An Irishman's Diary

Tony and Cherie Blair, when out buying their sun-dried tomatoes and scented candles on Islington High Street, are probably being regularly assaulted at this time of the year by the ubiquitous strains of the popular Christmas Carol, Tannenbaum (or Oh Christmas Tree). The melody to the carol is the same one used for The Red Flag, the socialist anthem - written by an Irishman - that the members of the current nouveau Labour Party Cabinet grimace their way through at the end of the annual party conference with much the same enthusiasm the present German cabinet would have for a recital of Deutschland Uber Alles. Not content with replacing the red flag with the red rose (fraternally stolen from the Spanish Socialist party), New Labour would probably prefer to replace the Clause Four-friendly Red Flag with something more touchy-feely and more "business partnership" oriented, such as like the sickening Things Can Only Get Better which drove everyone to distraction during the British General Election last May. (Curiously enough, that was also written by an Irishman, Patrick Cunahan from Derry, who performs under the name Dream).

Historic anthem

It took a long time for the British Labour Party to own up to the fact that its historic anthem was written by an Irishman and it was only a few years ago that the party (then under Kinnock) affixed a plaque to the front of a small Edwardian house in Forest Hill, South London, where one Jim Connell died in 1929. While most of "old" Labour were word perfect in all six verses of The Red Flag, few, if any, would have known anything about its composer.

Jim Connell was born in Co Meath in 1852 and left to work in London when he was 22. His spent spells as a navvy, a poacher, a journalist and a lawyer. He even merited an inclusion in Who's Who, where he said that his education consisted of being "under a hedge for a few weeks" and his favourite method of relaxation was "poaching".

A lifelong trade union activist of some standing, he edited a well-known left-wing paper called The Call and spent most of his free evenings at political rallies and demonstrations. In 1889 he was at one such rally in support of a dockers' strike in London when he was deeply impressed by a speaker who equated socialism with religion in a very eloquent manner. On the 15-minute train journey home from Charing Cross to New Cross he wrote the words to the song that still resounds at seaside Labour conferences to this day.

Grand sentiments

The grandiloquent sentiments of his anthem reflect the passion he felt on that train journey home: the first verse is: "The people's flag is deepest red/ It shrouded oft our martyred dead/ And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold/ Their hearts' blood dyed to every fold." The words are surely familiar to at least some of those who spent time agitating in draughty halls over the years. Many activists, however, make do with just knowing the chorus: "Then raise the scarlet standard high/ Beneath its folds we'll live and die/ Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer/ We'll keep the Red Flag flying here." People still erroneously believe that the symbol of the red flag is something to do with Soviet Communism - it's actually the other way around. A red flag has been used as a sign of resistance since 1797, when sailors on a Royal Navy ship mutinied and raised an emblem of that colour - possibly because pirate flags were originally red (the "Jolly Roger" is a corruption of the French joli rouge, meaning red and beautiful).

Original melody

The song was instantly popular, but Jim Connell came to loathe it because of the melody it was set to. He was happy enough with the original melody, an old military Jacobite tune called The White Cockade. That was dropped after a year or so, because it was being used in a popular music-hall hit of the day and confusion abounded. The words were then set to the melody of the traditional German Christmas Carol Tannenbaum. Connell wasn't impressed: "The essence of every song resides in its chorus," he said at the time. "The chorus of The Red Flag is a challenge six times repeated. That is why the song must be to a military air. The song is supposed to appeal to the emotions, as there are many people who cannot be appealed to through reason." He was dismayed that his call of international socialist revolution should be reduced to the tune of a children's carol. Still, The Red Flag remains a stirring and emotive song thanks to Connell's words, though it's hardly that compatible with New Labour's policies. But while they've ditched Clause Four and other such time-honoured commitments to socialism, the party's leaders seem curiously reluctant to replace The Red Flag as the party's anthem. Maybe it's because Tony Blair has heeded the warning contained in the fourth verse: "It waved above our infant might/ When all above seemed dark at night/ It witnessed many a deed and vow/ We must not change its colour now." But I wouldn't bet on it.