Many people with even a passing interest in Irish History have heard the name
James Connolly. Many might know that Connolly was an executed leader of the 1916 Easter Rising. But
how many know what he stood for, what he fought for, and what he ultimately gave his life for?
Who was this Revolutionary Leader that was so important, so dangerous to the very existence
of British Imperialism in Ireland that, while he was already fatally wounded beyond the point of
even being able to stand up, he had to be tied to a chair and shot dead by a British firing squad in
Kilmainham Gaol? Could it be that the Imperialists were trying to kill more than just a man that day?
In fact, they were trying to murder not only Connolly himself, but his political ideology.
So, what was this ideology – this Revolutionary vision – that James Connolly lived, fought,
and ultimately gave his life for? This video will seek to answer some of these questions, while also
providing a broad overview of some of the key events in James Connolly’s remarkable life.
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by sharing these videos around on social media. James Connolly fought for the liberation of the
working class every day of his life. Born on the 5th of June, 1868, into the slums
of the Cowgate in Edinburgh, Scotland to Irish migrant working parents from county Monaghan,
Connolly grew up in what was affectionately called ‘little Ireland’,
a deeply impoverished emigrant Irish Community, which gave him a deep love for
his oppressed country, and a burning hatred of the class system from a very early age. Leaving
school for working life at just 11 years of age, Connolly was thrown into the world of
workers fighting against exploitative bosses just to earn enough to eke out an existence.
Even from these early days, the young Connolly would have been influenced by Socialist ideas
and the emerging truths of Marxism, as his brother John was a committed Socialist,
and active in Scottish Socialism, later becoming Secretary of the Scottish Socialist Federation.
However, at aged just 14, to escape the abject poverty forced on the Irish Community in Scotland,
Connolly lied about his age and his name and enlisted in the British Army. Serving with the 2nd
Battalion of the Royal Scottish Regiment, Connolly was deployed to Ireland. This would become an
important factor in determining the course of his life. While serving in the British Army in Ireland
during a period known as the land war, when the masses of Irish tenant farmers rose up in
resistance against the absentee English landlords who claimed ownership of the majority of the
land in Ireland, Connolly’s class politics were reinforced, and his hatred of British Imperialism
and the British Army was galvanised. It was during this time, while still in his formative years,
that Connolly’s love for Ireland and her oppressed people grew into a passion,
a passion to end the centuries of colonial occupation and exploitation. While in Ireland
at this time, Connolly also met and fell in love with Lilly Reynolds, a working-class protestant
Republican from Wicklow. In many ways it is to Lilly that we owe the teachings of James Connolly,
because it was her who first taught him to read, and then to write in a thoroughly engaging style
that he would later put to use with such effect when explaining the complex political positions
of Socialism, Republicanism and Revolutionary Marxism to the Irish Working Class, and outlining
how they all went hand-in-hand in application to the particular conditions of Ireland.
On hearing that his regiment was to be deployed to India, Connolly deserted the British Army and
returned to Scotland, where Lily joined him and the two were married in 1890.
Connolly threw himself into the Scottish Socialist movement, becoming active in the Scottish
Socialist Federation like his brother. Now able to read and write, Connolly dived into the serious
study of Marx, Engels and Revolutionary theory. Desmond Greaves wrote that ‘The main textbooks
of his early years were the Communist Manifesto, Wage Labour and Capital, Value Price and Profit
(all of Marx), and the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels.’ He also began to engage in a serious
study of Irish Revolutionary History and became deeply committed to the ideas of Wolfe Tone,
Robert Emmet and James Fintan Lalor. Connolly understood that the colonial oppression of
Ireland was a manifestation of class oppression and that the fight for freedom in Ireland was
both the class and the national struggle. In order to better formulise his ideas,
Connolly founded the Scottish Socialist newspaper, The Socialist, and became its first editor.
However, he longed to return to Ireland to play a role in building the Revolutionary
Movement there. So, when a job as the full-time secretary of the Dublin Socialist Club arose,
paying one pound a week, Connolly jumped at the opportunity and returned to Ireland in 1896.
Now, one of the key reasons that Connolly is so important today is that he synthesized
the Revolutionary Ideology of Irish Socialist Republicanism, which is the Marxist scientific
socialist method applied to the concrete conditions of Ireland as a guide to action
and a roadmap to victory. On commencing his role with the Dublin Socialist Club,
Connolly immediately began agitating for Irish Socialist Republicanism, arguing that the Class
and National struggle in Ireland were one and the same fight and could not be separated;
that the working class could only rise to power by first waging the successful national liberation
struggle. As an occupied and oppressed colony, these ideas, building on the earlier positions
of Jemmy Hope and Fintan Lalor struck a chord with a section of the advanced working class,
and Connolly quickly found a following. It was through the Dublin Socialist Club
that Connolly was able to agitate for another one of his key ideas, the establishment of a Marxist
Party. By now a committed and articulate Marxist, Connolly believed with Marx and Engels that the
working class must have their own independent fighting organisations. He believed that the Class
and National struggle must be led by a Marxist Party that itself was the organised vanguard of
the Working Class. In fact, Connolly at this point was arguing that the National struggle in Ireland
could only be successful under Working-Class leadership. The ideas being put forward by
Connolly at this time parallel those of Lenin, demonstrating the universal truth of Marxism,
that two Great Revolutionary Leaders on opposite sides of the world were coming
to the same revolutionary conclusions at much the same time, independently of one another,
based on the applications of Marxism to the concrete conditions of their own countries.
Connolly’s argument was a convincing one. At a meeting at Pierce Ryan’s Pub on Thomas Street
in Dublin in May 1896, the Dublin Socialist Club accepted Connolly’s Motion to establish a Marxist
Party and the Irish Socialist Republican Party was born. Connolly had given the Irish Working
Class their First Weapon of the Revolution. The new Party, under Connolly’s leadership
began to agitate not only for complete Irish Independence from Britain, but the establishment
of an Irish Socialist Republic, and were the first organisation to do so. The application of Marxism
to Ireland was clear from the First manifesto of the Party, written by Connolly, which declared,
‘That the subjection of one nation to another, as of Ireland to the authority of the British Crown,
is a barrier to the free political and economic development of the subjected nation,
and can only serve the interests of the exploiting classes of both nations. That, therefore,
the national and economic freedom of the Irish people must be sought in the same direction,
viz., the establishment of an Irish Socialist Republic, and the consequent conversion of
the means of production, distribution, and exchange into the common property of society,
to be held and controlled by a democratic state in the interests of the entire community.’
With Connolly as a full-time organiser, the new party established branches in Dublin,
Belfast, Cork, Limerick and Naas, County Kildare, and launched a revolutionary newspaper called
‘The Workers Republic’ to propagate the ideas of Irish Socialist Republicanism.
Unfortunately, however, Connolly’s wages weren’t always forthcoming from the party, and with a
growing family existing just above destitution, he was forced to emigrate to America to find work.
Connolly remained active in the Marxist Movement in America, first working as an organiser with
Daniel De Leon, before becoming a founding member of the Industrial Workers of the World as well
as a full-time organiser. But the Revolutionary Movement in Ireland was still his driving passion,
and Connolly established the Irish Socialist Federation in America to promote the cause of
the independent Irish Socialist Republic among the large and ever-growing Irish emigrant community
there. While in America, Connolly continued to deepen his study of Revolutionary theory and how
it applied to the conditions in Ireland. It was no surprise then that following the establishment
of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union by Jim Larkin in 1909 as an independent,
militant Irish trade Union, that Connolly jumped at the chance to return to Ireland
to take up organising work once more. Connolly returned to Ireland in 1910
and moved to Belfast to organise the new, militant trade union. Promoting Socialist Republicanism
and non-sectarianism, Connolly had success in recruiting both Catholics and Protestants in
Belfast to the workers’ union and had significant success in winning a dock strike in the city.
It was also in 1910 that Connolly published his masterpiece, and perhaps still the most important
Marxist text written in Ireland, ‘Labour in Irish History’, in which he uses the Marxist method of
historical materialism to chart the course of Irish History and bring forward the leading role
of the working class in the fight for freedom. The book became a Socialist Republican bible of sorts,
establishing Connolly as both a major Marxist thinker on the international stage,
and as a great leader at home within the Irish Revolution. In this text Connolly asserts
what has become a fundamental position of the revolutionary struggle in Ireland, that ‘only the
Irish working class remain as the incorruptible inheritors of the fight for freedom in Ireland.’
In 1913, the ITGWU became a household name when Jim Larkin led the workers of Dublin in a mammoth
fight for Union recognition. The ITGWU’s militancy and successful use of the sympathetic strike
caused the capitalist class to both fear and hate the union. In August of that year, William Martin
Murphy, the leader of a gang of 400 bosses, issued an ultimatum to the workers that they must give an
undertaking not to be members of the ITGWU, or they would be denied work. Larkin and the Dublin
Working Class went to war with the bosses, leading to 20,000 workers being locked out of employment.
Street battles with the police and scabs followed, and even the British Army were
used against the Dublin Working Class. Following the arrest of Larkin, Connolly
came from Belfast to Dublin to take leadership and announced the formation of the Irish Citizen Army,
as a Working-Class defence force. In a quote often attributed to Lenin,
the ICA has been described as ‘the First Red Army in Europe’. With the establishment of the ICA,
Connolly had given the Irish Working Class their Second Weapon of the Revolution.
Under Connolly’s leadership, the ICA quickly moved from a defence force to a
Socialist Republican Army, and following their establishment, the police never attacked the
workers during the lockout again. The ICA prevented evictions, targeted exploitative
bosses and trained men and women in equal standing to play a part in the Revolution.
The Constitution of the ICA published in 1914 makes clear its Socialist Republican credentials.
It asserts that, ‘The first and last principle of the Irish Citizen Army is the avowal that
the ownership of Ireland, moral and material, is vested of right in the people of Ireland’.
With the outbreaks of Imperialist war in Europe, Connolly demonstrated his importance as a true
Marxist Revolutionary when he broke with the cowardice of the Second International and called
on the working classes of Europe to oppose the Imperialist war through Revolution. Once again
Connolly and Lenin, despite geographical distance, found themselves advocating the same revolutionary
line. Applying this position to Ireland, Connolly and the ICA began to openly preach Revolution,
calling for an uprising against British Rule in Ireland to strike an international blow against
Imperialism, transforming the Imperialist War into Revolutionary War of liberation.
At the same time as Connolly was openly preaching Revolution, an underground Revolutionary
Republican Organisation, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, was secretly planning to use the
Imperialist war as an opportunity to launch an uprising against British Rule in Ireland, as they
understood that “England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity”. The IRB approached Connolly and the
ICA and these Revolutionary forces agreed to work together to fight the common enemy,
British Imperialism. Connolly joined the IRB’s Military Council to plan the uprising
and the Socialist Republican ICA entered into a broad united front with the petit bourgeois strand
of Irish Republicanism to stage a Revolution. In doing so, Connolly had now given the Irish Working
Class their Third Weapon of the Revolution This Revolutionary Front staged the 1916
Easter Rising, heroically rising up against British Imperialism and fighting relentlessly
from the 24th to the 29th of April against the then-largest empire in the entire world.
Connolly’s Marxist influence can again be seen in the 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic,
which declares ‘the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland’
and also ‘guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its
citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole
nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally’.
The 1916 Republic, under Connolly’s influence and leadership, would be the People’s Republic.
So, with this brief overview of Connolly’s extraordinary life and key revolutionary
contributions, it is a bit easier to see why British Imperialism felt compelled to
murder this already-dying man strapped to a chair by firing squad. They executed Connolly
because he was the 1916 Rising’s heart and soul: the Working-Class Marxist Hero
of the Irish Revolution. They executed him in an attempt to murder Irish Socialist
Republicanism and dismantle the Three Weapons of the Revolution generated under Connolly’s Great
Leadership. They executed him to kill militant trade unionism and the alternative working class
power structures that Connolly advocated. But they failed. While they may have killed
a man on the 12th of May, 1916, James Connolly Lives. Today, Irish Socialist Republicanism,
Connolly’s application of the Marxist scientific socialist method to the concrete conditions of
Ireland is the leading ideology of Revolutionary Republicanism. His writings remain as relevant
today as when they were written, demonstrating that the fundamental truth of the science of
Marxism runs through the veins of each and every Socialist Republican today. And the
name of James Connolly continues to be heard, and will continue to be heard, wherever Irish Workers
fight exploitation, even in England, in the belly of the Imperialist beast, where Connolly and his
Revolutionary ideology are being invoked today as a guide to action by striking rail workers.
They may have killed a man, but James Connolly lives.
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