Colonel William A. Phillips

James Connolly (Irish: Séamas Ó Conghaile;^[1] 5 June 1868 – 12 May 1916) was an Irish republican, socialist, and trade union leader, executed for his part in the 1916 Easter Rising against British rule in Ireland. He remains an important figure both for the Irish labour movement and for Irish republicanism.

He became an active socialist in Scotland, where he had been born in 1868 to Irish parents. On moving to Ireland in 1896, he established the country's first socialist party, the Irish Socialist Republican Party. It called for an Ireland independent not only of Britain's Crown and Parliament, but also of British "capitalists, landlords and financiers".

From 1905 to 1910, he was a full-time organiser in the United States for the Industrial Workers of the World, choosing its syndicalism over the doctrinaire Marxism of Daniel DeLeon's Socialist Labor Party of America, to which he had been initially drawn. Returning to Ireland, he deputised for James Larkin in organising for the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, first in Belfast and then in Dublin.

In Belfast, he was frustrated in his efforts to draw Protestant workers into an all-Ireland labour and socialist movement but, in the wake of the industrial unrest of 1913, acquired in Dublin what he saw as a new means of striking toward the goal of a Workers' Republic. At the beginning of 1916, he committed the union's militia, the Irish Citizen Army (ICA), to the plans of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and the Irish Volunteers, for war-time insurrection.

Connolly commanded the ICA in the Easter Rising of that year, from the rebel garrison holding Dublin's General Post Office. He was wounded in the fighting and, following the rebel surrender at the end of Easter week, was executed along with the six other signatories to the Proclamation of the Irish Republic.

Early life

Connolly was born in the Cowgate or "Little Ireland" district of Edinburgh in 1868, the third son of Mary McGinn and John Connolly, a labourer,^{[2][note 1]} Irish immigrants from County Monaghan. Throughout his life he was to speak with a Scottish accent.^[4]

He left the local Catholic primary school at age 10 to seek work.^[5] At age 14, following his eldest brother John, he enlisted in the Royal Scots Regiment,^[6] falsifying both his name and age.^[7] Little is known of his seven years in the British Army,^[8] but it is certain that he served in Ireland during the period of the Land War.^[9][10] He developed a deep hatred for the army that lasted his entire life.^[11] When he heard that his regiment was being transferred to India, he deserted.^[12]

Connolly had another reason for staying: his future wife Lillie Reynolds whom he had met in Dublin.^[13] The couple moved to Scotland where they married in April 1890.^[14] Like his father before him, he worked as a municipal manure carter. For a few months in 1895, he tried to set up as a cobbler but he had not the requisite skill was increasingly distracted by his interest in the new socialist and labour movement.^[15][16]

Socialist republican

Scottish Socialist Federation

Again following in the example of his brother John, in 1890 Connolly had joined the Scottish Socialist Federation, succeeding his brother as its secretary in 1893. Largely a propaganda organisation, the Federation supported Keir Hardie and his Independent Labour Party in the campaign for labour representation in Parliament.^[17]

Within the SSF, Connolly was greatly influenced by John Leslie,12 years his senior, but like him born to poor Irish immigrants. While Leslie did not envisage Ireland breaking the English connection before the advent of a socialist Britain, he was to encourage Connolly in the creation of a separate socialist party in Ireland.^[18]

In 1896, after the birth of his third daughter, Connolly considered a future for his family in Chile. But thanks to an appeal by John Leslie, he had the offer of employment in Dublin as a full-time secretary for the Dublin Socialist Club, at £1 per week.^[8][19]

Irish Socialist Republican Party

Connolly soon split the Dublin Socialist Club, and in its stead formed the Irish Socialist Republican Party (ISRP).^[20] In what was then, if briefly, the "literary centre of advanced nationalism",^[21] Alice Milligan's Belfast monthly, The Shan Van Vocht, he published a first statement of the party credo, "Socialism and Nationalism"", This suggested that, even if a step toward formal separation and independence, the legislature that the Irish Parliamentary Party wished to see restored in Dublin would be a mockery of Irish national aspirations.

If you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs.^[22]

By the same token, Connolly implied that there was little to be expected from the "Irish Language movements, Literary Societies or [1798] Commemoration Committees" of Milligan and of their mutual friends in Dublin (Arthur Griffith, Maud Gonne, and Constance Markievicz whom Connolly was to join in protesting Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee and the Boer War).^[23] There could be no lasting progress toward an Irish Ireland without acknowledging that, as a force that "irresistibly destroys all national or racial characteristics", capitalism was the Celtic Revival's "chief enemy".^[24][25]

Milligan, who deferred to the Irish Republican Brotherhood (in 1899 they had her pass her subscription list to Griffith and his new weekly, the United Irishman, the forerunner of Sinn Féin),^[26] confined her response to Connolly's ambition to contest Westminster elections. Were the ISRP successful, she predicted "an alliance with the English labour" no less debilitating than the courtship of English Liberals had proved for the Irish Parliamentary Party.^[27] In the event, Ireland's first socialist party failed in an attempt to elect Connolly to Dublin City Council and never exceeded more than 80 active members.^[28]

Dispirited and at odds with the ISRP's other leading light, E. W. Stewart, manager of the party's paper, The Worker's Republic,^[29] in September 1902 Connolly departed for a four-month lecture tour of the United States. It was organised by the American Marxist theoretician, Daniel De Leon, who had Connolly address largely Irish-American audiences on behalf of his Socialist Labor Party.^[30] On his return, Connolly had his resignation from the IRSP accepted without demur,^[31] and with De Leon's inducement, he decided to emigrate.^[32]

Union and party organiser

America: Industrial Workers of the World

On arrival in the United States, and before he could call on his family to join him, Connolly lived with cousins in Troy, New York, and found work as a salesman for insurance companies. But by 1905, and after being elected to the national executive of De Leon's Socialist Labor Party, he had returned full-time to political work. With De Leon's endorsement, he was an organiser for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the "One Big Union".. He worked, mainly in the New York City / Newark, New Jersey area, with Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, the "Wobblies" leading agitator among the women of the east-coast textile industry. With Flynn, and with ex-ISRP members Jack Mulray and John Lyng, and Patrick L. Quinlan, he also formed then Irish Socialist Federation (ISF), with branches in New York City and Chicago, and produced its weekly the Harp.^[33][34]

Under the influence of the IWW, a "mass movement, whose militancy was unequalled", Connolly began to turn away from what was an "unashamedly vanguard party.^[35] Precipitating a final break with De Leon, was a dispute over his party leader's invocation of the "iron law of wages". Often associated with Ferdinand Lassalle, this proposed that, in general, wages could not be sustained much above the level of subsistence level, and that nominal gains are readily offset by their upward pressure on prices. The implication was that, short of engaging in direct revolutionary action, there was little that mass unionism could practically achieve for the working class.^[36][37] Connolly defence of the collective pursuit of wage, workplace and legislative gains (for which he cited Marx), Socialism Made Easy (1909). was to become a reference for the English syndicalist, Tom Mann, who played a leading role in the eve-of-war industrial unrest in Britain, and for Shop Stewards’ Movement that roused Clydeside, Manchester and Sheffield in defiance of the wartime labour regime.^[38]

Connolly also took issue with De Leon's insistence that a socialist party be as "intolerant as science" of deviations from strict materialism In 1907, he confessed that while he "usually posed as a Catholic", he had not done his "duty" for fifteen years, and had "not the slightest tincture of faith left".^[39] Yet Connolly would not accept that religious faith and observance was, in itself, incompatible with the struggle for social justice.^[37][40]

In April 1908, Connolly left the SLP, and at its Chicago conference, the IWW expelled the party.^[41] In the new year, Connolly and the ISF affiliated with the Socialist Party of America,^[42] a broader coalition more tolerant of the syndicalism that Connolly was to carry over Into a last statement of his socialist credo. In The Re-conquest of Ireland (1915), the Workers' Republic is not De Leon's party-controlled directive state, but an industrial commonwealth: "the workshops, factories, docks, railways, shipyards, &c., shall be owned by the nation, but administered by the Industrial Unions of the respective industries".^[43]

ITGWU leader in Belfast

Through the ISF Connolly re-established links with socialists in Ireland, and in 1909 he transferred the production of the Harp to Dublin. The following year, James Larkin persuaded the Socialist Party of Ireland to raise the funds that would enable Connolly and his family to return.^[44] In January 1909, Larkin had established the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, his own model of the One Big Union.^[45] The same year, 1911, in which Connolly's occupation was listed on the census return as "National Organiser Socialist Party,^[46] Larkin sent him north to Belfast to organise for the ITGWU in Ulster.

In a city in which the Protestant-dominated apprenticed trades were organised in British-aligned craft unions, Larkin in 1907 had organised dock labourers. A strike, joined by carters, shipyard workers, sailors, firemen, boilermakers, coal heavers, transport workers, and women from the city's largest tobacco factory, was broken following the government's deployment of troops. Four years later, Connolly did manage to bring dockers out in sympathy with striking cross-channel seamen, and in the process to secure a pay increase.^[47] But for the ITGWU, Connolly's target was Belfast's largest industry, linen.^[48]

The sweated trade engaged thousands of women and girls both in mills and, unprotected by the Factory Acts, as outworkers. A Belfast Trades Council sponsored Textile Operatives Society, led by Mary Galway,^[49] concentrated on the better-paid Protestant women in the making-up sections. In the face of a speed up of production in the mills, Connolly worked to bring out on strike more than one thousand spinners and, first with Marie Johnson and then her friend Winifred Carney as its secretary, to recruit women into a new--effectively women's--section of the ITGWU, the Irish Textile Workers' Union (ITWU).^[50]

Without the funds to sustain the action, Connolly persuaded the spinners return to work and apply tactics he had learned as an organizer for the IWW.^[51]

If a girl is checked for singing, let the whole room start singing at once; if you are checked for laughing, let the whole room laugh at once; and if anyone is dismissed, all put on your shawls and come out in a body. And when you are returning, don’t return as you generally do, but gather in a body outside the gate, and march in singing and cheering.

He then sought to capitalise on the relative success of the tactic by building up the ITWU. In June 1913, while claiming that "the ranks of the Irish Textile Workers’ Union are being recruited by hundreds",^[52] with Carney Connolly produced a Manifesto to the Linen Slaves of Belfast (1913)^[53] that revealed their frustration as organisers:^[54]: 29

[M]any Belfast mills are slaughterhouses for the women and penitentiaries for the children. But while all the world is deploring your conditions, they also unite in deploring your slavish and servile nature in submitting to them; they unite in wondering of what material these Belfast women are made, who refuse to unite together and fight to better their conditions.

The ITWU's membership may not have greatly exceeded the 300 subscribed under Johnson in Catholic west Belfast.^[55] To Carney, Connolly conceded that the union's survival was largely a matter of "keeping the Falls Road crowd together".^[50]

"Protestantism" and the appeal for "socialist unity"

Sectarian division within the labour movement in Belfast had been heightened by the return of Home Rule to the political agenda (from 1910, a Liberal government was again dependent on the votes of the IPP). On the basis that "some form of self-government seems practically certain of realisation", Connolly issued a "Plea for Socialist Unity in Ireland". It recognised "the force of religious bigotry" as the only argument remaining against forging unity in a separate and independent Irish party.^[56]

Later, after the new Home Rule bill had survived a final reading at Westminster (May 1914), Connolly conceded that collective bargaining, progressive taxation and social security were not principles for which majorities would be as readily found in an Irish parliament. He anticipated a "reactionary and anti-democratic assembly" against which Irish socialists might find themselves relying upon the solidarity and financial support of their comrades in Britain and America.^[57]

But in what had been an "ill-tempered and discursive" exchange with William Walker,^[58] the leader of the Independent Labour Party in Belfast, Connolly had made no allowance for Labour Unionism.^[59] It was still Unionism,^[60] and Unionism he understood as a political expression of Irish Protestantism.^[61] As a legacy of settler colonialism, Connolly maintained that in Ireland Protestantism was "synonymous" with what Catholicism represented in much of the rest of Europe; that is, with "Toryism, lickspittle loyalty, servile worship of aristocracy and hatred of all that savours of genuine political independence on the part of the lower classes".^[62][61]

On the eve of his departure from Belfast, Connolly invoked this perversity to explain why in Ireland's industrial capital he had encountered not what socialist theory would have predicted, its most politically-alert working class, but rather those he now disclaimed as the "least rebellious slaves in the industrial world".^[63][64] This was a reverse of a picture he had painted years before for the ISRP. Then he had cited "the Protestant workmen of Belfast so often out on strike against their Protestant employers and their Protestant ancestors of 100 years ago [1798] in active rebellion against the English Protestant Government" as a demonstration of what "little bearing" the question of religious faith has in the struggle for freedom.^[65]

In April 1912, four of the five Belfast branches of the ILP did attend the founding conference in Dublin of an Independent Labour Party of Ireland. But they remained "very sensitive to the unpopularity of Home Rule" and did not carry their commitment over, when in May, Connolly secured a resolution at the Irish Trades Union Congress in favour of an Irish Labour Party.^[66] Instead (joined in time by Winifred Carney) they adhered to what in Belfast became, after partition, the Northern Ireland Labour Party.^[67][68]

Dublin lock-out

On 29 August 1913, Larking recalled Connolly to Dublin. The success of the ITGWU in signing up thousands of unskilled men and women, and its effective use of sympathetic strikes, had elicited a particularly aggressive reaction from employers. Beginning with, and led by, the owner of the tramway company, William Murphy, they dismissed those who refused to abjure the union and replaced them with scab labour brought in from elsewhere in the country or from Britain.^[69] By the end of September, the "lock out" and its knock-on effects had placed upwards of 100,000 people (workers and their families, a third of the city's residents) in need of assistance.^[70]

In a campaign to raise funds, on 1 November Connolly shared platform at London's Royal Albert Hall with George Lansbury and Sylvia Pankhurst, and with an Irish contingent that included George Russell ("Æ") and George Bernard Shaw.^[71] He took the opportunity to declare that he stood for "opposition to the domination of nation over nation, of class over class, or of sex over sex".^[72]

He had only recently recovered from a week-long hunger strike (a tactic borrowed from the Pankhursts and other suffragettes) that had secured his release from police detention. But Larkin was being held of charges of sedition. In Dublin, this left Connolly to respond to an intercession by the Catholic Church.^[73]

In the hope of replicating a tactic that for Elizabeth Gurley Flynn had turned the tide in the recent, and celebrated, "Bread and Roses" textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts,^[74] Dora Montefiore had devised a children's "holiday scheme".^[75] The poorly nourished children of the locked-out and striking workers were to be billeted with sympathetic families in England and in Belfast.^[76] On the grounds that their hosts were not guaranteed to be Catholic, the Church objected and crowds gathered at the docks and at what-is-now Connolly station to prevent the children's "deportation".^[77][78] Connolly, who had been wary from the first, cancelled the scheme, but nonetheless sought to score a point the against the clericalist opposition by telling his people to ask the archbishop and priests for food and clothing.^[79]

Connolly and Larkin had shown a willingness to negotiate on the basis of an inquiry into the dispute by the Board of Trade. While critical of the ITGWU's employment of the "sympathetic" strike, it concluded that employers were insisting on an anti-union pledge that was "contrary to individual liberty", and that "no workman or body of workmen could reasonably be expected to accept”. The employers were unmoved.^[80]

The workers began to drift back to work early 1914, after the Trade Union Congress in England rejected Larkin and Connolly's plea for a sympathetic strike and for additional funding. Exhausted, and falling into bouts of depression, Larkin took a declining interest in the now crippled union, and eventually in October accepted the invitation of "Big Bill" Haywood of the IWW to speak in the United States. He did not return to Ireland until 1923.^[81] His departure left Connolly, in charge not only of what remained of ITGWU with its headquarters at Liberty Hall, but also of a workers' militia.^[82]

Easter Rising

Irish Citizen Army

Floated as an idea by Shaw at the Albert Hall meeting,^[71] the training union men as force to protect picket lines and rallies was taken up in Dublin by "Citizens Committee" chair, and Boer-War veteran, Jack White, himself the victim of a police baton charge.^[83] But in accepting White's services, Connolly made reference not to the labour dispute, but to the national question: "why", he asked "should we not train our men in Dublin as they are doing in Ulster".^[84] In the north, the Unionists, including trade-union men,^[85] were forming the ranks of the Ulster Volunteers. To White's first handful of volunteers, Constance Markievicz contributed her Fianna Éireann nationalist youth, and in November 1913 the Irish Citizen Army (ICA) was born.^[86]

After the return to work, the command of the ICA divided on the militia's future, and in particular on policy toward the Irish Volunteers, the much larger nationalist response to the arming of Ulster Unionism. Secretary to the ICA Council, Seán O'Casey, described the formation of the Irish Volunteers as "one of the most effective blows" that the ICA had received. Men who might have joined the ICA were now drilling—with the blessing of the IRB—under a command that included employers who had locked out men trying to exercise "the first principles of Trade Unionism".^[87] When it became apparent that Connolly was gravitating towards an IRB strategy of cooperation with the Volunteers, O'Casey and Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, the Vice President, resigned, leaving Connolly in undisputed command.^[88]

On the eve of the July Crisis of 1914, Connolly had written of a "desire to see an effective force carrying the green flag of an Irish regiment whilst unconditionally under the red flag of the proletarian army".^[89] That this referred to ICA may not have been clear: its constitution contained James Fintan Lalor's assertion of “the ownership of Ireland, moral and material" by its people, but no reference to a republic, red or green. However, a "qualitatively new situation arose" for Connolly and his supporters with Britain's declaration of war against Germany on 4 August.^[90]

The Home Rule Bill received royal assent, but with a suspensory act delaying implementation for duration of the war (and with the reservation that the question of Ulster's inclusion had still to be resolved). Leader of the IPP, John Redmond, then split the Irish Volunteers by urging them (in the hope of securing Britain's good faith) to rally to the British Army's colours.^[91] The vast majority heeding his call--some 175,000 men--reformed themselves as the National Volunteers. This left 13,500 to reorganise under the nominal command of Eoin MacNeill of Gaelic League but, in key staff positions, directed by undercover leaders of the IRB: Patrick Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh and Joseph Plunkett.^[92]

Path to insurrection

It was not as a pacifist that Connolly, in October 1914, became president of the Irish Neutrality League (chairing a committee that included Arthur Griffith, Constance Markievicz and Francis Sheehy-Skeffington).^[93] He was urging active opposition to the war, and acknowledged that this amounted to "more than a transport strike". Stopping the export of foodstuffs from Ireland, for example, might involve "armed battling in the streets".^[94] In the Irish Worker he had already declared that if, in the course of Britain's "pirate war upon the German nation", the Kaiser landed an army in Ireland "we should be perfectly justified in joining it".^[95] A further editorial in the ITGWU paper betrayed his exasperation with the "jingoism" of the British labour movement:^[96] It suggested that insurrection in Ireland and throughout the British dominions might be required “to teach the English working class they cannot hope to prosper permanently by arresting the industrial development of others”.^[97]

In December, the Irish Worker was suppressed and in May 1915 Connolly revived his old ISRP title, Workers' Republic. The new weekly continued to display an interest in the international socialist and labour movement: reports on protections for dock labour in the Netherlands; agitation for the eight-hour-day in the US munitions industry; solidarity with striking Welsh miners; and Sylvia Pankhurst's observations on the benefits of state child care in Hungary.^[98] But accompanied by the martial-patriotic poetry of Maeve Cavanagh, Connolly's editorials continued to urge Irish resistance,^[99] and on the express understanding that this could not "be conducted on the lines of dodging the police, or any such high jinks of constitutional agitation".^[100] He cautioned that those who oppose conscription (the prospect that was drawing crowds to the meetings, the marches and parades of the Irish Citizen Army and of the Volunteers) "take their lives in their hands" (and, by implication, that they should organise accordingly). In December 1915, Connolly wrote:“We believe in constitutional action in normal times, we believe in revolutionary action in exceptional times. These are exceptional times".^[101][102]

He was aware of, but not privy to, discussions within the IRB on prospects for a national rising. Patrick Pearse cautioned his colleagues on treating with Connolly:

Connolly is most dishonest in his methods. He will never be satisfied until he goads us into action, and then he will think most of us too moderate and want to guillotine half of us.

Indeed, by the New Year, believing the Irish Volunteers were dithering, Connolly he was threatening to rush Dublin Castle, around which he had already deployed his ICA on nightly manoeuvres. Determined to safeguard their plans for an insurrection at Easter. Seán Ó Faoláin suggests that the IRB had Connolly "kidnapped.,^[103] A unit of Volunteers had been mobilised to arrest Connolly had he refused to meet with the IRB Council, but Patrick Pearse, Tom Clarke and the other IRB leaders resolved matters by finally taking Connolly into their confidence.^[104]

Easter week 1916

On 14 April 1916, Connolly summoned Winifred Carney to Dublin where she prepared his mobilisation orders for the Irish Citizen Army (ICA). Ten days later, on Easter Monday, they set out for the General Post Office (GPO) with an initial garrison party from Liberty Hall Carney (armed with a typewriter and a Webley revolver) served as Connolly's aide de camp with the rank of adjutant.^[105] The ICA had the distinction of giving women "rank and duty just as if they were men".^[106]

From the steps of the GPO, Patrick Pearse read the "Proclamation of the Irish Republic". Connolly had contributed to the final draft, which declared "the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland" and, in a phrase that he had often been used, a "resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts".^[107]

According to Darrell Figgis, who with Roger Casement had run German guns for the Irish Volunteers, the rebel strategy of occupying the GPO and other public buildings in the city centre, had been informed by Connolly's belief that "the capitalist class of one country would never destroy the buildings that were the pride of the capitalist class of another".^[108] Connolly's biographer, Samuel Levenson records a exchange between Volunteers after a British gunboat began shelling their positions from the Liffey.

"General Connolly told us the British would never use artillery against us". "He did,did he? Wouldn't it be great now if General Connolly was making the decisions for the British".^[109]

Whatever his merits as a strategist, witnesses cast no doubt on his courage under fire: Michael Collins said of Connolly that he "would have followed him through hell".^[110] Leading men on the street and supervising the construction of barricades, he was twice wounded on the Thursday. Carney refused to leave his side,^[105] and was with him the following day, Friday 29 April, when, carried on a stretcher, he was among the last to evacuate the GPO to Moore Street. There Pearse issued the order for the ICA and Irish Volunteer fighters, now under constant British bombardment, to "lay down arms".^[111]

As he was being returned to a stretcher to be carried toward the British lines, Connolly told those around him not to worry: "Those of us that signed the proclamation will be shot. But the rest of you will be set free."^[112]

Death

Connolly was not actually held in gaol, but in a room (now called the "Connolly Room") at the State Apartments in Dublin Castle, which had been converted to a first-aid station for troops recovering from the war.^[113]

Connolly was sentenced to death by firing squad for his part in the rising. On 12 May 1916, he was taken by military ambulance to Royal Hospital Kilmainham, across the road from Kilmainham Gaol, and from there taken to the gaol, where he was to be executed. While Connolly was still in hospital in Dublin Castle, during a visit from his wife and daughter, he said: "The Socialists will not understand why I am here; they forget I am an Irishman."^[114][115]

Connolly had been so badly injured from the fighting (a doctor had already said he had no more than a day or two to live, but the execution order was still given) that he was unable to stand before the firing squad; he was carried to a prison courtyard on a stretcher. He is said to have returned to the Catholic Church in few days before his execution.^[116][117] ACapuchin, Father Aloysius Travers administered absolution and last rites. Asked to pray for the soldiers about to shoot him, Connolly said: "I will say a prayer for all men who do their duty according to their lights."^[118] Instead of being marched to the same spot where the others had been executed, at the far end of the execution yard, he was tied to a chair and then shot.^[119]

His body (along with those of the other leaders) was put in a mass grave without a coffin. The executions of the rebel leaders deeply angered the majority of the Irish population, most of whom had shown no support during the rebellion. It was Connolly's execution that caused the most controversy.^[120] Historians have pointed to the manner of execution of Connolly and similar rebels, along with their actions, as being factors that caused public awareness of their desires and goals and gathered support for the movements that they had died fighting for.^{[citation needed]}

The executions were not well received, even throughout Britain, and drew unwanted attention from the United States, which the British Government was seeking to bring into the war in Europe. H. H. Asquith, the Prime Minister, ordered that no more executions were to take place; an exception being that of Roger Casement, who was charged with high treason and had not yet been tried.

Although Connolly abandoned religious practice in the 1890s, he turned back to Roman Catholicism in the days before his execution.^{[121][116][117]}

Political views

Part of a series on
Marxism
Theoretical works Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 The Condition of the Working Class in England The German Ideology The Communist Manifesto The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte Grundrisse Capital Critique of the Gotha Programme Dialectics of Nature The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State What Is to Be Done? The Accumulation of Capital Philosophical Notebooks Terrorism and Communism The State and Revolution Essays on Marx's Theory of Value History and Class Consciousness History of the Russian Revolution Prison Notebooks The Black Jacobins On Practice Theses on the Philosophy of History Dialectic of Enlightenment A Critique of Soviet Economics The Long Revolution Guerrilla Warfare The Wretched of the Earth Reading Capital Monopoly Capital The Society of the Spectacle Pedagogy of the Oppressed Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses Ways of Seeing How Europe Underdeveloped Africa Social Justice and the City Women, Race and Class Marxism and the Oppression of Women Imagined Communities Hegemony and Socialist Strategy The Sublime Object of Ideology Time, Labor and Social Domination The Age of Extremes The Origin of Capitalism Empire Late Victorian Holocausts Change the World Without Taking Power Caliban and the Witch An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital Capitalist Realism How to Blow Up a Pipeline Capital in the Anthropocene
Philosophy Alienation Dialectical materialism Ideology Philosophy of nature Philosophy in the Soviet Union Reification
Critique of political economy Capital (accumulation) Crisis theory Commodity Concrete and abstract labor Factors of production Falling profit-rate tendency Means of production Mode of production Capitalist Socialist Productive forces Scientific socialism Surplus product Socially necessary labour time Value-form Wage labour
Sociology Base and superstructure Bourgeoisie Class Class consciousness Classless society Commodity fetishism Communist society Critical theory Cultural hegemony Democracy Dictatorship of the proletariat Soviet Radical Exploitation False consciousness Human nature Immiseration Imperialism Lumpenproletariat Metabolic rift Proletariat Private property Relations of production State theory Working class
History Class struggle Historical determinism Primitive accumulation Proletarian revolution World revolution Theory of historical trajectory
Aspects Aesthetics Archaeology Criminology Cultural analysis Cultural Studies Ethics Film theory Geography Historiography Literary criticism Marxism and religion Sociology Philosophy
Common Variants Structural Autonomist Marxism–Leninism Guevarism Maoism Titoism Trotskyism Neo-Gramscianism Regulation school Third-worldist Hegelian Budapest School Frankfurt School Humanist Neue Marx-Lektüre Open Political Praxis School Both Black Classical Communization Feminist Leninism Neo Post Western
Other Variants Analytical Austromarxism Centrist Council communism Eurocommunism Instrumental Marxism–Leninism–Maoism Nkrumaism Orthodox Revisionist Situationist Socialism with Chinese characteristics Wertkritik Workerism
People Marx Engels Morris Lafargue Kautsky Plekhanov Du Bois Connolly Du Bois Lenin Luxemburg Liebknecht Kollontai Bogdanov Stalin Trotsky Grossman Zinoviev Bloch Lukács Korsch Bukharin Ho Serge Gramsci Galiev Pashukanis Bordiga Benjamin Mao Basu Mariátegui Horkheimer Dutt Brecht Marcuse Kalecki Fromm Cox Lefebvre James Adorno Padmore Sartre Deutscher Beauvoir Sombart Nkrumah Sweezy Emmanuel Hill Bettelheim Draper Jones Hobsbawm Althusser Hinton Williams Freire Mandel Sivanandan Miliband Cabral Thompson Bauman Fanon Kosik Berger Castro Guevara Liebman Heller Guattari Mészáros O'Connor Wallerstein Mies Tronti Debord Amin Hall Nairn Parenti Negri Jameson Dussel Harvey Laclau Bahro Poulantzas Vattimo Badiou Harnecker Altvater Anderson Löwy Vogel Sison Easthope Rancière Berman Przeworski Cohen Therborn Ahmad Losurdo Ture Postone Rodney Bannerji Spivak Newton Sakai Wood Federici Wolff Balibar Eagleton Kurz Hartsock Rowbotham Mouffe Geras Brenner Davis Massey Cleaver Bishop Haraway Panitch Clarke Jessop Davis Wright Fraser Burawoy Holloway Rose Screpanti Tamás Hampton Cano Žižek Berardi Sankara Hennessy McDonnell Douzinas Roediger Foster West Ghandy Marcos Heinrich Prashad Kelley Dean Lordon Linera Fisher Li Coulthard Malm Seymour Toscano Bhattacharya Moufawad-Paul Srnicek Horvat Hamza Saito
Journals Antipode Capital & Class Capitalism Nature Socialism Constellations Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory Historical Materialism Mediations Monthly Review New Left Review Race & Class Rethinking Marxism Science & Society Socialist Register
Related topics 21st-century communist theorists Anarchism Creative destruction Conflict theory Criticism of Marxism Communism Communalism Economic determinism History of communism Left-wing politics Marxian economics New Left Old Left Municipalism Political ecology Socialism Authoritarian Democratic Market Reformist Revolutionary Utopian Left-wing populism Universal class Vulgar Marxism Economism Worker cooperative Workers' council
Outline  Communism portal  Philosophy portal  Socialism portal

Syndicalism

Connolly was not simply a socialist, but specifically was a Syndicalist.^[122][123] Syndicalism is a form of socialism which espouses the idea that socialism will come about through the mass action of trade unions, and that in a socialist society the unions will control the means of production. Connolly's syndicalism was developed through his interactions with Daniel DeLeon, the Industrial Workers of the World, and Jim Larkin. Although Connolly himself dabbled in electoral politics, he came to lean towards the syndicalist viewpoint that the most effective way for workers to gain power was through strikes. Connolly was also a supporter of the syndicalist and IWW view that workers should organise themselves into "One Big Union".^[122][123]

Connolly and DeLeon often clashed on a number of points; one point, in particular, was that Connolly rejected DeLeon's contention that every nominal wage increase gained by workers would be quickly and exactly offset by a corresponding increase in prices, with Connolly arguing that Karl Marx himself had rejected this notion. Connolly suggested that endorsing the idea that wage increases were meaningless would result in socialists never fighting to improve the conditions of workers.^[122][123]

In 1910, Connolly published the book Labour in Irish History in which he analysed Irish history from a Marxist perspective. In the book, Connolly argues that prior to the British colonisation of Ireland, the Irish lived in a form of stateless communism. The book also criticised Daniel O'Connell and his work towards Catholic emancipation on the grounds that the result only uplifted the Catholic bourgeoisie and not Catholics as a whole.^[122][123]

Connolly envisioned the Industrial Workers of the World forming their own political party which would bring together the feuding socialist groups such as the Socialist Labor Party of America and the Socialist Party of America.^[124] Likewise, he envisaged independent Ireland as a socialist republic. His connection and views on Revolutionary Unionism and Syndicalism have raised debate on if his image for a workers' republic would be one of State or Grassroots socialism.^{[125][126][127]} For a time he was involved with De Leonism and the Second International until he later broke with both.^[128]

Religion

Over the course of his political lifetime, Connolly maintained that there was no inherent conflict between religion and socialism, holding that socialists should campaign on economic and political issues alone, and completely avoid debating spirituality, particularly with clergy. Connolly saw attacking religion as a strategic and tactical mistake for socialists, bogging them down in an unnecessary conflict. He also believed that any religion that promoted egalitarianism and humanitarianism could, in fact, aid the introduction of socialism.^[122][123] In 1910 Connolly wrote the pamphlet Labour, nationality and religion in which he specifically outlined his view that Socialism and Catholicism were not incompatible.^[122][123]

Another point Connolly and DeLeon differed on was marriage; Connolly believed strictly in monogamy while DeLeon was willing to entertain the notion of polyamorous marriages.^[122][123]

Nationalism

Part of a series on
Irish republicanism
Concepts Abstentionism Anti-imperialism Armalite and ballot box strategy Dissident republican Éire Nua Irish nationalism Irish republican legitimism New Departure Radicalism Republicanism United Ireland
History Irish Rebellion of 1798 Acts of Union 1800 Irish rebellion of 1803 Young Ireland rebellion Fenian Rising Fenian raids Fenian dynamite campaign Easter Rising 1918 general election Irish revolutionary period Irish War of Independence Irish Civil War 1932 general election S-Plan Border Campaign The Troubles Arms Crisis 1981 Irish hunger strike Good Friday Agreement Dissident Irish republican campaign
People Gerry Adams Cathal Brugha Neil Blaney Tom Clarke James Connolly Seamus Costello Éamon de Valera Robert Emmet Cathal Goulding Thomas J. Kelly Seán Mac Stíofáin Seán MacBride Terence MacSwiney Constance Markievicz Bernadette Devlin Martin McGuinness Ruairí Ó Brádaigh Dáithí Ó Conaill Peadar O'Donnell John O'Mahony Patrick Pearse Seán Russell Bobby Sands James Stephens Wolfe Tone Moss Twomey
Active parties Aontú Éirígí Fianna Fáil Irish Republican Socialist Party Republican Network for Unity Republican Sinn Féin Saoradh Sinn Féin
Defunct parties All Ireland Anti-Partition League Anti H-Block Aontacht Éireann Clann na Poblachta Clann Éireann Communist Party of Ireland (Marxist–Leninist) Córas na Poblachta Cumann na Poblachta Cumann Poblachta na hÉireann Fianna Uladh Independent Fianna Fáil Irish Anti-Partition League Irish Independence Party Irish Socialist Republican Party Irish Workers' Group (1976) National Corporate Party Northern Council for Unity Republican Congress Republican Labour Party Republican Socialist Collective Saor Éire SLISO Socialist Republican Party
Militant groups Active Arm na Poblachta Continuity IRA Cumann na mBan‎ Fianna Éireann Irish Republican Liberation Army Irish Republican Movement New IRA Inactive Irish National Liberation Army Óglaigh na hÉireann (Real IRA splinter group) Defunct Connolly Column Irish Brigade Irish Citizen Army Irish National Invincibles Irish People's Liberation Organisation Irish Republican Army (1919–1922) Irish Republican Army (1922–1969) Irish Republican Brotherhood Irish Revolutionary Forces Irish Volunteers Official IRA Provisional IRA Real IRA Republican Action Against Drugs Republican Defence Army Saor Éire (1967–1975) Saor Uladh Society of United Irishmen South Armagh Republican Action Force Young Ireland
Active Organisations 32 County Sovereignty Movement Anti-Imperialist Action Ireland Cabhair Connolly Association Connolly Youth Movement IRPWA Irish National Congress IRSCNA NORAID National Graves Association, Belfast National Graves Association Revolutionary Housing League Wolfe Tone Societies Ógra Fianna Fáil Ógra Shinn Féin
Defunct Organisations Clan na Gael Clann na hÉireann Comhairle na Poblachta Dungannon Clubs Emmet Monument Association Fenian Brotherhood Friends of Irish Freedom Irish Republican Voice Irish Socialist Federation League of Communist Republicans Northern Resistance Movement People's Democracy Phoenix National and Literary Society Troops Out Movement
Media An Phoblacht Evening Press Guerrilla Days in Ireland IRIS Magazine Irish Freedom Republican News Saoirse Irish Freedom Sinn Féin The Gaelic American The Hibernia Magazine The Irish Felon The Irish People The Irish Press The Nation The Phoenix The Starry Plough The Sunday Press United Irishman (1848 newspaper) United Irishman (1948 newspaper)
Politics portal  Ireland portal

The historian Fergus D'arcy has argued that prior to his return to Ireland in 1910, Connolly was not particularly concerned with the ideological idea of nationalism, but living in Ireland forced Connolly to grapple with the "national question".^[122] In 1911, Connolly entered into a public debate with Belfast socialist William Walker. Walker argued that socialism in Ireland would only come about if Ireland remained a part of the United Kingdom, and stated he was an "Internationalist", not a nationalist. Connolly rebutted with his belief that "the only true socialist internationalism lay in a free federation of free peoples".^[122]

Although Connolly committed himself and his Irish Citizen Army to the Easter Rising, he remained wary of the Irish nationalists he was aligning himself with. A week before the Easter Rising, he reportedly told members of the ICA "in the event of victory, hold on to your rifles, as those with whom we are fighting may stop before our goal is reached. We are out for economic as well as political liberty".^[129]

In Scotland, Connolly's thinking influenced socialists such as John Maclean, who would, like him, combine his leftist thinking with nationalist ideas when he formed the Scottish Workers Republican Party.^[130]

Connolly was an advocate of a universal language, stating "I do believe in the necessity, and indeed in the inevitability of an universal language; but I do not believe it will be brought about, or even hastened, by smaller races or nations consenting to the extinction of their language."^[131] As such he learned and advocated Esperanto.^[132]

Nationalism and Antisemitism

Connolly spoke positively about Bundist activism in the Russian Empire.^[133] At other times, however, Connolly's publication reprinted antisemitic articles, such as one during the Boer War which posed the question: "What would you do in the same position as the Boers? Supposing your country was invaded by a mob of Jew and foreign exploiters ... What would you do?".^[134] Connolly's Harp (the journal of the Irish Socialist Federation) also featured an article in 1909 that stated that "the patriotic Irish capitalists imported wholesale scab Jews to break the strike of Irish workers".^[135]

Connolly sharply criticised the overtly antisemitic tone of the British SDF's publications during the War, arguing that they had attempted to "divert the wrath of the advanced workers from the capitalists to the Jews".^[133]

Feminism

Connolly had a particular concern with the role of women in society. In 1915, Connolly wrote in The Reconquest of Ireland that "The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave" and "of what use...can be the re-establishment of any form of Irish state if it does not embody the emancipation of womanhood?".^[136] Connolly supported the Suffragette movement, and Francis Sheehy-Skeffington opined that Connolly was "the soundest and most thorough-going feminist among all the Irish labour men".^[123][136] Connolly suggested the oppression of women was a consequence of private property.^[136] Connolly held the view that it was not the role of men to liberate women, but for women to liberate themselves with the help of supporting men.^[123][136]

Personal life

James Connolly and his wife Lillie had seven children.^[137] Nora became an influential writer and campaigner within the Irish-republican movement as an adult. Roddy continued his father's politics. In later years, both became members of the Oireachtas (Irish parliament). Moira became a doctor and married Richard Beech.^[138] One of Connolly's daughters, Mona, died in 1904 aged 13, when she burned herself while she did the washing for an aunt.^[139]

Three months after James Connolly's execution his wife was received into the Catholic Church, at Church St. on 15 August.^[140]

Legacy

Connolly's legacy in Ireland is mainly due to his contribution to the republican cause; his legacy as a socialist has been claimed by a variety of left-wing and left-republican groups, and he is also associated with the Labour Party which he founded. Connolly was among the few European members of the Second International who opposed, outright, World War I. This put him at odds with most of the socialist leaders of Europe.

Connolly has been referred and referenced as a "political idol' for a number of trade unionists, such as Mike Quill^[141] and Mick Lynch^{[142][143][144]}

Tributes

• In 1928, Follonsby miners' lodge in the Durham coalfield unfurled a newly designed banner that included a portrait of Connolly on it. The banner was burned in 1938, replaced but then painted over in 1940. A reproduction of the 1938 Connolly banner was commissioned in 2011 by the Follonsby Miners' Lodge Banner Association and it is regularly paraded at various events in County Durham ('Old King Coal' at Beamish Open Air museum, 'The Seven men of Jarrow' commemoration every June, the Durham Miners' Gala every second Saturday in July, the Tommy Hepburn annual memorial every October), in the wider UK and Ireland.^[145][146]
• Connolly Books, a leftist bookstore in Dublin which was established in 1932, is named after Connolly.^[147]
• The Connolly Association, a British organisation which formed in 1938 and campaigns for Irish unity and independence, is named after Connolly.^[148]
• Connolly and the events of his death are mentioned in the fourth verse of the 1958 song "The Patriot Game" by Irish songwriter Dominic Behan (this verse is sometimes omitted from renditions of the song).^[149]
• In 1968, Irish group The Wolfe Tones released a single named "James Connolly", which reached number 15 in the Irish charts.^[150] The band Black 47 wrote and performed a song about Connolly that appears on their album Fire of Freedom. Irish singer-songwriter Niall Connolly has a song "May 12th, 1916 – A Song for James Connolly" on his album Dream Your Way Out of This One (2017). The song "Connolly Was There" is a popular Irish folk song celebrating Connolly's contributions to Unions in Ireland. A well known rendition was sung by Derek Warfield.^[151]
• In a 1972 interview on The Dick Cavett Show, John Lennon stated that James Connolly was an inspiration for his song, "Woman Is the Nigger of the World". Lennon quoted Connolly's 'the female is the slave of the slave' in explaining the feminist inspiration for the song.^[152]
• The Non-Stop Connolly show (1975),^[153] a 12-hour play on the life and politics of James Connolly written by John Arden and Margaretta D'Arcy. It was sometimes presented as a daily series and complete script reading, as in London in 1976 at the Almost Free Theatre Soho.
• Dunedin Connollys GFC, a Edinburgh, Scotland Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) club founded in 1988, takes its name from his.^[154]
• The song "James Connolly" appears on the 1991 album Black 47 by the band Black 47. It celebrates his career as a socialist and Republican.^[155]
• In a 2002 BBC television production, 100 Greatest Britons where the British public were asked to register their vote, Connolly was voted in 64th place.
• The Connolly Youth Movement is named after him.^[156]

Memorials

There is a statue of James Connolly in Dublin, outside Liberty Hall, the offices of the SIPTU trade union. Another statue of Connolly stands in Union Park, Chicago near the offices of the UE union.

In 1986 a bust of Connolly was erected in Riverfront Park in Troy, New York.^[157]

In March 2016 a statue of Connolly was unveiled by Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure minister Carál Ní Chuilín, and Connolly's great-grandson, James Connolly Heron, on Falls Road in Belfast.^[158]

Connolly Station, one of the two main railway stations in Dublin, and Connolly Hospital, Blanchardstown, are named in his honour.

In the Cowgate area of Edinburgh where Connolly grew up there is a likeness of Connolly and a gold-coloured plaque dedicated to him under the George IV bridge.^[159]

In July 2023 a plaque was unveiled by the Dublin City Council at Connolly's former residence on South Lotts Road in Ringsend.^[160]

Writings

• Connolly, James. 1897. Erin's Hope: The Ends and the Means (republished as The Irish Revolution, c. 1924)
• Connolly, James. 1898. The New Evangel
• Connolly, James. 1910. Labour in Irish history (republished 1914)
• Connolly, James. 1910. Labour, Nationality, and Religion (republished 1920)
• Connolly, James. 1914. The Axe to the Root, and, Old Wine in New Bottles (republished 1921)
• Connolly, James. 1915. The Re-Conquest of Ireland (republished 1917)
• Ryan, Desmond (ed.). 1949. Labour and Easter Week: A Selection from the Writings of James Connolly. Dublin: Sign of the Three Candles
• Edwards, Owen Dudley & Ransom, Bernard (eds.). 1973. Selected Political Writings: James Connolly, London: Jonathan Cape
• Anon. (ed.). 1987. James Connolly: Collected Works (Two volumes). Dublin: New Books
• Ó Cathasaigh, Aindrias (ed.). 1997. The Lost Writings: James Connolly, London: Pluto Press ISBN 0-7453-1296-9

See also

• James Connolly bibliography

Notes

References

Further reading

• Allen, Kieran. 1990. The Politics of James Connolly, London: Pluto Press ISBN 0-7453-0473-7
• Anderson, W.K. 1994. James Connolly and the Irish Left. Dublin: Irish Academic Press. ISBN 0-7165-2522-4.
• Collins, Lorcan. 2012. James Connolly. Dublin: O'Brien Press. ISBN 1-8471-7160-5.
• Fox, R.M. 1943. The History of the Irish Citizen Army. Dublin: James Duffy & Co.
• Fox, R.M. 1946. James Connolly: the forerunner. Tralee: The Kerryman.
• Gallagher, Niamh. 30 November 2023. "How to Plan an Insurrection" (review of Liam McNulty, James Connolly: Socialist, Nationalist and Internationalist), London Review of Books, vol. 45, no. 23
• Kostick, Conor & Collins, Lorcan. 2000. The Easter Rising. Dublin: O'Brien Press ISBN 0-86278-638-X
• Lloyd, David. Rethinking national Marxism. James Connolly and ‘Celtic Communism’ Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 5:3, 345–370.
• Lynch, David. 2006. Radical Politics in Modern Ireland: A History of the Irish Socialist Republican Party (ISRP) 1896- 1904. Dublin: Irish Academic Press. ISBN 0-7165-3356-1.
• McNulty, Liam. 2022. James Connolly: Socialist, Nationalist and Internationalist. London: Merlin Press. ISBN 0-8503-6783-2.
• Nevin, Donal. 2005. James Connolly: A Full Life. Dublin: Gill & MacMillan. ISBN 0-7171-3911-5.
• O'Callaghan, Sean. 2015. James Connolly: My search for the Man, the Myth and his Legacy. ISBN 9781780894348
• Ransom, Bernard. 1980. Connolly's Marxism, London: Pluto Press. ISBN 0-86104-308-1.
• Strauss, Eric. 1973. Irish Nationalism and British Democracy, Westport CT: Greenwood. ISBN 0-8371-8046-5
• Thompson, Spurgeon. "Gramsci and James Connolly: Anticolonial intersections", Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 5:3, 371-381
• Townshend, Charles (2005). Easter 1916: the Irish rebellion. London: Allen Lane. 49, 81, 122, 134–6, 155–8, 161, 171, 214, 246, 254–7, 261–3, 309. ISBN 978-0-7139-9690-6.

External links

• James Connolly archive at Marxists.org
• The Real Ideas of James Connolly
• James Connolly's grave, Arbour Hill, Irish Graves website
• IWW's Memorial Page for James Connolly
• 1916 Walking Tour Site
• "The Relevance Of James Connolly in Ireland Today" Archived 9 August 2002 at the Wayback Machine by George Gilmore
• "James Connolly & Irish Freedom: A Marxist Analysis" by G. Schuller
• "BBC online poll: James Connolly voted onto 100 'Greatest' people" at the Wayback Machine (archived 28 October 2009) by Niall Mulholland (CWI), 31 August 2002
• Film biopic of Connolly underway
• "James Connolly – A Marxist appreciation" (Spartacist League Dayschool)
• "Connolly is set for a heroic makeover on silver screen" by Kevin Myers
• Connolly family from the 1911 Irish Census
• Connolly images collated on the online Multitext pages of University College Cork