James Connolly
James Connolly was a socialist who joined a nationalist rising and was shot tied to a chair because he could not stand. He was born in the Cowgate in Edinburgh in 1868 to Irish immigrant parents, left school at eleven, and enlisted in the British Army at fourteen by lying about his age, serving seven years in Ireland, which is where his politics began. He deserted, worked as a carter and a manure remover in Edinburgh, and became a full-time organiser. He founded the Irish Socialist Republican Party in 1896, spent seven years in the United States with the Industrial Workers of the World, and came back to organise for the transport union in Belfast and Dublin. The Dublin lockout of 1913, in which some 20,000 workers were locked out for eight months by 300 employers, is the formative event: the police baton-charged a meeting and killed two men, and Connolly and Larkin formed the Irish Citizen Army to protect pickets. It is the first workers' militia in Europe. His analysis was that the Irish capitalist class would never deliver either socialism or independence, and by 1916 he had concluded that the war made a rising necessary; the Irish Republican Brotherhood, worried that he would act alone, brought him into their plans. He commanded in the General Post Office, was hit in the ankle by a ricochet, and was carried out on a stretcher. He was executed on 12 May 1916, the last of the fifteen. His writings are still argued about by people who want the nationalism without the socialism or the reverse. He had said that if the flag of England came down and the green flag went up without a socialist republic behind it, everything would go on as before, which is a sentence that has been quoted at every Irish government since.
- Lived: 1868 CE – 1916 CE
- Nationality: Irish
- Roles: revolutionary, military_leader
