James Connolly

Connolly, James (1868-1916). Author and union leader, Connolly was the most important Irish socialist. Though unsuccessful in an attempt to reconcile socialism and nationalism, he remains a great influence in Ireland and Scotland. Born in Edinburgh, Connolly joined the British army. Self-educated, he became a socialist organizer in Belfast and Dublin, founding the Irish Socialist Republican Party 1896 and ‘the Workers’ Republic' 1898. In 1910, he organized the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union with James Larkin and led the strike following a lock-out in 1913. Badly wounded in the Easter Rising, he was executed strapped to a chair.

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Connolly, James (1868-1916), socialist and patriot. Born to Irish parents in an Edinburgh slum, he left school at 11 and worked in a variety of jobs before enlisting in the army. He came to Dublin in 1896, founded the Irish Socialist Republican Party in 1898, and edited The Workers' Republic until 1903. He went to America and worked with the labour movement there. On his return to Dublin in 1910 he organized the Socialist Party of Ireland. In 1913 he established the Citizen Army in order to protect worker's rights during the Lock-Out Strike. At the outbreak of the First World War he opposed attempts to introduce military conscription in Ireland. In 1916 he was appointed commander of the Republican forces in Dublin, acting from headquarters at the GPO [see Easter Rising]. Though badly wounded in the fighting, he was sentenced to death by a British court martial and executed strapped in a chair on 12 May. Labour in Irish History (1910), the most influential of his writings, interprets early Irish society as socialist.

Connolly, James, 1870-1916, Irish nationalist and socialist. An advocate of revolutionary syndicalism, he went (1903) to the United States, where he helped to organize the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Returning to Ireland, he became an organizer of the Belfast dock workers. He helped James Larkin to organize the Irish Transport and General Workers Union and, during the great lockout of the Dublin transport workers in 1913, organized a citizen army. Convinced that the triumph of Irish nationalism was a prerequisite for the success of Irish socialism, he joined the Easter Rebellion of 1916. He was wounded, court-martialed, and executed.

Bibliography

See two selections from his writings: Socialism and Anatomy (with intro. and notes by D. Ryan, 1948) and The Workers' Republic (ed. by D. Ryan, 1951); biography by C. D. Greaves (1972).

Quotes:

"Just as it is true that a stream cannot rise above its source, so it is true that a national literature cannot rise above the moral level of the social conditions of the people from whom it derives its inspiration."

"Without the power of the Industrial Union behind it, Democracy can only enter the State as the victim enters the gullet of the Serpent."