Republican, socialist and one of founders of the Irish Citizen Army James Connolly was born in Edinburgh on 5 June 1868.
His parents were Irish emigrants who had left Monaghan for a better life in Scotland. The Cowgate that young Connolly was raised in was more popularly known as ‘Little Ireland’.
Decent jobs and housing were scarce and poverty, disease and degradation abounded. At the tender age of 14, as a means of escaping poverty, Connolly falsified his age and joined the British Army, enlisting in the 1st Battalion of the King’s Liverpool Regiment in 1882.
Initially stationed in Cork and eventually in Dublin it was in this city that he first met Lillie Reynolds who he later married in Scotland having left the army prematurely as his battalion was being shipped off to India.
Over the next few years his interest in socialism developed to the extent that he became one of the leading organisers of the various small socialist parties in Scotland. Finding himself blacklisted by Scottish employers he decided to try his hand at becoming a cobbler. His business acumen was sorely lacking and he wryly commented that he was going to buy a shaving mirror and watch himself slowly starve to death.
An appeal for work for Connolly was made and a job offer came from the Dublin Socialist Club, so in 1896 he came back to Ireland with his young family.
He immediately disbanded the Dublin Socialist Club and founded instead the Irish Socialist Republican Party which one commentator said had more syllables than members.
A little known aspect of Connolly’s life is that he lectured extensively in the United States in 1902 and in fact emigrated there in 1903. For seven years he was involved with the Labour movement in the US and eventually rose to become the New York organiser for the Industrial Workers of the World who campaigned under the motto: ‘An injury to one is an injury to all’.
Returning to Ireland in 1910, a matured Connolly campaigned for the Socialist Party and after a time Jim Larkin appointed him as Ulster Organiser for the Irish Transport and General Workers Union in Belfast.
Active during the Lockout of 1913-14, Connolly was one of the founders of the Irish Citizen Army. With the departure of Larkin to the US in 1914 Connolly now found himself in charge of the ITGWU.
He was also in command of the Citizen Army and had his own newspaper the Workers’ Republic. Liberty Hall now became, according to the Irish Times, “the centre of social anarchy” in Dublin.
A strong supporter of women’s rights, Connolly was a close associate of Maud Gonne, Constance Markievicz, Dr Kathleen Lynn and Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington.
Connolly was sworn into the Irish Republican Brotherhood in January 1916 which ensured that the Labour movement and the ICA would have a central role in the planned Rising.
He was appointed Commandant-General of the Dublin Brigade, directing the Army of the Irish Republic from the GPO during Easter Week.
Badly wounded in two separate incidents Connolly was executed strapped to a chair in the Stone-breaker’s Yard in Kilmainham Gaol on 12 May 1916.
• Lorcan Collins runs the Michael Collins Walking Tour (www.michaelcollinstour.com) and the 1916 Walking Tour (www.1916rising.com). His books, published by O’Brien Press, include ‘1916: The Rising Handbook’ (2016) and ‘James Connolly: 16 Lives’ (2012).
