{"id":606410,"date":"2026-08-27T17:38:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T17:38:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/606410\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T17:38:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T17:38:19","slug":"where-oh-where-is-our-james-connolly-inside-the-new-documentary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/606410\/","title":{"rendered":"Where oh where is our James Connolly? Inside the new documentary"},"content":{"rendered":"

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 RT\u00c9 One this August – watch now, via RT\u00c9 Player.<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"N\/A\"
\nSinger and songwriter Christy Moore features in We Only Want the Earth<\/p>\n

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\u2019s unequal world.<\/p>\n

Before retiring as President of SIPTU in 2003, I agreed with good friends and colleagues in the trade unions (particularly No\u00edr\u00edn 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.<\/p>\n

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\nConnolly’s grandson James Connolly Heron also features in the new documentary<\/p>\n

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\u2019s story on screen and hopefully engage this generation in a more meaningful consideration of his life\u2019s work and ideas for Ireland.<\/p>\n

His views on national independence and partition, labour history, women’s rights, wars, poverty and more are all-important.<\/p>\n

We concluded that the best way to do this might be with a combination of Connolly\u2019s 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\u2019s ideas in Ireland would be timely.<\/p>\n

\"N\/A\"
\nConnolly’s great-great-granddaughter Tamsin Iona Connolly Heron<\/p>\n

When Alan Gilsenan, a highly regarded filmmaker and Yellow Asylum Films accepted this challenge, we were delighted to proceed enthusiastically with our project.<\/p>\n

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\u2019 production.<\/p>\n

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\nConnolly addressing workers on a trip to the U.S.<\/p>\n

Connolly argued that his works and analysis of society should not be taken as dogmatic arguments for the solution of all society\u2019s problems and are not ‘holy writ\u2019. But in many respects, his hopes and aspirations for society ring absolutely true for many people in today\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

His views on national independence and partition, labour history, women\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\"N\/A\"
\nActor Stephen Rea reads the words of James Connolly<\/p>\n

So what better title to summarise our endeavours than Connolly\u2019s own statement? ‘Our Demands Most Modest Are: We Only Want The Earth’.<\/p>\n

We Only Want the Earth – The Life and Ideas of James Connolly premieres on Wednesday 26 August on RT\u00c9 One and RT\u00c9 Player at 9.35pm<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former trade union leader and politician Des Geraghty introduces We Only Want the Earth – The Life and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606411,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60],"class_list":["post-606410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}