Former trade union leader and politician Des Geraghty introduces We Only Want the Earth – The Life and Ideas of James Connolly, a new documentary portrait of the legendary socialist and revolutionary leader, receiving its premiere on RTÉ One this August – watch now, via RTÉ Player.
The name of James Connolly has a very special place in the hearts and minds of most Irish people over the generations. Most would remember him for his leadership role in the 1916 Rebellion and his execution, by a British firing squad in Kilmainham Jail, on the 12th of May, 1916.
What is often less remembered is that prior to his execution Connolly led an extraordinary life of activism for the labour movement in the UK, USA and Ireland. His wrote many important books and pamphlets and hundreds of articles, songs and speeches.
Singer and songwriter Christy Moore features in We Only Want the Earth
In spite of the greatly changed times we now experience, I believe that Connolly’s ideas and philosophy continue to have an enduring relevance for us in today’s unequal world.
Before retiring as President of SIPTU in 2003, I agreed with good friends and colleagues in the trade unions (particularly Noírín Greene) that we should cooperate on a project to produce a full-length feature film about Connolly. This was in some respects seen by us as a potentially important contribution for the upcoming 2016 Commemoration of the Rising.
Connolly’s grandson James Connolly Heron also features in the new documentary
Our early enthusiasm for this project proved somewhat unrealistic and over ambitious, so not surprisingly we missed the 2016 target. However, we remained determined to find a way to tell James Connolly’s story on screen and hopefully engage this generation in a more meaningful consideration of his life’s work and ideas for Ireland.
His views on national independence and partition, labour history, women’s rights, wars, poverty and more are all-important.
We concluded that the best way to do this might be with a combination of Connolly’s own words and his personal history, combined with the views of those who now have to face some of the major challenges of our time. Also, with the emergence now of more wars and a ruthless and greedy class of billionaires dictating politics on a global scale, we felt that a serious review of Connolly’s ideas in Ireland would be timely.
Connolly’s great-great-granddaughter Tamsin Iona Connolly Heron
When Alan Gilsenan, a highly regarded filmmaker and Yellow Asylum Films accepted this challenge, we were delighted to proceed enthusiastically with our project.
Having no major investors, commercial sponsors or state supports, we relied completely on support and contributions from individual workers and trade unions, so that it would be a truly independent workers’ production.
Connolly addressing workers on a trip to the U.S.
Connolly argued that his works and analysis of society should not be taken as dogmatic arguments for the solution of all society’s problems and are not ‘holy writ’. But in many respects, his hopes and aspirations for society ring absolutely true for many people in today’s troubled world. He did so much and wrote so much in a relatively short life; and we recognised the difficulty of reflecting all of that in a single film.
His views on national independence and partition, labour history, women’s rights, wars, poverty and more are all-important. He uniquely argued that the status of the lowest class in society was the correct measurement of the progress of society.
Actor Stephen Rea reads the words of James Connolly
So what better title to summarise our endeavours than Connolly’s own statement? ‘Our Demands Most Modest Are: We Only Want The Earth’.
We Only Want the Earth – The Life and Ideas of James Connolly premieres on Wednesday 26 August on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player at 9.35pm