was alive.

However, I was taken aback that there was no reference during the programme to James Connolly’s role in founding the Labour Party and I ask why RTÉ would omit this historical fact? It was the Labour Party that James Connolly foresaw would put his ideas into practice in an Irish parliamentary democracy. When he proposed the motion that led to the founding of the party at the ICTU conference in the Town Hall, Clonmel, on May 27, 1912, he asked: “When the representatives of Ireland came to meet in the old historic building in Dublin, which they had heard so much about, were the workers to be the only class that was not to be represented?”