James Connolly: A Short Biography
by
Lisa O’Reilly
James Connolly was born on June 5 1868, at 107,
the Cowgate, Edinburgh. His parents, John and Mary Connolly, had immigrated to
Edinburgh from County Monaghan in the 1850s. His father worked as a manure
carter, removing dung from the streets at night, and his mother was a domestic
servant who suffered from chronic bronchitis and was to die at an early age.
Anti-Irish feeling at the time in Scotland was very bad in fact Irish
immigrants were forced to live in the slums of the Cowgate and the Grassmarket
which became known as ‘Little Ireland’. Overcrowding, poverty, disease,
drunkenness and unemployment were extensive – the only jobs available was
selling second-hand clothes and working as a porter or a carter.
Connolly went to St Patricks School in the
Cowgate, as did his two older brothers, Thomas and John. At ten years of age,
he left school and got a job with Edinburgh’s Evening News newspaper, where he worked as a ‘Devil’, cleaning inky
rollers and fetching beer and food for the adult workers. His brother Thomas
also worked with the same newspaper. In 1882, aged 14, he joined the British
Army, then, as now, the last the army resort for those with ambitions to escape
a background of poverty. He was to remain for nearly seven years, all of it in
Ireland, where he witnessed first hand the terrible treatment of the Irish
people at the hands of the British. The mistreatment of the Irish by the
British and the landlords led to Connolly to form an intense hatred of the
British Army.
While he was in Ireland Connolly met a Protestant
named Lillie Reynolds. In 1888 they became engaged. He went back to Scotland
after discharging himself from the British Army. Connolly and Lillie Reynolds
married in Perth in 1890. After they married they moved to Edinburgh. Connolly
got a job with his father and brother as labourers. He then went on to work as
a manure carter on a casual and strictly temporary basis with Edinburgh
Corporation. “He became active in Socialist and trade union circles and became
secretary of the Scottish Socialist Federation almost by mistake”[1].
When this occurred, Connollys brother John was the secretary of the Federation.
However John was fired from his job and so James took up his job. After this he
became involved with the Independent Labour party which was formed in 1893 by a
man called Kerr Hardie.
Connolly
lost his job with the Corporation in 1894. In February 1895 he opened a Cobbler’s
shop which was not a financial success. In May 1896, Connolly was invited by
John Leslie –a Scottish Socialist to Dublin to work as paid organizer of the
Dublin Socialist Society for £1 a week. James, Lillie and their three
daughters, Mona, Aideen and Nora moved to Dublin in 1896. In May 1896 James
founded the Irish Socialist Republican Party. Connolly lived at 54 Pimlico Road
with his wife and three daughters. Also living there were six other families,
so there were a total of thirty people living in the same house. In 1898
Connolly went on a lecture and fund-raising tour. Before leaving Ireland, he
founded The Workers’ Republic Newspaper,
which was the first Irish Socialist paper. As part of this tour he spent five
months in the USA in 1902. When he returned to Dublin he discovered the Irish
Socialist Republican party existed in name only. He worked for the Scottish
District Federation when he returned to Edinburgh.
In 1903 Connolly chaired the inaugural meeting of
the Social Labour Party but when his party wasn’t going anywhere he decided to
immigrate to the US. He didn’t return to Ireland until seven years later in
1910. In America, Connolly was an outsider in the Irish-American communities
with their Catholic, conservative leadership. Whilst in the US he founded the
Irish Socialist Federation in New York and also another newspaper titled The Harp. This however failed soon after
it was launched.
Convinced that his American venture had been a
regrettable one. James returned to Ireland in 1910 and in June 1911 he became
Belfast organiser for James Larkin’s Irish Transport and General Workers Union.
The Labour Party was co-founded by Connolly in 1913. Later that year he and
James Larkin organized opposition to the Employers Federation in the 1913 Great
Lock-Out of workers that August. In late 1914 James Larkin travelled to the USA
for a lecture tour, leaving Connolly as the key figure in the Irish Labour
movement.
In the year before that, 1913 Connolly had also
co-founded the Irish Citizen Army (ICA) at Liberty hall. It was established to
defend the rights of the working people. Connolly returned to Dublin in October
1914. That December he revived the newspaper The Workers Republic and published articles on guerilla warfare in it.
He also continuously attacked the Irish Volunteers for their inactivity. The
IRB would not allow the ICA to have any input on its Provisional Committee.
By
this time the Irish Volunteers were 180,000 strong. Their leadership had urged
them to support England in the war against Germany. The leader of the Irish
Parliamentery Party was John Redmonds and half of the Provisional Committee of
the Irish Volunteers were his people. When the Irish Volunteers split, the
larger side sided with John Redmond. These became known as the National
Volunteers. Approximately 11,000 of the membership refused to join John Redmond
and remained in Ireland.
The Dublin Castle Authorities suppressed The Workers’ Republic newspaper in
Febraury 1915. At the same time the Irish Republican Brotherhood had become
alarmed by Connollys ICA manoeuvres in Dublin in January 1916. They were also
shocked at Connollys impatience at the visible lack of preparations for a
rising and the IRB decided to take Connolly into their confidence. During the
next few months Connolly took part in the preparation for a rising. James
Connolly was appointed Military Commander of the Republican Forces in Dublin,
which included his own Irish Citizen Army.
Throughout Easter week Connolly was based at the
Republican HQ at the GPO. Here he was severely injured. Following the
surrender, he was arrested and court-martialled. Connolly was propped up in bed
before a court-martial on May 9, 1916. He was sentenced to die by firing squad.
At that time he was being held in the military hospital in Dublin Castle. On
May 10 William Martin Murphy who had led the employers in the Great Lock-Out of
workers in 1913 urged the British Government to execute Connolly in a leading
article in the Irish Independent.
Connolly was taken by ambulance from Dublin Castle to Kilmainham Jail. He was
carried into the prison yard on a stretcher. He was then strapped into a chair
in a corner of the yard. He was then executed by firing squad. Connolly’s body
was then taken to the British military cemetery in neighboring Arbour Hill
Prison, as were the other 14 executed leaders. There, he was buried without a
coffin in a mass quicklime grave.
In the last statement the night before he died
Connolly said; Believing that the British Government has no right in Ireland,
never had any right in Ireland, and never can have any right in Ireland, the
presence, in any one generation of Irishmen, of even a respectable minority,
ready to die to affirm that truth, makes that Government for ever a usurpation
and a crime against human progress. I personally thank God that I have lived to
see the day when thousands of Irish men and boys, and, hundreds of Irish women
and girls, were ready to affirm that truth, and to attest it with their lives
if needs be.
Short Questions
Q1. Long Review of a source.
One of the books used for this essay was The Easter Rebellion by Max Caulfield.This book provides a
concise account of the Easter Rising. It was a good source because it was
highly readable and very informative. The topic has a human feel which most
history books seem to exclude in recording the events. You would struggle to
find a book of similar size that contained so much history. It also contained
information about Connollys role in the rising.
Q2. Short Review.
One of the
books that I used for this project was Modern
Irish lives by Louis McRedmond. This book was published by Gill and
Macmillan in Dublin in 1996.
As the title suggests
the book contains information on the lives of anyone who played a significant
role in Irish History in modern times. I found it a good source for the
following reasons;
1. It was written in a clear and easy to
understand form,
2. It covered Connolly’s life in good detail and
3. I was able to read about other people who
played a part at this time in History, e.g. James Larkin.
Q3 Bibliography.
Reeve, C and Reeve B.A. James Connolly and the United States, Humanities Press, INC.
Atlantics Highlands, New Jersey 1978.
Litton, H. Irish
Rebellions. Wolfhound Press Ltd., Dublin, 1998.
Caulfield, M. The
Easter Rebellion, Gill and Macmillan Ltd., Dublin, 1995.
Ward, J, A. The
Easter Rising, Harlan Davidson,
2003.
McRedmond, L. Modern
Irish Lives. Gill and Macmillan Ltd., 1996.
Brady, C. Encyclopedia
of Ireland, Helicon Publishing Ltd., Oxford, 2000.
Bouillon, H. A
Dictionary of Irish biography. Gill and Macmillan, Dublin 1999.
Q4. Skills
Two Skills that we learnt doing this project
were:
1. Computer Skills; I learnt how to use Microsoft
Word, how to use the Internet to find information and how to print out documents.
2. I learned how to write Leaving Certificate essays
properly using footnotes, and bibliography at the end (a list of books).
Q5. Reasons for studying this topic.
Two
reasons for studying this topic are as follows;
1. James
Connolly played a very important role in the 1916 Rising and
2. He
had a varied and intresting life prior
to this.