Explore the surprising links between James Connolly and Ulysses on a Joycean walk through Dublin’s class politics at the turn of the century on Sunday, 14th June at 12pm.
From 1898 to 1903, James Connolly was editor of Workers’ Republic, a Dublin newspaper that covered class politics and nationalist ambitions with a keen eye and caustic tone. Its articles and editorials contain more than occasional crossovers with Ulysses, with some of the same people in politics, literature, and journalism strolling through the pages of each. There are also familiar themes and events: the fall of Parnell and the campaign for Home Rule; the Boer War and Chamberlain; working class poverty and middle class inertia – a veritable riot of socialism, capitalism, bullocks and bards.
This walk will explore these links by taking a stroll through the class politics of Dublin in the early 1900s: a misshapen, goldbricking metropolis, tottering on the edge of empire. It will also look at the lives of both men, two wandering rocks in the city they shared at the turn of the twentieth century.
The tour will be led by Conor McCabe, editor of The Lost and Early Writings of James Connolly, 1889-1898.
The tour starts in front of the James Connolly Memorial in Beresford Place opposite Liberty Hall. It will end at St. Michan’s Park.
Tickets are €13 regular, €6.50 concession.