Come Here To Me!

Grafton Street, 1911.

A timely gem this, from the National Archives online site.

I have gone from a weekly visitor to the Archives to never having time to set foot in the place owing to work,and you’d miss it. This leaflet is taken from 1911, and written by James Connolly. It can be read by expanding the image below.

Fellow-workers, stand by the dignity of your class. All these parading royalties, all this insolent aristocracy, all these grovelling, dirt-eating capitalist traitors, all these are but signs of disease in any social state – diseases which a royal visit brings to a head and spews in all its nastiness before our horrified eyes. But as the recognition of the disease is the first stage towards its cure, so that we may rid our social state of its political and social diseases, we must recognise the elements of corruption.

Helena Molony of the Irish Citizen Army, in her excellent Witness Statement to the Bureau of Military History, described passing the corner of Grafton Street and seeing “..an illuminated screen (which) displayed the portraits of King George and Queen Mary smug and benign, look down on us”. Seizing the day, she noted that “..I produced my stones and let fly, without any warning”. For this, she was taken to Store Street Police Station, with crowds following. She noted that “…it was terribly humiliating, no one but rowdies went to the police stations”

If interested in this, you may also like two other leaflets we’ve uploaded here. Firstly, the Yiddish election leaflet of James Connolly from the 1902 election, and also this leaflet from 1942, issued to remember the anniversary of Connolly’s death.