On Meeting Monarchy

By Jim Slaven

JCS meet Betty Battenberg republican style. July 1999

“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” – James Connolly

So Martin McGuinness has finally met Betty Battenberg. It is obviously a matter for Sinn Fein who they meet but from the outside this looks like another ‘leadership initiative’ which has nothing to do with improving the material conditions of the working class or advancing towards the Republic. It does however put republicans outside Ireland in the position of having to decide whether to show solidarity with this act or not. For our part the James Connolly Society have been critical of the SNP leaderships decision to come out as…