This book was published after 'Century' went to press. I am adding the following notes on it in support of the Plunkett et al background to JJ's political work. I was unable to get to review it, though I would have liked to do so.

On p15 of the Introduction the following extract sets the scene: '..The reader of Russell's work will find a different world, an Ireland of intense practical development and concerned industrial propaganda. The great monument of this Ireland might be the power station on the Shannon river, and not the General Post Office...'. Allen goes on (p28) to evaluate the Irish Homestead as '..the most consistently creative organ of cultural and industrial opinion in Ireland of the first two decades of the 20th century. Development, education, the foundation of libraries and the need for technical instruction were all subjects ... addressed with enthusiasm..'.

Politically in 1905 Russell was supportive of Griffith's Sinn Fein, while attempting to keep the emergent co-operative movement independent of orthodox nationalist and unionist politics. John Dillon and TW Russell in the parliamentary party were hostile to the co-operative movement, seeing it as a threat to the small-town gombeen-capitalists. Griffith in turn was supportive of Russell's artistic and dramatic productions (pp35-36). Under the influence of the anarchist Kropotkin's Fields, Factories and Workshops, and Mutual Aid, Russell wrote in 1909: '..All that the organisation of industry by the State can do to effect economics, can be done much more effectively and economically by economic co-operation..'. Russell gave space to Standish O'Grady to develop his ideas along these lines further in 1910. He went on to publish his 'mutual aid primer' Co-operation and Nationality in 1912, promoting it in the Homestead.

During the period of the 1913 strike Russell shared a platform with Connolly in the Albert Hall, in the campaign for the release of Larkin. He incurred the wrath of the Freeman's Journal and DP Moran's Leader, with the nationalist political establishment attempting to split the co-operative movement from the labour movement, it being regarded by nationalists as 'anti-Irish' to seek support from the British labour movement. Despite this, unity was retained, with the co-operative movement supplying the strikers with food. Connolly looked forward to the workers in time of industrial peace supporting the consumer co-operative movement (p63), as outlets for agricultural producers. All this is background to JJ's work in the co-operative movement at this time.

Russell's response to the 1916 Rising was to complete and to publish his National Being, which he had begun in 1914. He used it in support of his work for the Irish Convention in 1917, seeking Canadian-type independence, and at all costs to avoid Partition. Under the influence of the current war conditions, he urges a type of 'civic conscription' to help build the nation under adverse conditions. He regarded the Rising as having been destructive of the co-operative national vision he had earlier been promoting. The Convention was an attempt at damage-limitation. In opposition to partition he attempted to '..rewrite the standard language of Irish nationalism in order to incorporate Northern business to the new State..' (p80). For some insights into JJ's work during this period, see the 1910s political module. JJ and Russell would appear to have been working on parallel tracks, with the French, Indian and TCD experiences dominating in the former. JJ did not begin to pick up Irish agricultural co-operative contacts until the 1920s.

During the post-war industrial unrest, Russell continued to be sympathetic to the aspiration of the post-Connolly labour movement, and to the Russian revolution, where he had hopes that the politics of the Kropotkin Mir (local commune) would prevail. Cathal O'Shannon, who edited the Voice of Labour, recorded (p98ff) that at a strike in Ballina the town's traders organised a blockade of the strikers, who resorted to seeking help from a Dublin consumer co-op society, with the result that a co-op store was opened in Ballina. These development were welcomed by Russell. O'Shannon printed in full Russell's editorials from the Homestead, in a section headed Co-operative Notes'. The concepts of the Workers' Republic and the Co-operative Commonwealth were converging.

After the Treaty, which he supported, Russell went on the edit the Irish Statesman, which acted during the 1920s as an outlet for progressive ideas, including those of JJ. This journal looked for its model to the London New Statesman, which had been founded in 1913 by Sydney and Beatrice Webb, with financial support from GB Shaw. The Directors included Horace Plunkett, James Douglas, George O'Brien, Lennox Robinson and Lionel Smith-Gordon. This was an important part of JJ's network during the previous decade; he had encountered Smith-Gordon during his Oxford period, and had worked with Douglas in lobbying the Convention.

The Irish Statesman consciously attempted to influence the thinking of the leading lights in the Free State. There was some influence from Bernard Shaw. It was attacked by Eire, a republican paper which ran from 1919 to 1924; Plunkett as an 'imperialist' being the 'bete noir'. Russell as editor consistently regarded the co-operative movement and the literary revival as being the foundation-stones of Irish nationality, and looked back to 1914 rather than 1916 (pp149ff). He did his best to distance himself from the civil war. He went on to develop a broad-based Irish cultural pantheon, including in it the scientists Hamilton, Kelvin and Tyndall along with Swift, Sheridan, Shaw and Yeats. He regarded '..Anglo-Ireland as the central modernising tendency in Irish culture..' (p177). In this context however Russell displayed somewhat of an elitist aristocratic philosophy, which later led him into trouble with O'Casey (p226). He did however attack censorship which was beginning to dominate Government cultural policy.

On the whole, there is a mantle belonging to the Irish Statesman waiting to be taken up by a contemporary critical journal: to combine support for democratic control over the capital investment process with an appreciation of the role of science in Irish culture; to combine an all-Ireland inclusive political culture with a positive approach to decentralisation of State powers. The aristocratic and mystical aspects need to be shed, however. I wonder who will take up this challenge? It will have my full support. RJ July 2003.

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 2003