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Life
1913-1988; [C. Desmond Greaves]; b. Birkenhead; ed. Liverpool Univ.; grad. botany and chemistry; later chief research chemist for Powell Duffryn; became Socialist during 1930s and abandoned career; joined Connolly Assoc., 1941; ed. Irish Freedom from 1945; also The Irish Democrat, until his death; lives of James Connolly, Liam Mellows and Sean O’Casey; a History of the ITGWU commissioned by that union’s executive; issued The Easter Rising as History (1966); Elephants against Rome [2000], a satirical verse novel set in 1930s Britain and Ireland, published by the a Desmond Greaves Summer School; his library of Irish books is held at the Working Movt. Library.
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Works
History, The Easter Rising as History (London 1966); Daltún Ó Ceallaigh, ed., Reconsiderations of Irish History and Culture: Selected Papers from the Desmond Greaves Summer School 1989-1993 [inc. Brendan Bradshaw, Brian P. Murphy, Declan Kiberd, Mary Cullen, Tomá mac Síomóin, Anthony Coughlin, and Donal McCartney].
Poetry, Elephants against Rome, intro. Anthony Coughlan; foreword Anthony Cronin (Léirmeas [2000]), 148pp.
Miscellaneous, Foreword to Marx, Engels: Ireland and the Irish Question, ed. L. I. Golman and V. E. Kunina (Moscow: Progress Publishers 1971; rep. 1974, 1978, 1986), pp.11-15 [infra].
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Commentary
Anthony Coughlan, C. Desmond Greaves, 1913-1988: An Obituary Essay [Irish Labour History Society] (Dublin 1990); author of lives and studies of James Connolly, and Wolfe Tone.
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Quotations
Foreword to Marx, Engels: Ireland and the Irish Question, ed. L. I. Golman and V. E. Kunina (Moscow: Progress Publishers 1971; rep. 1974, 1978, 1986), pp.11-15: ‘England has for centuries of imperialism (in the broad sense) behind her. Consequently most of her best radicals have tended, in their struggle against the chauvinism surrounding them on all sides, to identify all national struggles as reaction. Perhaps since Irish people resemble them so much, in contrast to peoples further afield, they find it hard to believe that Irish nationalism has not come the same content as that of their own ruling class, which they rejected. Wisdom begins in the frank, total [11] and unconditional recognition of the right of the Irish nation to determine its own international destiny, and it is from that point that the identify of interest between the working class of English and that of Ireland begins to operate in practice.’ (pp.11-12.) Further, ‘The radical wing of Republicanism was constnatly attracted towards the revolutionary working class. Thus Clarke, Pearse and MacDermott were drawn into an alliance with Connolly in 1916. Similar forces came together in 1921-22. The bourgeoisie, backed by a confused and feaful Labour leadership, was prepared to accept partition, which Lloyd George had forced on Ireland at the point of the [13] gun. The Republican party, Sinn Fein, split. Among those who opposed the monstrous settlement were leaders such as Liam Mellows, strongly influenced by Connolly’s teachings, and Marxists within the Republican movement, such as Peadar O’Donnell. Outside the Republican ranks the only party to oppose the Treaty was the Young Communist Party of Ireland, led by James Connolly’s son, and a number of its members took part in the fighting that ensureed. In the twenties and thirties the Republican newspaper An Phoblacht regularly carried articles by internationally known Marxists. It may therefore be said, and the Irish reader of this book can judge for himself from his own experience, that so little is Marxists alien to to the Irish tradition that reactionary ruling classes, actual or prospective, have always sought special means for insulating the people from its influence.’ (p.14.)
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References
Working Class Movement Library (Salford) has an Irish Collection formed around T. A. Jackson’s library and incorporating the library of Desmond Greaves, deposited by his executor Anthony Coughlan. Among books included in his library is J. Dunsmore Clarkson’s Labour and Nationalism in Ireland [Studies In History, Economics and Public Law] (New York; Columbia UP 1925), of which only 200 copies were printed, two having been presented to Greaves by the author, of which he gave one to Irish labour leader Tom Johnson. According to that web page, ‘his musical interests were entirely classical; he was very knowledgeable about, but he had no great love for, Irish music.’ [See online.]
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