Connell festival to remember Apartheid campaign and Limerick Soviet

The 21st annual Jim Connell Festival will take place in Kells and Crossakiel from Friday to Sunday.

The festival, which celebrates Jim Connell, the writer of the socialist anthem The Red Flag, will see hundred of trade unionists from across the country and the UK travel to the Kells area.
The festival launch will take place on Friday night in the Headfort Arms Hotel where the 'Right to Housing for All' and 'Trade Unionists for a New and United Ireland' will be among the topics. Cllr Ian Henderson from the borough next to the Grenfell Tower will also attend,
On Saturday there will be a number of public presentations in Kells Theatre. The first is by Al Tamimi, chairperson of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity campaign.
Mary Manning, the former Dunnes Stores worker who led the strike against Dunnes Stores over handling goods from South Africa in the Apartheid era will give a talk at 11.30am.
The Tommy Grimes lecture this year will be on the '1919 Limerick Soviet - when workers in Limerick took on an Empire.' It will be given by Mike McNamara at 1.15pm.
The lecture commemorates the late Cllr Tommy Grimes, one of the main driving forces behind the festival over the years.
A social night will take place in Maguires pub in Kells starting at 9pm on Saturday night.
There will be a parade and rally in Crossakiel on Sunday at which trade unionists will march behind their trade union banners and there will be speakers from the Mandate Trade Union, Unison, and the Durham Miners.
This will be followed by traditional music session in McCabes Bar from 4pm to 6pm.
Jim Connell was born in the townland of Rathniska near the village of Kilskyre, and as a teenager became involved in land agitation. He moved to Dublin where he worked as a docker until he became blacklisted for attempting to unionise the workers.
In 1875, he moved to London and held a variety of jobs, including time as a staff journalist on Keir Hardie's newspaper The Labour Leader, and was secretary of the Workingmen's Legal Aid Society during the last 20 years of his life.
He was inspired to write a socialist anthem after attending a meeting during the London Dock Strike of 1889. He set down the words while on a train journey from Charing Cross railway station to his home in Honor Oak, south London. It is generally accepted that he gained inspiration as he watched the train guard raise and lower the red signal flag on the platform.
He stayed loyal to the principles of socialism throughout his life and died from a stroke at 77 in 1929. His body was cremated in Golder's Green in London.