View source for James Connolly

{{Short description|Irish republican, trade unionist and revolutionary (1868–1916)}}
{{Other people}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=March 2022}}
{{Use Hiberno-English|date=December 2021}}
{{Infobox person
| image              = James_Connolly2.jpg
| alt                = A side view black-and-white photo of Connelly in a suit
| caption            = 
| birth_date         = {{Birth date|1868|6|5|df=y}}
| birth_place        = [[Cowgate]], [[Edinburgh]], Scotland
| death_date         = {{Death date and age|1916|5|12|1868|6|5|df=y}}
| death_place        = [[Kilmainham Gaol]], [[Dublin]], Ireland
| death_cause        = [[Execution by firing squad]]
| organization       = {{plainlist|
*[[Industrial Workers of the World]] (1905–1910)
*[[Irish Transport and General Workers Union]] (1910−1916)}}
| spouse             = {{marriage|[[Lillie Connolly]]|1890}}
| children           = 7, including [[Nora Connolly O'Brien|Nora]] and [[Roddy Connolly|Roddy]]
| party              = {{plainlist|
*[[Scottish Socialist Federation]]/[[Social Democratic Federation|SDF]] (1892−1903)
*[[Independent Labour Party]] (1893–1895)
*[[Irish Socialist Republican Party]] (1896–1904)
*[[Socialist Labor Party of America]] (1903–1908)
*[[Irish Socialist Federation]] (1904–1910)
*[[Socialist Party of America]] (1908–1910)
*[[Socialist Party of Ireland (1904)|Socialist Party of Ireland]] (1910–1914)
*[[Labour Party (Ireland)|Irish Labour Party]] (1912–1916)}}
| module             = {{Infobox military person
   |embed         = yes
   |embed_title   = Military service
   |allegiance    = 
   |branch        = {{Ubl|[[British Army]]|[[Irish Citizen Army]]|[[Irish Republic]]}}
      |serviceyears  = {{ubl|British Army (1882 to 1889)|Irish Citizen Army (1913 to 1916)}}
   |rank          = [[Commandant-general|Commandant General]] (Irish Republic, 1916)
   |battles       = [[Land War]] (speculated) <br> [[1886 Belfast Riots]] (speculated) <br> [[Easter Rising]]
   |placeofburial = [[Arbour Hill Prison]], Dublin
  }}
}}

'''James Connolly''' ({{langx|ga|Séamas Ó Conghaile}};<ref>Ó Cathasaigh, Aindrias. 1996. ''An Modh Conghaileach: Cuid sóisialachais Shéamais Uí Chonghaile''. Dublin: Coiscéim, ''[[passim]]''</ref> 5 June 1868 – 12 May 1916) was a [[Scottish people|Scottish]]-born [[Irish republicanism|Irish republican]], [[socialist]], and [[trade union]] leader, executed for his part in the [[Easter Rising|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 [[Crown of the United Kingdom|Britain's Crown]] and [[Parliament of the United Kingdom|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 De Leon|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|Irish Transport and General Workers Union]], first in [[Belfast]] and then in [[Dublin]].

In Belfast, he was frustrated in his efforts to draw [[Protestantism in Ireland|Protestant]] workers into an all-Ireland labour and socialist movement but, in the wake of the [[Dublin lock-out|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.

Alongside [[Patrick Pearse]], Connolly commanded the insurrection in Easter of that year from rebel garrison holding [[General Post Office, Dublin|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,<ref name=":6">{{Cite book |last=Levenson |first=Samuel |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=atIuAAAAIAAJ&q=%22james+connolly%22++%22Little+Ireland%22. |title=James Connolly: a biography |publisher=Martin Brian and O'Keeffe |year=1973 |isbn=978-0-85616-130-8 |location=London |page=}}</ref>{{rp|28}} both Irish immigrants from [[Ulster]]. His mother was from [[Ballymena]], [[County Antrim]] and his father from [[County Monaghan]]. He spoke with a Scottish accent his entire life.<ref name=":452">Donal Nevin. 2005. ''James Connolly: A Full Life'', Dublin: Gill and Macmillan; {{ISBN|0-7171-3911-5}}</ref>{{rp|636}}

Relying on his biographer [[C. Desmond Greaves|Desmond Greaves]], most accounts of his life suggest that it was with the [[British Army]] that Connolly first came to Ireland. Greaves reports that Connolly reminisced about being on military guard duty in [[Cork Harbour]] on the night in December 1882 when [[Maolra Seoighe]] was hanged for the Maamtrasna massacre (the apparent feud killing of a peasant family).<ref name=":032" />{{rp|26}} This might suggest that, having been listed in the [[1881 United Kingdom census|census of the previous year]] as a 12-year old baker's apprentice,<ref name=":452" />{{rp|7}} Connolly, following his brother John into the military, had falsified his age and name to enlist in the 1st Battalion, [[King's Regiment (Liverpool)|King’s Liverpool Regiment]]  (recruited heavily from the Irish in Britain). If so, it is possible that Connolly also saw service in [[County Meath]] during the [[Land War (Ireland)|Land War]] and in [[Belfast]] during the town's deadly [[1886 Belfast riots|sectarian riots in 1886]].<ref>{{Cite web |date=2017-07-31 |title=James Connolly's time as a British soldier, some new evidence |url=https://treasonfelony.wordpress.com/2017/07/31/james-connollys-time-as-a-british-soldier-some-new-evidence/ |access-date=2024-04-22 |website=The Treason Felony Blog |language=en}}</ref>  But absent documentation of his military service, this is a matter of speculation.<ref name="DIB2">{{Cite book |last=McCabe |first=Conor |title=The Lost & Early Writings of James Connolly, 1889 -1898 |publisher=Iskra Books |year=2024 |isbn=9798330435319 |location=Dublin |pages=374}}</ref> According to Nora, her father left the army in February 1889 and returned to Scotland.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=MacEoin |first=Uinseann |url=https://archive.org/details/survivors-uinseann-mac-eoin/page/183/mode/2up?view=theater |title=Survivors: the story of Ireland's struggle as told through some of her outstanding living people ... |publisher=Agenta Publications |year=1980 |location=Dublin |pages=184}}</ref> 

In Dublin, Connolly had met [[Lillie Connolly|Lillie Reynolds]], and in the New Year, 1890, she followed him to Scotland where, with special dispensation (Reynolds was [[Protestantism in Ireland|Protestant]]) they married in a Catholic church.<ref name=":92">{{Cite book |last=Morgan |first=Austen |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8zToAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA14 |title=James Connolly : a political biography |publisher=Manchester University Press |year=1990 |isbn=978-0-7190-2958-5 |location=Manchester |page=}}</ref>{{rp|15}}

== Socialist republican ==
{{quote box|width=30em|After Ireland is free, says the patriot who won't touch Socialism, we will protect all classes, and if you won't pay your rent you will be evicted same as now. But the evicting party, under command of the sheriff, will wear green uniforms and the [[Coat of arms of Ireland|Harp without the Crown]], and the warrant turning you out on the roadside will be stamped with the arms of the Irish Republic.|source=James Connolly, in ''Workers' Republic'', 1899}}

=== Scottish Socialist Federation ===
Again following his brother John, in 1890 Connolly joined the [[Scottish Socialist Federation]], and succeeded his brother as its secretary in 1893. Largely a propaganda organisation, the Federation supported [[Keir Hardie]] and his [[Independent Labour Party]] (for which Connolly also served as the Edinburgh branch secretary)<ref name=":25" />{{rp|8}} in the campaign for labour representation in Parliament.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Johnson |first=Michael |date=2016 |title=How Connolly became a socialist {{!}} Workers' Liberty |url=https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2017-07-26/how-connolly-became-socialist |access-date=2024-04-05 |website=www.workersliberty.org |language=en}}</ref>

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.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Young |first=James D. |date=1993 |title=John Leslie, 1856–1921: A Scottish-Irishman As Internationalist |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23197307 |journal=Saothar |volume=18 |pages=55–61 [55–56] |jstor=23197307 |issn=0332-1169}}</ref>

In 1896, after the birth of his third daughter, and having lost, while standing for election to the city-council, his municipal carter's job, and then failed as a [[Shoemaking|cobbler]], 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.<ref name=":452" />{{rp|47-48}}

=== Irish Socialist Republican Party ===
In Dublin, where he first became a navvy and then a proof reader, Connolly soon split the Socialist Club, forming in its stead the [[Irish Socialist Republican Party]] (ISRP).<ref>{{Cite news |last=Hadden |first=Peter |date=Apr–May 2006 |title=The real ideas of James Connolly |url=http://www.socialismtoday.org/100/connolly.html |access-date=28 April 2011 |magazine=Socialism Today |publisher=Socialist Party (England and Wales) |location=London |issue=100}}</ref> In what was then, in 1897, the "literary centre of advanced nationalism",<ref name=":10">{{Cite book |last=Metscher |first=Priscilla |url=https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/149124/connolly.pdf;sequence=1 |title=James Connolly and the reconquest of Ireland |publisher=MEP Publications, University of Minnesota |year=2002 |isbn=0-930656-74-1 |location=Minneapolis |pages=}}</ref>{{rp|44}} [[Alice Milligan|Alice Milligan's]] Belfast monthly, ''[[The Shan Van Vocht]]'', he published a first statement of the party credo, [https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1897/01/socnat.htm "Socialism and Nationalism"]", This suggested that, even if a step toward formal independence, the legislature that the [[Irish Parliamentary Party]] wished to see restored in Dublin would be a mockery of Irish national aspirations.<blockquote>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.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Connolly |first1=James |date=January 1897 |title=Socialism and Nationalism |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1897/01/socnat.htm |journal=Shan van Vocht |volume=1 |issue=1 |access-date=26 January 2021}}</ref></blockquote>By the same token, Connolly implied that there was little to be expected from the "Irish Language movements, Literary Societies or [<nowiki/>[[Irish Rebellion of 1798|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 "to-hell-with-the-British-empire"<ref>{{Cite web |last3=6 February 2016 |date=2016-02-08 |title=1916 lives: Passionate words by James Connolly gave hope to many |url=https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-20380560.html |access-date=2024-04-21 |website=Irish Examiner |language=en}}</ref> protests against [[Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria|Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee]] and the [[Second Boer War|Boer War]]).<ref name=":6" />{{rp|51, 66–69}} 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|Celtic Revival's]] "chief enemy".<ref>{{Cite news |last=Connolly |first=James |date=October 1, 1898 |title=The Language Movement |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1898/10/language.htm |work=The Workers’ Republic}}</ref><ref name=":10" />{{rp|17}} 

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 (newspaper)|Sinn Féin]]''),<ref name="Stokes">{{cite web |last1=Stokes |first1=Tom |title=Tag Archives: Shan Van Vocht: A Most Seditious Lot: The Feminist Press 1896–1916 |url=https://theirishrepublic.wordpress.com/tag/shan-van-vocht/ |access-date=26 January 2021 |website=The Irish Republic}}</ref> confined her response to Connolly's ambition to contest [[Palace of Westminster|Westminster]] elections. Were the ISRP successful, she predicted "an alliance with the English Labour" no less debilitating than the courtship of English [[Liberal Party (UK)|Liberals]] had proved for the [[Irish Parliamentary Party]].<ref name="Steele 12">{{cite book |last1=Steele |first1=Karen |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bAG_MyaeT14C |title=Women, Press, and Politics During the Irish Revival |date=2007 |publisher=Syracuse University Press |isbn=9780815631170 |location=Syracuse, New York |pages=39–40, 44–45 |access-date=31 January 2021}}</ref> In the event, Ireland's first socialist party, garnering only a few hundred votes, failed to elect Connolly to [[Dublin City Council]] and never exceeded more than 80 active members.<ref>Lynch, David (2005), ''Radical Politics in Modern Ireland – A History of the Irish Socialist Republican Party 1896–1904.'' Dublin: Irish Academic Press. {{ISBN|978-0716533566}}</ref>

Connolly was dispirited and at odds with the ISRP's other leading light, [[E. W. Stewart]], manager of the party's paper, ''The Worker's Republic'' and also sometime candidate for the city council. He accused Stewart of "reformism",<ref name=":452" />{{rp|209–212}} of failing to appreciate that "the election of a socialist to any public body is only valuable insofar as it is the return of a disturber of the public peace”.<ref name=":032">{{cite book |last1=Greaves |first1=C. Desmond |url= |title=The Life and Times of James Connolly |date=1972 |publisher=Lawrence and Wishart |isbn=978-0853152347 |edition=2nd |location=London |pages= |access-date=}}</ref>{{rp|63}} In 1900, Connolly had supported the American [[Marxist]] [[Daniel De Leon]] in condemning the decision in [[French Third Republic|France]] by the socialist [[Alexandre Millerand|Alexander Millerand]], at the height of the [[Dreyfus affair|Dreyfus Affair]], to accept a post in [[Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau]]’s government of “Republican Defence”.<ref name=":032" />{{rp|131–133}}

== Union and party organiser ==
=== America: Industrial Workers of the World ===
[[File:James_Connolly_addresses_crowd_in_NYC,_1908.jpg|left|thumb|Connolly addresses a crowd of 8,000, New York City, [[May Day]], 1908]]
In September 1902, at the invitation of De Leon's [[Socialist Labor Party of America|Socialist Labor Party]], Connolly departed for a four-month lecture tour of the United States. Addressing largely [[Irish Americans|Irish-American]] audiences, he emphasised that he spoke for class, not country:<blockquote>I represent only the class to which I belong…I could not represent the entire Irish people on account of the antagonistic interests of these classes, no more than the wolf could represent the lambs or the fisherman the fish.<ref name=":032" />{{rp|149}}</blockquote>On his return, Connolly had his resignation from the IRSP accepted without demur.<ref name=":032" />{{rp|99}} He returned to Scotland for the [[Social Democratic Federation]], where, after witnessing the organisation's expulsion of "De Leonists", he decided on a future in America.<ref name=":032" />{{rp|166–167}}

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 the [[Socialist Labor Party of America|Socialist Labor Party]], he had returned to political work. With De Leon's endorsement, he was an organiser for the [[Industrial Workers of the World]] (IWW), the "[[One Big Union (concept)|One Big Union]]".<ref name=":032" />{{rp|61-62}}

Finding employment with the [[Singer Sewing Machine Company|Singer Sewing Machine]] in [[Elizabeth, New Jersey]], and living in [[The Bronx]], he befriended the young [[Elizabeth Gurley Flynn]] (daughter of a neighbouring couple from [[Galway]]),<ref name=":73">{{Cite journal |last=O'Donnell |first=L. A. |date=1987 |title=Irish Yeast in Trade Unions |url=https://motherjonescork.com/2019/03/19/james-connollys-encounter-with-mother-jones-in-new-york/ |journal=Talkin' Union |issue=16}}</ref> who was to become the "Wobblies" chief agitator among the largely immigrant women of the east-coast textile industry.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Meagher |first=Meredith |date=2013 |title=The girl orator of the Bowery: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Ireland and the Industrial Workers of the World |url=https://www.historyireland.com/the-girl-orator-of-the-bowery-elizabeth-gurley-flynn-ireland-and-the-industrial-workers-of-the-world/ |access-date=2024-04-21 |website=History Ireland}}</ref> Together they were supported by [[Mother Jones]], "America’s Most Dangerous Woman”,<ref name=":82">{{Cite book |last1=Brundage |first1=David |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tix2CwAAQBAJ&q=irish+socialist+federation&pg=PA135 |title=Irish Nationalists in America: The Politics of Exile, 1798–1998 |date=2016 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=9780199715824 |page=135}}</ref> the Wobblies' co-founder and a veteran organiser for the [[United Mine Workers of America|United Mine Workers]] whom Connolly had learnt to admire from Ireland.<ref name=":73" />

With Flynn, and with ex-ILP member [[Patrick L. Quinlan]], in 1907 Connolly formed the [[Irish Socialist Federation]] (ISF) to promote the SLP's message among Irish immigrants. It had branches in [[New York City]] and [[Chicago]], and Connolly edited its weekly the ''Harp''.<ref name=":82" /><ref name=":92"/>{{rp|67–70}}

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".<ref name=":20"/>{{rp|28}}  In April 1908, and after a bitter dispute in which De Leon accused him of being a police spy,<ref name=":032" />{{rp|63}} Connolly left the SLP, and at its Chicago conference, the IWW expelled the party.<ref name=":92"/>{{rp|67}} In the new year, together with Mother Jones,<ref name=":73" /> Connolly and the ISF affiliated with the [[Socialist Party of America]],<ref name=":1722">{{Cite book |last=Collins |first=Lorcan |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_W6NAwAAQBAJ |title=James Connolly: 16 Lives |date=2013 |publisher=The O'Brien Press |isbn=978-1-84717-609-7 |pages=146–148 |language=en}}</ref> a broader coalition more tolerant of their revolutionary [[syndicalism]].<ref name=":1722"/>

=== ITGWU leader in Belfast ===
[[File:Belfast Mill Workers early 1900s.jpg|thumb|Belfast mill workers early 1900s|231x231px]]
Through the ISF Connolly re-established links with socialists in Ireland, and in January 1910 he transferred the production of the ''Harp'' to Dublin, although it was to survive only until June. Until 1914, Connolly's principal outlet was to be ''The Forward'', a weekly of the Glasgow ILP, which had a small circulation in Belfast.<ref name=":25" />{{rp|95}} In July, Connolly landed in Derry ostensibly on a speaking tour, but [[James Larkin]] soon persuaded the [[Socialist Party of Ireland (1904)|Socialist Party of Ireland]] (SPI) to raise the additional funds that would enable Connolly's family to join him.<ref>{{Cite web |last=D'Arcy |first=Fergus |date=2009 |title=James Connolly |url=https://www.dib.ie/biography/connolly-james-a1953 |access-date=2025-01-05 |website=Dictionary of Irish Biography}}</ref> In January 1909, Larkin had established the [[Irish Transport and General Workers' Union|Irish Transport and General Workers Union]], his own model of the [[One Big Union (concept)|One Big Union]].<ref name=":92"/>{{rp|112}}  The same year, 1911, in which Connolly's occupation was listed on the [[1911 census of Ireland|census return]] as "National Organiser Socialist Party,<ref>{{cite web |title=Census of Ireland 1911 |url=http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/reels/nai000119513/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180424215517/http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/reels/nai000119513/ |archive-date=24 April 2018 |access-date=2017-05-28 |website=Census.nationalarchives.ie}}</ref> 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, troops had been deployed in 1907 to break strikes Larkin had called among dock labourers, carters and other casual and general workers. Four years later, Connolly succeeded in bringing dockers out in sympathy with striking cross-channel seamen, and in the process to secure a pay increase.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ryan |first=William Patrick |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=u_qBjR5CJWkC |title=The Irish Labor Movement: From the 'twenties to Our Own Day |date=1919 |publisher=Talbot Press |pages=193–194 |language=en}}</ref> ITGWU membership grew, and Connolly was approached by women toiling in Belfast's largest industry, [[linen]].<ref name=":10" />{{rp|109–113}}

The [[Sweated labour|sweated trade]] engaged thousands of women and girls both in mills and, unprotected by the [[Factory Acts]], as [[outworker]]s. A [[Belfast Trades Council]] sponsored Textile Operatives Society, led by [[Mary Galway]],<ref>{{Cite web |last=Clarke |first=Frances |date=2009 |title=Galway, Mary {{!}} Dictionary of Irish Biography |url=https://www.dib.ie/biography/galway-mary-a3413 |access-date=2024-03-13 |website=www.dib.ie |language=en}}</ref> concentrated only on the better-paid Protestant women in the making-up sections. In response to the speeding up of production in the mills and, relatedly, the fining of workers for such new offences as laughing, whispering and bringing in sweets (the creation, in Connolly words, of "an atmosphere of slavery"),<ref name=":11">{{Cite book |last=Ó Faoláin |first=Seán |title=Constance Markievicz or The Average Revolutionary |publisher=Jonathan Cape |year=1934 |pages=}}</ref>{{rp|152}} thousands of spinners went out on strike.

As they did not yet have the union organisation and the strike funds to sustain the action, Connolly persuaded the women to return to work and apply tactics he had learned as an organiser for the IWW. They should collectively defy the rules, so that "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".<ref name=":11" />{{rp|152}}<ref name=":10" />{{rp|112}} He then sought to capitalise on the relative success of the tactic by building up, first with [[Marie Johnson (suffragist)|Marie Johnson]] and then [[Winifred Carney]] as its secretary, a new{{snd}}effectively women's{{snd}}section of the ITGWU, the Irish Textile Workers' Union (ITWU).<ref name=":722">{{Cite book |last=Woggon |first=Helga |url= |title=Silent Radical – Winifred Carney, 1887–1943: A Reconstruction of Her Biography |date=2000 |publisher=SIPTU, Irish Labour History Society |pages=11–12 |language=en}}</ref>

In June 1913, while claiming that "the ranks of the Irish Textile Workers’ Union are being recruited by hundreds",<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Connolly |first=James |date=7 June 1913 |title=The Awakening of Ulster's Democracy |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1913/06/awaken.htm |journal=Forward}}</ref> with Carney, Connolly produced a ''[https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1913/xx/linslavs.htm Manifesto to the Linen Slaves of Belfast] (''1913).<ref name=":132">{{Cite web |title=Winifred Carney – A Century Of Women |url=https://www.acenturyofwomen.com/winifred-carney |access-date=2024-03-09 |website=www.acenturyofwomen.com |language=en}}</ref> It revealed their frustration as organisers: if the world deplored their conditions, the women were told that it also deplored their "slavish and servile nature in submitting to them".<ref name=":52">{{Cite journal |last=Greiff |first=Mats |date=1997 |title='Marching Through The Streets Singing And Shouting': Industrial Struggle And Trade Unions Among Female Linen Workers In Belfast And Lurgan, 1872–1910 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23198640 |journal=Saothar |volume=22 |pages=29–44 |jstor=23198640 |issn=0332-1169}}</ref>''{{rp|29}}'' The Textile Workers' membership may not have greatly exceeded the 300 subscribed under Johnson in Catholic west Belfast.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Callan |first=Charles |date=2009 |title=Labour lives no. 11: Marie Johnson (1874–1974) |url=https://www.irishlabourhistorysociety.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/LL-11-M-Johnson.pdf |journal=Soathar |volume=34 |pages=113–115}}</ref><ref name=":92"/>''{{rp|99}}'' To Carney, Connolly conceded that the union's survival was largely a matter of "keeping the [[Falls Road, Belfast|Falls Road]] crowd together".<ref name=":722" />

[[Orange Order|Orangism]], in which Connolly had seen a "glorified representation" of the tradesman's contempt for the unskilled,<ref name=":25" />{{rp|111}}was reinvigorated by the return of [[Irish Home Rule movement|Home Rule]] to the political agenda (from 1910, a [[Liberal government, 1905–1915|Liberal government]] was again dependent on Irish votes). When, in the summer of 1912, a Home Rule Bill was introduced, [[Ulster loyalism|loyalists]] forced some 3,000 workers out of the shipyards and engineering plants: in addition to Catholics, 600 Protestants targeted for their non-sectarian labour politics.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Morgan |first=Austen |url= |title=Labour and Partition: The Belfast Working Class, 1905-1923 |date=1991 |publisher=Pluto Press |isbn=978-0-7453-0326-0 |location=London |pages=127–139 |language=en}}</ref> In this environment, Connolly found himself increasingly confined to organising, and to addressing meetings, in the Catholic districts of the city.<ref name=":92"/>''{{rp|103–104}}'' Even here he was pursued by what he described as "social and religious terrorism".<ref name=":7">{{Cite journal |last=Connolly |first=James |date=1911 |title=Mr. John E. Redmond, M.P.. His Strength and Weakness |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1911/03/redmond.htm |journal=Forward |issue=18 March}}</ref>

Connolly had to find some "corner of the Catholic ghetto outside the political preserve of [[Joseph Devlin]] [[Member of Parliament (United Kingdom)|MP".]]<ref name=":92"/>{{rp|103}} Although a sometime ally (Devlin initiated [[Home Office]] inquiry into conditions in the linen mills),<ref name=":92"/>{{rp|99}} the [[Belfast West (UK Parliament constituency)|Belfast West]] MP was leader both of those Connolly viewed as "the conservatives of a belated Irish capitalism", the [[United Irish League]], and those who he dismissed as "Green" [[Orange Order|Orangemen]], the [[Ancient Order of Hibernians]]. Together, Connolly found them capable of bringing "every species of intimidation and bribery . . . to bear upon Catholics who refused to bow to the dictates of the official Home Rule gang".<ref name=":7" />

=== Dublin lock-out ===
{{Main|Dublin lock-out|Irish Citizen Army|History of the Labour Party (Ireland)}}[[File:1913lockout.jpg|thumb|[[Dublin Metropolitan Police]] break up a union rally|left]]
On 29 August 1913, Larkin recalled Connolly to Dublin. The success of the ITGWU in signing up thousands of unskilled men and women had elicited a particularly aggressive reaction from employers. Beginning with, and led by, the owner of the tramway company, [[William Martin Murphy|William Murphy]], they dismissed those who refused to renounce the union and replaced them with [[Strikebreaker|scab labour]] brought in from elsewhere in the country or from Britain.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Yeates |first=Padraig |date=2013 |title=The Dublin 1913 Lockout |url=https://www.historyireland.com/the-dublin-1913-lockout/ |access-date=2024-04-16 |website=History Ireland}}</ref> By the end of September, the combination of the "lock out", the [[Solidarity action|sympathetic strikes]] Larkin called for in response, and their 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.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Higgins |first=Michael D. |author-link=Michael D. Higgins |date=2013 |title='The Task of Remembering the Lockout of 1913' Address to The Universities Ireland Conference |url=https://president.ie/index.php/en/media-library/speeches/president-higgins-delivers-the-task-of-remembering-the-lockout-of-1913 |access-date=2024-04-16 |publisher=Office of the President of Ireland |language=en}}</ref>

Early in the conflict Connolly freed himself from police detention through a week-long hunger strike, a tactic borrowed from the British [[Suffragette|suffragettes.]] However, from October Larkin was held on charges of sedition. This left Connolly to respond to an intercession by the [[Catholic Church in Ireland|Catholic Church]].<ref name=":15">{{Cite book |last=O'Callaghan |first=Sean |title=James Connolly: My Search for the Man, the Myth and his Legacy |publisher=Arrow Books |year=2016 |isbn=9781784751807 |location=London}}</ref>{{rp|65}}

In the hope of replicating a tactic that for [[Elizabeth Gurley Flynn]] had turned the tide in the recent, and celebrated, [[1912 Lawrence textile strike|textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts]],<ref>{{cite book |last=Watson |first=Bruce |title=Bread & Roses: Mills, Migrants, and the Struggle for the American Dream |publisher=Penguin Group |year=2005 |location=New York |pages=157–161}}</ref> [[Dora Montefiore]] had devised a children's "holiday scheme".<ref>{{Cite web |last=Montefiore |first=Dora |date=1913 |title=Our Fight to Save the Kiddies in Dublin: Smouldering Fires of the Inquisition |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/montefiore/1913/kiddies.htm |access-date=2022-10-25 |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref> The poorly nourished children of the locked-out and striking workers were to be billeted with sympathetic families in England<ref>{{Cite news |last=Moriarty |first=Therese |date=11 September 2013 |title=Saving kids, saving souls |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/saving-kids-saving-souls-1.1522272 |access-date=2022-10-25 |newspaper=The Irish Times |language=en}}</ref> On the grounds that their hosts were not guaranteed to be Catholic, the Church objected and Hibernian crowds gathered at the docks to prevent the children's "deportation".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Morrissey |first=Thomas J. |date=2013 |title=Archbishop Walsh and the 1913 Lock-Out |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23631179 |journal=Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review |volume=102 |issue=407 |pages=283–295 |jstor=23631179 |issn=0039-3495}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=23 October 1913 |title=Archbishop attacks 'export of Irish children' {{!}} Century Ireland |url=https://www.rte.ie/centuryireland/index.php/articles/archbishop-attacks-export-of-irish-children |access-date=2022-10-25 |website=www.rte.ie}}</ref> Connolly, who had been wary from the first, cancelled the scheme, but nonetheless sought to score a point against the [[Clericalism|clericalist]] opposition by telling his people to ask [[William Walsh (archbishop of Dublin)|the archbishop]] and priests for food and clothing.<ref name=":6" />{{rp|333}}

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|"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.<ref name=":10" />{{rp|142–143}}

After the ITGWU-controlled Dublin Socialist Party failed in the January 1914 municipal elections to register support for the strike<ref name=":54" />{{rp|163}} and the [[Trades Union Congress|Trade Union Congress]] in England had declined Larkin and Connolly's plea for railwaymen to embargo goods for Dublin and for further funding, the workers began to drift back, submitting to their employers. Exhausted, and falling into bouts of depression, Larkin took a declining interest in the beleaguered union, and eventually in October accepted an invitation from [[Bill Haywood|"Big Bill" Haywood]] of the IWW to speak in the United States. He did not return to Ireland until 1923.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=O'Connor |first=Emmet |date=2002 |title=James Larkin in the United States, 1914–23 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3180681 |journal=Journal of Contemporary History |volume=37 |issue=2 |pages=183–196 |doi=10.1177/00220094020370020201 |jstor=3180681 |issn=0022-0094|url-access=subscription }}</ref> His departure left Connolly, in charge not only of the ITGWU with its headquarters at Liberty Hall, but also of a workers' militia.<ref name=":6" />{{rp|333}}

==Easter Rising==
=== Irish Citizen Army ===
[[File:Irish Citizen Army Group Liberty Hall Dublin 1914.jpg|thumb|Irish Citizen Army contingent outside ITGWU HQ Liberty Hall, 1915, under the banner: "We serve neither King nor Kaiser, but Ireland!”|200x200px]]

First floated as an idea by [[George Bernard Shaw]],<ref name=":0332">{{Cite journal |last=O'Ceallaigh Ritschel |first=Nelson |date=2013 |title=George Bernard Shaw and the Irish Citizen Army |url=https://www.historyireland.com/george-bernard-shaw-irish-citizen-army/ |journal=History Ireland |issue=6}}</ref> the training of union men as a force to protect [[Picketing|picket lines]] and rallies was taken up in Dublin by "Citizens Committee" chair, [[Jack White (Irish socialist)|Jack White]], himself the victim of a police [[Baton (law enforcement)|baton]] charge.<ref name=":452"/>{{rp|552–553}}  In accepting White's services, Connolly made reference to the national question: "why", he asked "should we not train our men in Dublin as they are doing in Ulster".<ref name=":6" />{{rp|240}} In the north, the [[Ulster Covenant|Unionists]], labour men among them,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ryan |first=Alfred Patrick |url= |title=Mutiny at the Curragh |date=1956 |publisher=Macmillan |isbn=978-7-230-01130-3 |pages=189 |language=en}}</ref> were forming the ranks of the [[Ulster Volunteers]].  The [[Irish Citizen Army]] (ICA) began drilling in November 1913, but then, after it had dwindled like the strike to almost nothing, in March 1914 the militia was reborn, its ranks supplemented by [[Constance Markievicz]]'s [[Fianna Éireann]] nationalist youth.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cardozo |first=Nancy |title=Maud Goone: Lucky Eyes and a High Heart |publisher=Victor Gollanz |year=1979 |isbn=0-575-02572-7 |pages=289}}</ref><ref name=":11" />{{rp|198}}

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 (and of which Markievicz was also a member). 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{{snd}}with the blessing of the [[Irish Republican Brotherhood|IRB]]{{snd}}under a command that included employers who had locked out men trying to exercise "the first principles of Trade Unionism".<ref name=":22">{{Cite journal |last=Newsinger |first=John |date=1985 |title='In the Hunger-Cry of the Nation's Poor is Heard the Voice of Ireland': Sean O'Casey and Politics 1908–1916 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/260532 |journal=Journal of Contemporary History |volume=20 |issue=2 |pages=221–240 [227–228] |doi= 10.1177/002200948502000202|issn= |jstor= 260532|s2cid=}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Michael Higgins |first=President of Ireland |date=22 March 2016 |title=Speech at a Reception to Mark the 102nd Anniversary of the Irish Citizen Army |url=https://president.ie/index.php/en/diary/details/president-hosts-a-reception-to-mark-the-re-organisation-of-the-irish-citize/speeches |access-date=2022-10-27 |website=president.ie |language=en}}</ref>

On 4 August 1914, [[United Kingdom declaration of war on Germany (1939)|Britain declared war on Germany]]. The [[Government of Ireland Act 1914|Home Rule Bill]] received royal assent, but with a [[Suspensory Act 1914|suspensory act]] delaying implementation for duration (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.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Finnan |first1=Joseph P. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4xq07aUiSlIC&pg=PA152 |title=John Redmond and Irish Unity: 1912–1918 |date=2004 |publisher=Syracuse University Press |isbn=0815630433 |page=152 |access-date=10 August 2015}}</ref> The vast majority heeding his call{{snd}}some 175,000 men{{snd}}reformed themselves as the [[National Volunteers]]. This left 13,500 to reorganise under the nominal command of [[Eoin MacNeill]] of [[Conradh na Gaeilge|Gaelic League]] but, in key staff positions, directed by undercover members of the IRB's Military Council: [[Patrick Pearse]], [[Thomas MacDonagh]] and [[Joseph Plunkett]].<ref>Michael Tierney, ''Eoin MacNeill'' Oxford University Press, 1980, pp. 171–172</ref>

=== Urges "revolutionary action" ===
In October 1914, Connolly assumed the presidency of the Irish [[Neutral country|Neutrality]] League (chairing a committee that included [[Arthur Griffith]], [[Constance Markievicz]] and [[Francis Sheehy-Skeffington]]),<ref>{{Cite news |last=Mac Donncha |first=Mícheál |date=2 November 2014 |title=The Irish Neutrality League |url=https://www.anphoblacht.com/contents/24531 |work=anphoblacht}}</ref> but not as a [[Pacifism|pacifist]]. He was urging active opposition to the war, which he labeled "fratricidal slaughter",<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Connolly |first=James |date=15 August 1914 |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1914/08/contrev.htm |title=A Continental Revolution |journal=Forward}}</ref> and acknowledged that the opposition must amount to "more than a transport strike". Stopping the export of foodstuffs from Ireland, for example, might involve "armed battling in the streets".<ref name=":10" />{{rp|181}} In the ''Irish Worker'' he had already declared that if, in the course of Britain's "pirate war upon the German nation", the [[Wilhelm II|Kaiser]] landed an army in Ireland "we should be perfectly justified in joining it".<ref>{{Cite web |last=Matgamna |first=Sean |date=2023 |title=James Connolly in World War One: running with the hare and riding with the hounds {{!}} Workers' Liberty |url=https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2023-02-26/james-connolly-world-war-one-running-hare-and-riding-hounds |access-date=2024-04-13 |website=www.workersliberty.org |language=en}}</ref> A further editorial in the ITGWU paper betrayed his exasperation with the "jingoism" of the British labour movement.<ref name=":10" />{{rp|180–181}} 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”.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Connolly |first=James |date=1914 |title=The Hope of Ireland |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1914/10/hopefrie.htm |journal=Irish Worker |issue=31 October}}</ref>

In December, the ''Irish Worker'' was suppressed and in May 1915 Connolly revived his old ISRP title, ''Workers' Republic''. Accompanied by the martial-patriotic poetry of [https://www.culturematters.org.uk/easter-196-and-maeve-cavanagh-poetess-of-the-revolution/ Maeve Cavanagh], Connolly's editorials continued to urge Irish resistance,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Yeates |first=Padraig |url= |title=The Workers' Republic: James Connolly and the Road to the Rising |date=2015 |publisher=SIPTU Communications Department |isbn=978-0-9555823-9-4 |language=en}}</ref> 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".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Connolly |first=James |date=2015 |title=Conscription |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1915/11/conscrpt.htm |journal=Workers' Republic |issue=27 November}}</ref> 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".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Connolly |first=James |date=1915 |title=Trust your Leaders! |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1915/12/trstldrs.htm |journal=Workers' Republic |issue=5 December}}</ref>{{rp|187}}

In February 1916, Connolly proposed, that with "thousands of Irish workers" volunteering to fight for British Crown and Empire, only the "red tide of war on Irish soil" would enable the nation to "recover its self-respect".<ref>''Workers' Republic'', 5 February 1916</ref><ref name=":54" />{{rp|172}}

=== Relations with the IRB ===

Connolly 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".<ref name=":5" />{{rp|168}}

By the New Year, believing the [[Irish Volunteers]] were dithering, Connolly 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]] claims that the IRB had Connolly "kidnapped".<ref name=":11" />{{rp|205}}A unit of Volunteers had been mobilised to arrest Connolly had he refused to meet with the IRB Council, but [[Patrick Pearse]], [[Tom Clarke (Irish republican)|Tom Clarke]] and the other IRB leaders resolved matters by finally taking Connolly into their confidence.<ref>{{cite news |date=23 January 2015 |title=Remembering the kidnapping of James Connelly |url=https://dublinpeople.com/news/features/articles/2015/01/23/remembering-the-kidnapping-of-republican-james-connolly/ |access-date=26 December 2023 |newspaper=Dublin People}}</ref>

Connolly was conscious that his new allies had, for the most part, been silent during the lock-out in 1913.<ref name=":22" /> Labour was not their cause, so that when he himself had proposed a programme for the Irish Volunteers in October 1914, he had confined it to political demands: "repeal of all clauses of the Home Rule Act denying Ireland powers of self-government now enjoyed by [[Union of South Africa|South Africa]], [[Australia]] or [[Canada]]".<ref>''Irish Worker'', 10 October 1914</ref><ref name=":54" />{{rp|167–168}}According to [[C. Desmond Greaves|Desmond Greaves]],<ref name=":252">{{Cite journal |last=Grant |first=Adrian |date=2016 |title=Review of The Life and Times of James Connolly |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/45283325 |journal=Saothar |volume=41 |pages=139–144 |jstor=45283325 |issn=0332-1169}}</ref>{{rp|142}} a week before the Rising Connolly advised his 200 ICA volunteers that, as they were "out for economic as well as political liberty", in the event of victory they should "hold on to" their rifles.<ref name=":032" />{{rp|403}}

=== Easter week 1916 ===
{{Main|Easter Rising}}
[[File:The_shell_of_the_G.P.O._on_Sackville_Street_after_the_Easter_Rising_(6937669789).jpg|thumb|The GPO in the aftermath of the Rising|220x220px|left]]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]], with Connolly commissioned by the IRB Military Council as Commandant of the Dublin Districts, they set out for the [[General Post Office, Dublin|General Post Office]] (GPO) with an initial garrison party from [[Liberty Hall]]. Carney (armed with a [[typewriter]] and a [[Webley & Scott|Webley]] revolver) served as Connolly's [[Aide-de-camp|aide de camp]] with the rank of [[adjutant]]<ref name=":0">Walshe, Sadhbh (2016)''',''' [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/03/16/opinion/eight-women-of-irelands-1916-easter-rising.html Eight Women of the Easter Rising] ''The New York Times'', 16 March.</ref> She was seconded in that role, for the first two days, by Connolly's 15 year-old son [[Roddy Connolly|Roddy]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Portraits 1916 Roddy Connolly |url=https://www.rte.ie/archives/exhibitions/1993-easter-1916/portraits-1916/765689-portraits-1916-roddy-connolly/ |access-date=2024-04-23 |website=RTÉ Archives |language=en}}</ref>

From the steps of the GPO, [[Patrick Pearse]] (President and Commander-in-Chief) 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".<ref name=":15" />{{rp|87}} In a further symbolic gesture of labour's stake in the rebellion, Connolly sent the [[Starry Plough (flag)|Starry Plough flag]], the symbol of Irish labour, to be hoisted by his men over the [[Imperial Hotel, Dublin|Imperial Hotel]], owned by the man who had organised their defeat in 1913, [[William Martin Murphy|William Murphy]].<ref name=":6" />{{rp|332}}

By some accounts the rebel strategy of occupying the GPO and other public buildings in the city centre, had been informed by Connolly's belief that the British were unlikely to rely on artillery,<ref name=":452" />{{rp|679}} that a regular bombardment of the city would have been possible only if, abandoning their businesses and property, the section of the population loyal to the government was outside insurgent lines.<ref name=":032" />{{rp|193}} Connolly's biographer, Samuel Levenson records an exchange between Volunteers after a British gunboat began shelling their positions from the [[River Liffey|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".<ref name=":6" />{{rp|308}}

Leading men on the street and supervising the construction of barricades, he was twice wounded on the Thursday. Carney refused to leave his side,<ref name=":0" /> and was with him the following day, Friday 29 April, when, carried on a stretcher, he was among the last to evacuate from the GPO, its upper floors burning, to [[Moore Street]].<ref name=":452" />{{rp|408–412.}} There, with [[Seán Mac Diarmada]] and [[Joseph Plunkett|Joseph Plunket]], Connolly persuaded Pearse, over [[Tom Clarke (Irish republican)|Tom Clarke]]'s objection, to ask the British for terms.<ref name=":4">{{Cite book |last=Edwards |first=Ruth Dudley |title=Patrick Pearse, The Triumph of Failure |publisher=Poolbeg |year=1990 |isbn=9781853710681 |location=Swords, Co. Dublin}}</ref>{{rp|304-305}} Satisfied that "the glorious stand which has been made by the soldiers of Irish freedom" was "sufficient to gain recognition of Ireland's national claim at an international peace conference", and "desirous of preventing further slaughter of the civilian population", Pearse recorded the "majority" decision.<ref name=":4" />{{rp|305}} [[Elizabeth O'Farrell]], sent under a white flag to the British commander, [[William Lowe (British Army officer)|Brigadier-General Lowe]],<ref name=":122">{{Cite book |last=Matthews |first=Ann |title=Renegades, Irish Republican Women 1900–1922 |publisher=Mercier History |year=2010 |isbn=978-1-85635-684-8 |location=Dublin |pages=124–158}}</ref> came back with a demand for unconditional surrender which, within the 30 minute time limit imposed, Pearse conceded.<ref name=":4" />{{rp|307}}

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."<ref name=":6" />{{rp|333}}

== Court martial and execution ==
[[File:2017-06-20_4904x7356_dublin_kilmainham_gaol_james_connolly_execution.jpg|thumb|Site of Connolly's execution at [[Kilmainham Gaol]] in Dublin|270x270px]]
Connolly was among 16 republican prisoners executed for their role in the Rising. Executions in [[Kilmainham Gaol]] began on 3 May 1916 with Connolly's co-signatories to the Proclamation, [[Patrick Pearse]], [[Tom Clarke (Irish republican)|Tom Clarke]] and [[Thomas MacDonagh|Thomas McDonagh]], and ended with his death and that of [[Seán Mac Diarmada]] on 12 May. [[Roger Casement]], who had run German guns for the Rising, was [[Hanging|hanged]] at [[Pentonville (HM Prison)|Pentonville Prison]], in London, on August 3. Unable to stand because of his wounds (his foot had turned [[Gangrene|gangrenous]]), Connolly had been placed before a firing squad tied to a chair.<ref name=":16">{{Cite web |title=EXECUTION OF JAMES CONNOLLY. (Hansard, 30 May 1916) |url=https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1916/may/30/execution-of-james-connolly |access-date=2024-05-06 |website=api.parliament.uk}}</ref> His body was placed, without rite or coffin, with those of his comrades in a common grave at the Arbour Hill military cemetery.<ref>{{Cite news |last=McGreevy |first=Ronan |date=18 January 2014 |title=Only eyewitness account of Easter Rising leaders' burial is made public |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/only-eyewitness-account-of-easter-rising-leaders-burial-is-made-public-1.1659566 |access-date=2024-05-06 |newspaper=The Irish Times |language=en}}</ref>

In a statement to the court martial held in [[Dublin Castle]] on 9 May, he proposed offering no defence, save against "charges of wanton cruelty to prisoners”,<ref>{{Cite news |last=Gartland |first=Fiona |date=3 May 2016 |title=1916 court martials {{sic|nolink=y}} and executions: James Connolly |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/1916-court-martials-and-executions-james-connolly-1.2631106 |access-date=2024-05-06 |newspaper=The Irish Times |language=en}}</ref> and he declared:<ref>{{Cite web |title=James Connolly: Last Statement (1916) |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1916/05/laststat.htm |access-date=2024-05-06 |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref><blockquote>We went out to break the connection between this country and the British Empire, and to establish an Irish Republic. We believed that the call we then issued to the people of Ireland, was a nobler call, in a holier cause, than any call issued to them during this war, having any connection with the war. We succeeded in proving that Irishmen are ready to die endeavouring to win for Ireland those national rights which the British Government has been asking them to die to win for [[German occupation of Belgium during World War I|Belgium]]. As long as that remains the case, the cause of Irish freedom is safe.</blockquote>The night before his execution, he was permitted a visit by his wife Lillie and their 8 year old daughter, Fiona (whose abiding memory of her father was to be his laughter).<ref name="Fiona Connolly">
{{cite web |title=Gone But Not Forgotten – Fiona Connolly |url=http://www.gonebutnotforgotten.ie/1916/fiona-connolly.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070716122218/http://www.gonebutnotforgotten.ie/1916/fiona-connolly.htm |archive-date=16 July 2007 |access-date=17 March 2024}}</ref> He is said to have returned to the Catholic Church in the few days before his execution.<ref name=":2">{{Cite web |date=26 May 2013 |title=Lost memoir tells how James Connolly returned to his faith before execution |url=https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/lost-memoir-tells-how-james-connolly-returned-to-his-faith-before-execution-29297110.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210314183746/https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/lost-memoir-tells-how-james-connolly-returned-to-his-faith-before-execution-29297110.html |archive-date=14 March 2021 |access-date=2020-12-19 |website=Irish Independent |language=en}}</ref><ref name=":3">{{Cite web |date=2013-05-26 |title=Atheist James Connolly turned to God hours before his death according to British Army chaplain |url=http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/atheist-james-connolly-turned-to-god-hours-before-his-death-according-to-british-army-chaplain-208986571-237592121.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160427040549/http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/atheist-james-connolly-turned-to-god-hours-before-his-death-according-to-british-army-chaplain-208986571-237592121.html |archive-date=27 April 2016 |access-date=2020-12-19 |website=IrishCentral.com |language=en}}</ref> A [[Order of Friars Minor Capuchin|Capuchin]], 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."<ref>{{cite book|first=Terry|last=Golway|title=For the Cause of Liberty: A Thousand Years of Ireland's Heroes|publisher=Simon and Schuster|year=2012}}</ref>

There was disquiet at Connolly's execution. In Parliament the government was pressed as to whether there was "precedent for the summary execution of a military prisoner dying of his wounds".<ref name=":16" /> But at the time, the greater outrage was over the executions of [[Willie Pearse|William Pearse]], put to death, it was thought, simply because he was the brother of the rebel leader, and Major [[John MacBride]] who played no part in planning the Rising but had fought against Britain in the [[Second Boer War|Boer War]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Story of 1916: Chapter 5. The Aftermath of the 1916 Rising |url=https://www.ucc.ie/en/theirishrevolution/collections/the-story-of-1916/chapter-5-the-aftermath-of-the-1916-rising/#:~:text=The%20executions%20provoked%20public%20outrage,Rising%20but%20had%20previously%20attracted |access-date=2024-05-06 |website=University College Cork |language=en}}</ref>

Despite the initial public hostility toward the rebels and the destruction they had brought upon Dublin, after the first executions of Pearse, Clarke and MacDonagh, [[John Redmond]] warned the [[Prime Minister of the United Kingdom|Prime Minister]], [[H. H. Asquith|Herbert Asquith]], that any further executions would make his position, and that of any other constitutional party or leader in Ireland, "impossible”.<ref>{{Cite news |last1=Hegarty |first1=Shane |last2=O'Toole |first2=Fintan |date=24 March 1916 |title=Easter Rising 1916 – the aftermath: arrests and executions |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/easter-rising-1916-the-aftermath-arrests-and-executions-1.2583019 |access-date=2024-05-06 |newspaper=The Irish Times |language=en}}</ref>

==Political thought==
{{Marxism}}
{{Irish republicanism}}
{{republicanism sidebar}}
=== Socialism and nationalism ===
The nature of Connolly's socialism, and its role in his decision to join the IRB in the Easter Rising, was disputed by his Socialist contemporaries in both Europe and the United States. It is the central point of contention in the extensive literature that has developed since on his political life and thought.<ref name=":54">{{Cite journal |last=Newsinger |first=John |date=1983 |title=James Connolly and the Easter Rising |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40402480 |journal=Science & Society |volume=47 |issue=2 |pages=152–177 |doi=10.1177/003682378304700203 |jstor=40402480 |issn=0036-8237}}</ref>{{rp|151}}<ref>{{Cite journal |last=O'Connor |first=Emmet |date=2006 |editor-last=Nevin |editor-first=Donal |title=Connecting Connolly |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23199967 |journal=Saothar |volume=31 |pages=85–89 |jstor=23199967 |issn=0332-1169}}</ref>{{rp|85}}

Writing in 1934, [[Seán Ó Faoláin]] described Connolly's political ideas as:<blockquote>an amalgamation of everything he had read that could, according to his viewpoint, be applied to Irish ills, a synthesis of [[Karl Marx|Marx]], [[Michael Davitt|Davitt]], [[James Fintan Lalor|Lalor]], [[Robert Owen]], [[Wolfe Tone|Tone]], [[John Mitchel|Mitchel]] and the rest, all welded together in his Socialist-Separatist ideal. He favoured [[industrial unionism]] as the method of approach to what he called variously, the Workers' Republic, the Irish Socialist Republic, the Co-operative State, the Democratic Co-operative Commonwealth... [The unions] would be he means of popular representation in the Workers' Parliament; and they would be the power controlling the national wealth ... In a word he believed in vocational representation combined with "all power to the Unions".<ref name=":11" />{{rp|189}}</blockquote>While he never had the opportunity to apply and test his principles even on a small scale, Connolly "at least [had] a point of view" and a "definite idea of what he meant by such terms as 'a Republic', 'Freedom', 'Emancipation' [and] 'Autonomy'".<ref name=":11" />{{rp|190}} But Ó Faoláin argues that in the end Connolly's social-emancipatory ideas proved to be secondary to his nationalism. The night before he was shot, Connolly said to his daughter Nora: "The Socialists will not understand why I am here; they forget I am an Irishman". For Ó Faoláin this was an admission that  "he had, in point of fact, gone over to nationalism and away from socialism".<ref name=":11" />{{rp|193}}

Some of Connolly's contemporaries suggested that there was no inconsistency: Connolly's socialism was itself merely a form of militant nationalism. Invoking Connolly at the inaugural meeting of [[Fianna Fáil]] in 1926, in support of his [[Protectionism|protectionist]] programme for national development, [[Éamon de Valera]] implied that Connolly's principal purpose in calling for a worker's republic was to complete the break with England.<ref name=":222">{{Cite journal |last=Morgan |first=Austen |date=1988 |title=Connolly and Connollyism: The Making of a Myth |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/29735380 |journal=The Irish Review (1986-) |issue=5 |pages=44–55 |doi=10.2307/29735380 |jstor=29735380 |issn=0790-7850|url-access=subscription }}</ref>{{rp|46}} [[Constance Markievicz]] was also to interpret Connolly's socialism in purely national, purely Irish, terms. Seizing on Connolly's portrait of [[Gaelic Ireland|Gaelic society]] in ''The Reconquest of Ireland'',<ref>{{Cite web |last=Matgamma |first=Sean |date=2023 |title=Connolly's history and his socialism {{!}} Workers' Liberty |url=https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2023-06-14/connollys-history-and-his-socialism |access-date=2024-05-01 |website=www.workersliberty.org |language=en}}</ref> she summarised his doctrine as the "application of the social principle which underlay the [[Early Irish law|Brehon laws]] of our ancestors".<ref name=":532">{{Cite web |last=McNulty |first=Liam |date=2023 |title=The "legacy" of James Connolly {{!}} Workers' Liberty |url=https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2023-08-10/legacy-james-connolly |access-date=2024-04-17 |website=www.workersliberty.org |language=en}}</ref>

At the same time, there were writers who, convinced that "Connolly's Irish Catholicism had not been irrevocably blemished by atheistic [[Marxism]]",<ref name=":222"/>{{rp|46}} found parallels between his commitment to [[industrial unionism]] and the [[corporatist]] doctrines [[Pope Leo XIII]] enunciated in his [[encyclical]] ''[[Rerum novarum]]'' (1891).<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Murphy |first=Brian |date=1989 |title=J. J. O'Kelly, the Catholic Bulletin and Contemporary Irish Cultural Historians |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25487490 |journal=Archivium Hibernicum |volume=44 |pages=(71–88) 82 |doi=10.2307/25487490 |jstor=25487490 |issn=0044-8745|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=McKenna |first=Lambert |url= |title=The Social Teachings of James Connolly |date=1991 |publisher=Veritas |isbn=978-1-85390-133-1 |language=en}}</ref> 

Beginning in 1961, with the publication of a major new biography by [[C. Desmond Greaves|Desmond Greaves]], there was a concerted effort to rehabilitate Connolly as a revolutionary socialist.<ref name=":14">{{Cite book |last=Walsh |first=Pat |title=Irish Republicanism and Socialism: The Politics of the Republican Movement 1905–1994 |publisher=Athol Books |year=1994 |isbn=0850340713 |location=Belfast |publication-date=1994 |pages=}}</ref>{{rp|49–51}}<ref name=":182">{{Cite book |last1=Hanley |first1=Brian |url= |title=The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party |last2=Millar |first2=Scott |date=2010 |publisher=Penguin Books Limited |isbn=978-0-14-102845-3 |pages= |language=en}}</ref>{{rp|36–37}}<ref name=":222"/> Greaves proposed that with the onset of the European war, Connolly's thought had run "parallel with [[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]]'s"; and reached the same conclusion:<ref name=":032" />{{rp|353}}  "Whoever wishes a durable and democratic peace must be for civil war against the governments and the bourgeoisie" (Lenin, "Turn Imperialist War into Civil War", 1915).<ref>{{Cite web |last1=Lenin |first1=V. I. |last2=Zinoviev |first2=G. Y. |date=1915 |title=Socialism and War |url=https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/themilitant/socialist-appeal-1939/v03n21/lenin.htm |access-date=2024-05-03 |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref> Greaves is the source for Connolly's oft-quoted "hold on to your rifles" admonition to his ICA volunteers, which might suggest that Connolly did see the Easter Rising as the prelude to this larger revolutionary struggle.<ref name=":252"/>{{rp|142}}

While ''The Life and Times of James Connolly''<ref name=":032" /> remains a standard reference,<ref name=":6" />{{rp|204}}<ref name=":252" />{{rp|140}} there have been objections to pressing Connolly into a [[Leninism|Leninist]] mold.<ref name=":252" /><ref name=":14" />{{rp|66–67}} Connolly's revolutionary outlook remained that of the [[syndicalism]] he had acquired in America, although in 1916 he entertained no suggestion of Irish workers being organised to seize control of their workplaces.<ref name=":20" /><ref name=":18" /> He was concerned, rather, with their quiescence in the war against Germany.<ref name=":54" /> This was viewed by Connolly, not as Lenin insisted a contest of rival imperialisms with no democratic principle at stake, but as a war in which, as the primary aggressor, Britain had presented an Ireland willing to strike for its freedom with a legitimate continental ally.<ref name=":10" />{{rp|181–184}}<ref name=":14" />{{rp|66–67}}

Connolly's understanding of the agrarian nature of nationalist Ireland, and of Ulster unionism, which deprived it of Belfast and its industrial hinterland, has also been subject to comment and revision. 

=== Revolutionary syndicalism ===
[[File:IWW Printing Co-op, IU 450, Detroit Universal Label.png|left|thumb|Industrial Workers of the World]]
Greaves concedes that there are formulations in Connolly's thinking that "smack of [[syndicalism]]"<ref name=":032" />{{rp|245}}—that is, of faith in the ability of the working class to secure a socialist future on the strength, not of a revolutionary party, but of their own labour-union democracy. Lenin had praise for De Leon's contribution to socialist thought,<ref name=":27" />{{rp|42}} but Connolly broke with De Leon precisely on the issue of industrial unionism.<ref name=":1722"/><ref name=":27">{{Cite journal |last=Cronin |first=Seán |date=1977 |title=The Rise and Fall of the Socialist Labor Party of North America |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23195205 |journal=Saothar |volume=3 |pages=21–33 |jstor=23195205 |issn=0332-1169}}</ref>{{rp|25–29}}

In 1908, Connolly accused De Leon of knocking "the feet from under" his party's alliance with the [[Industrial Workers of the World|IWW]] by arguing that, as prices rise with wages, the gains the union secures for labour are only nominal. The implication was that the One Big Union was merely a "ward-heeling club" for the [[Socialist Labor Party of America|SLP]], a place from which militants could be recruited to the real task: building a party to take state power.<ref name=":282">{{Cite journal |last=Connolly |first=James |date=1904 |title=Wages, Marriage and the Church |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1904/condel/conart.htm |journal=The People |issue=9 April}}</ref>

Since it suggests that within capitalism there is no prospect of the working class improving its position, Connolly allowed that the "theory that a rise in prices always destroys the value of a rise in wages" sounds "revolutionary", but maintained that it was not Marxist and not true.<ref name=":452" />{{rp|231}} The value of labour is not fixed, but is the subject of a continuous struggle. It is in this struggle that workers acquire the organisational strength and the confidence to bring capital to heel, and to extend their own control of production and distribution.<ref name=":8">{{Cite book |last=Connolly |first=James |title=Socialism Made Easy |chapter=Industrial Unionism and Constructive Socialism |chapter-url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1908/sme/inconsoc.htm |location=Chicago |publisher=Charles H. Kerr & Co. |year=1909 |orig-date=1908}}</ref>

In a last statement of his credo, ''The Re-conquest of Ireland'' (1915), Connolly affirmed that the outcome of this struggle, the worker's republic, is not an overweening state. Rather it is an industrial commonwealth in which "the workshops, factories, docks, railways, shipyards, &c., shall be owned by the nation, but administered by the Industrial Unions of the respective industries".<ref name=":17">{{Cite book |last=Connolly |first=James |url=https://archive.org/details/reconquestofirel00conn/page/n5/mode/2up |title=The Re-conquest of Ireland |publisher=Maunsel & Co. |year=1917 |location=Dublin & London |pages=}}</ref> In "State Monopoly versus Socialism" (1899) he had been clear that "without this co-operative control the public ownership by the State is not Socialism – it is only State capitalism".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Connolly |first=James |date=10 June 1899 |title=State Monopoly versus Socialism |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1901/evangel/stmonsoc.htm |journal=Workers Republic}}</ref>

An early compiler of his ideas, notes that Connolly "nowhere attempts to explain how the general interests of the State, as distinguished from specific interests of the Industrial Unions, are to be provided for". It was only certain that Connolly was not a "state socialist".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=McKenna |first=L. |date=1919 |title=The Teachings of James Connolly (Continued) |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20505388 |journal=The Irish Monthly |volume=47 |issue=556 |pages=532–542 |jstor=20505388 |issn=2009-2113}}</ref>{{rp|536}}  Connolly was, himself, confident that his:<ref name=":20">{{Cite journal |last=McCarthy |first=Conor |date=2018 |title=James Connolly, Civil Society and Revolution |url=https://journals.openedition.org/osb/2778 |journal=Observatoire de la société britannique |language=en |issue=23 |pages=11–34 |doi=10.4000/osb.2778 |issn=1775-4135|url-access=subscription }}</ref>{{rp|31}}<blockquote>...  conception of Socialism destroys at one blow all the fears of a bureaucratic state, ruling and ordering the lives of every individual from above, and thus gives assurance that the social order of the future will be an extension of the freedom of the individual, and not a suppression of it.<ref name=":8" /></blockquote>In his last six years, Connolly had devoted his energies almost entirely to the ITGWU and to the Irish Citizen Army. A  "pairing of union and militia" is central to syndicalist scenarios for social revolution.<ref name=":20" />{{rp|9, 17, 28–29}} But Connolly knew that "his union, the ITGWU . . ., weakened by the industrial struggles of 1913-14, was not up to the effort of seizing docks, railways, shipping etc.".<ref name=":19">{{Cite journal |last=Greaves |first=C. Desmond |date=1984 |title=Connolly and Easter Week: A Rejoinder to John Newsinger |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40402580 |journal=Science & Society |volume=48 |issue=2 |pages=220–223 |doi=10.1177/003682378404800206 |jstor=40402580 |issn=0036-8237}}</ref>{{rp|121–122}} He made no attempt, prior to or during the Rising, to appeal to workers to join the insurgency. In an address published just one week before the Rising on the forthcoming congress of the Irish TUC, there is no intimation of the impending action. In reference to the war, Connolly's only advice was that the congress should proceed in August as planned.<ref name=":18">{{Cite web |last=Lyons |first=Brian |date=2023 |title=Land, Labour & the Irish Revolution: 1913-23 |url=https://www.blakdwarf.org/post/land-labour-the-irish-revolution-1913-23 |access-date=2024-05-12 |website=Black Dwarf |language=en}}</ref>

=== A two-stage struggle ===

At the beginning of 1916, Connolly drew "a crucial distinction between the struggle for socialism and for national liberation".<ref name=":54" />{{rp|169}} In the ''Irish Worker'' (23 January) he wrote:<blockquote>Our programme in time of peace was to gather in the hands in Irish trade unions the control of all the forces of production and distribution in Ireland . . . [but] in times of war we should act as in war. . . . While the war lasts and Ireland still is a subject nation we shall continue to urge her to fight for her freedom. . . . The time for Ireland's battle is NOW.<ref name=":54" />{{rp|169}}</blockquote>His calculation was not based alone on the strategic opportunity presented by Britain's engagement with Germany. Connolly had described [[John Redmond]]'s pact with the government as "the most gigantic, deep-laid and loathsome attempt in history to betray the soul of a people".<ref name=":54" />{{rp|167}} At the beginning of February 1916, he acknowledged that the pact was delivering the working class, and not least by means of simple bribery:<ref name=":54" />{{rp|172}}<blockquote>We have said that the Working Class was the only class to whom the word "Empire" and the things for which it was the symbol did not appeal . . . [and] therefore, from the intelligent working class could alone come the revolutionary impulse. . . .  But if the Militant Labour Leaders of Ireland have not apostatised the same cannot be said of the working class as a whole . . . .  For the sake of a few paltry shillings per week thousands of Irish workers have sold their country in the hour of their country's greatest need and hope. For the sake of a few paltry shillings Separation Allowance thousands of Irish women have made life miserable for their husbands with entreaties to join the British Army.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Connolly |first=James |date=1916 |title=Notes from the Front: The Ties that Bind |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1916/02/fronta.htm |journal=Worker's Republic |issue=5 February}}</ref></blockquote>In ''Erin's Hope'' (1897), Connolly had claimed that socialists would succeed where the [[Fenian]]s, and the [[Young Ireland]]ers before them, had failed, in preparing "the public mind for revolution".<ref name=":54" />{{rp|156}} For this, they would rely on the militant organisation of labour, neither seeking nor accepting the cooperation of men whose ideals were not their own, and with whom they might therefore "be compelled to fight at some future critical stage of the journey to freedom". To this category, Connolly assigned  "every section of the propertied class".<ref name=":54" />{{rp|156}} [[John Newsinger]] argues that such talk was now put aside. Connolly embraced "the conception of revolution that prevailed in the inner circles of the IRB: that a small minority must be prepared to sacrifice itself in order to save the soul of the nation". It was, he suggests, the "politics of despair".<ref name=":54" />{{rp|170}} Austen Morgan similarly concludes Connolly "collapsed politically as a socialist.<ref name=":92"/>{{rp|199}} Unable to sustain his faith in proletarian action, that he died "unapologetic [[Fenian]]".<ref name=":222"/>{{rp|45–46}}

Noting that, two weeks before the Rising, Connolly, was still affirming that "the cause of labour is the cause of Ireland, the cause of Ireland is the cause of labour" and that the two "cannot be dissevered",<ref name=":21">{{Cite journal |last=Connolly |first=James |date=1916 |title=Irish Flag |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1916/04/irshflag.htm |journal=Workers Republic |issue=8 April}}</ref> Greaves insists that little had changed in Connolly's fundamental thinking.<ref name=":19"/>{{rp|121–122}} Rather, Kieran Allen sees Greaves, consistent with the "Stalinist" view of the Irish question, attempting to "impose" on Connolly's wartime activities the [[popular front]] model of an alliance with "national" elements of the bourgeoisie. Yet while himself insisting on Connolly's Marxist credentials, Allen suggests that, having always regarded republicanism as an essentially "classless" tradition that could "won over to socialism", it was inevitable that Connolly would "accommodate his politics" to those of Clarke and Pearce.<ref name=":25">{{Cite book |last=Allen |first=Kieran |url= |title=The Politics of James Connolly |date=1990 |publisher=Pluto Press |isbn=0-7453-0473-7 |language=en}}</ref>{{rp|91, 151-152}}

Rather than being "dragged away from his labour convictions", [[R.M. Fox]] argues that under the unique conditions of the [[World War I|Great War]] Connolly was compelled to "force the independence issue to the point of armed struggle".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Fox |first1=R.M. |title=James Connolly: The Forerunner |date=1946 |publisher=The Kerryman Ltd |pages=11–12}}</ref>  For [[Richard English]], while this may have been so, it is Connolly's failure "to persuade any but a tiny number of the Irish people" of his argument that accounts for his "gesture" in 1916. Acceding to the IRB's  "inclusive, cross-class approach to the nation", his hope was only of an "eventual" vindication<ref>English, Richard (2007), ''Irish Freedom, the History of Nationalism in Ireland''. London: Pan Books, pp. 265- 266. {{ISBN|978-1405041898}}</ref> of his belief that, once national rebellion had secured "the national powers needed by our class", social revolution would follow.<ref name=":21" />

=== Farm-labour cooperation ===
In ''Erin's Hope'' (1897), in ''Labour in Irish History'' (1910) and again in ''The'' ''Reconquest of Ireland'' (1915), Connolly had reinforced his conviction that socialism was Ireland's national destiny by characterising it as a "re-conversion" to the collectivism of the country's Gaelic and agrarian past.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Coquelin |first=Olivier |date=2008 |title=A Reactionary Dimension in Progressive Revolutionary Theories? The Case of James Connolly's Socialism Founded on the Re-Conversion of Ireland to the Celtic System of Common Ownership |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41219613 |journal=Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium |volume=28 |pages=14–27 |jstor=41219613 |issn=1545-0155}}</ref> In this he was greatly influenced by [[Alice Stopford Green]]'s ''The Making of Ireland and its Undoing: 1200–1600'' (1908), and by the work of other historians and anthropologists, "who suggested that common ownership of land had been the basis of primitive society in most countries before its replacement by capitalist relations of production."<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Gallagher |first=Niamh |date=30 November 2023 |title=How to Plan an Insurrection |url=https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n23/niamh-gallagher/how-to-plan-an-insurrection |magazine=[[London Review of Books]] |volume=45 |number=23}}</ref>

Apart from what he may have witnessed as a soldier, Connolly's only sustained experience of rural Ireland was three weeks spent in [[County Kerry]] in 1898, in the company of Maud Gonne,<ref name=":25" />{{rp|21}} reporting on famine conditions for [[Daniel De Leon|De Leon's]] ''Weekly People.''<ref name=":04">{{Cite journal |last=Dillon |first=Paul |date=2000 |title=James Connolly and the Kerry Famine of 1898 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23198961 |journal=Saothar |volume=25 |pages=29–42 |jstor=23198961 |issn=0332-1169}}</ref>{{rp|30}} 

Connolly had concluded that "the root cause" of the distress was not landlordism per se or an "alien government", but rather a "system of small farming and small industry" in which the Irish peasant "reaps none of the benefits of the progress . . . [and] organisation of industry".<ref name=":04" />{{rp|39}}This was the seemingly orthodox Marxist view to which Connolly was already committed. In ''Erin's Hope'', he had proposed that "the day of the small farmers, as of small capitalists, is gone" and that salvation lay in "the nationalisation of land in the hands of the Irish state". From Kerry, he wrote more loosely of the Socialist Republic organising greater "co-operative effort",<ref name=":04" />{{rp|39}}<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ellis |first=Peter Beresford |url= |title=James Connolly: Selected Writings |date=1988 |publisher=Pluto Press |isbn=978-0-7453-0267-6 |language=en |chapter=Introduction. Connolly: His Life and Work}}</ref>{{rp|13}} but in either case it was an analysis that suggested that "the most important struggles for the Irish peasantry would occur not in the countryside, but between labour and capital in the cities". There is no discussion of the role the rural population itself might play in the creation of the new republic.<ref name=":04" />{{rp|40}}

By the time of his return from America in 1910, the combined effects of continued emigration and land reform was effecting a profound social transformation.<ref name=":04" />{{rp|40}}<ref name=":92" />{{rp|198}} In ''Labour in Irish History'', Connolly recalls the words of [[Wolfe Tone]]: “Our freedom must be had at all hazards. If the men of property will not help us they must fall; we will free ourselves by the aid of that large and respectable class of the community – the men of no property.”<ref>{{Cite book |last=Connolly |first=James |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1910/lih/chap07.htm |title=Labour in Irish History |publication-date=1901 |chapter=The United Irishmen}}</ref>  But after the [[Land Acts (Ireland)|Wyndham Act]] (1903), the peasant "was, or else was well on the way to becoming, a freehold farmer--a man of property".<ref name=":23" />{{rp|250}} Unmoved by what Connolly supposed was their "memory of the common ownership and common control of land by their ancestors",<ref name=":17" />{{rp|318}} it was a status they would defend it with tenacity.<ref name=":23">{{Cite book |last=Mansergh |first=Nicholas |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=if2hvgEACAAJ |title=The Irish Question, 1840-1921: A Commentary on Anglo-Irish Relations and on Social and Political Forces in Ireland in the Age of Reform and Revolution |date=1975 |publisher=University of Toronto Press |isbn=978-0-04-901022-2 |language=en}}</ref>{{rp|250}}<ref name=":12">{{Cite web |last=Matgamma |first=Sean |date=2023 |title=Connolly's history and his socialism {{!}} Connolly and the landowning peasants |url=https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2023-06-14/connollys-history-and-his-socialism |access-date=2024-05-12 |website=www.workersliberty.org |language=en}}</ref>

A "large self-confident class of farmer owners" was shifting the balance of class forces in Catholic Ireland against Connolly's identification of the national cause with labour. Their emancipation from taxation imposed in the working-class interest would be "the main economic achievement of independence".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Clifford |first=Brendan |title=Connolly: The Polish Aspect |publisher=Athol Books |year=1985 |location=Belfast |pages=94–95}}</ref> Yet while claiming that the "system of petty farming conveys no hope to the minds of the working class",<ref name=":25" />{{rp|20}} Connolly believed in the possibility of a farm-labour alliance. A feature of the transition from tenancy to ownership in countryside was the establishment of creameries and other [[Agricultural cooperative|agricultural co-operatives]]. Participation was often reluctant, and generally failed to support broader networks, but the image was created abroad of Irish farmers as "co-operative trailblazers".<ref>Breathnach, Proinnsias (2012) ''Reluctant co-operators: dairy farmers and the spread of creameries in Ireland 1886-1920.'' In: At the Anvil: Essays in honour of William J. Smyth. Geography Publications, Dublin, pp. 555-573. {{ISBN|978-0-906602-63-8}}</ref> 

In ''The Reconquest of Ireland'' (1915), Connolly celebrates the development and, recalling the co-operative stores his union had opened in Dublin after the Lock-out, "confidently" predicts that, "in the very near future", the labour movement will create its own "crop of co-operative enterprises". The stage would then be set for town and country to heal their "latent antagonism" and converge on a common ideal — the "Co-operative Commonwealth".<ref name=":17" />{{rp|320–321}}<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Allen |first=Nicholas |date=2000 |title=A Revolutionary Cooperation: George Russell and James Connolly |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20646310 |journal=New Hibernia Review / Iris Éireannach Nua |volume=4 |issue=3 |pages=46–64 |jstor=20646310 |issn=1092-3977}}</ref>{{rp|52–55}}<ref>{{Cite book |last=Mulholland |first=M |title=Labour, British radicalism and the First World War |publisher=Manchester University Press |isbn=9781526109293 |editor-last=Bland |editor-first=Lucy |location=Manchester |publication-date=2018 |pages=182–200 |chapter=Irish Labour and the 'Co-operative Commonwealth' in the era of the First World War}}</ref> It was a seeming mixture of "[[Sinn Féin (1905-17)|Sinn Féinism]], [[Cooperativism|Co-operativism]], and [[Municipal socialism|Municipalism]]" for which he was criticised by his friend, and editor of the paper Connolly had established in Scotland, ''[[The Socialist (SLP newspaper)|The Socialist]]'',<ref>{{Cite web |date=2019-10-07 |title=Derry collector uncovers letters to James Connolly |url=https://www.irishnews.com/news/northernirelandnews/2019/10/07/news/derry-collector-uncovers-letters-to-james-connolly-1731716/ |access-date=2025-07-12 |website=The Irish News |language=en}}</ref> John Carstairs Matheson.<ref name=":25" />{{rp|99}}

=== Ulster unionism ===
[[File:The Ulster Volunteer Force, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1914 Q81771.jpg|thumb|Ulster Volunteers, Belfast, 1914|200x200px]]In 1898 Connolly had cited "the [[Protestantism in Ireland|Protestant]] workmen of Belfast, so often out on strike against their Protestant employers, and the role their Protestant ancestors had played a 100 years previously in the [[Irish Rebellion of 1798|rebellion]] against the [[The Crown|British Crown]], as a demonstration of what  "precious little bearing" the question of religious faith has in the struggle for freedom.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Connolly |first=James |date=1898 |title=The Fighting Race |url=https://celt.ucc.ie/published/E900002-003.html |journal=Workers' Republic |issue=13 August}}</ref> Later, when in Belfast for the Socialist Party and the ITGWU, he identified "religious bigotry" as the one obstacle remaining to the acceptance of Irish self-government and thus to the achievement of socialist unity on a separate all-Ireland basis.<ref name=":9">{{Cite journal |last=Connolly |first=James |date=27 May 2011 |title=Plea For Socialist Unity in Ireland |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1911/connwalk/1-socunity.htm |journal=Forward (Glasgow)}}</ref> But he understood this as a political force arising, not from confessional differences, but from the deliberate recall and accentuation of ancient native-[[Plantations of Ireland|planter]] divisions.<ref name=":5">{{Cite book |last=Cronin |first=Seán |url= |title=James Connolly: Irish Revolutionary |date=2020 |publisher=McFarland |isbn=978-1-4766-3997-0 |location=Jefferson, North Carolina |language=en}}</ref>{{rp|144–146}}

As the new Home Rule bill safely progressed through [[Palace of Westminster|Westminster]], Connolly appeared to concede the objection of [[William Walker (trade unionist)|William Walker]], the Protestant leader of the [[Independent Labour Party]] in Belfast,<ref name=":14" />{{rp|21}} who argued for [[Labour Party (UK)|British Labour]] and British social legislation.<ref name=":24" /> He suggested that having "voted against the [https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1911-05-10/debates/48856605-e8f2-4e4f-998b-3d3efe66babe/RightToWorkBill Right to Work Bill], the Minimum Wage for Miners, and the Minimum Wage for Railwaymen, [and] intrigued against the application to Ireland of the Feeding of Necessitous School Children and the Medical Benefits of the [[National Insurance Act 1911|Insurance Act]],<ref name="Connolly 1913">{{Cite journal |last=Connolly |first=James |date=1913 |title=The Awakening of Ulster's Democracy |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1913/06/awaken.htm |journal=Forward |issue=7 June}}</ref> in a parliament of their own [[Irish Parliamentary Party|Home Rulers]] would likely set a bad example to "reactionists everywhere".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Connolly |first=James |date=4 July 1914 |title=Labour in the new Irish Parliament |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1914/07/irish-parl.html |journal=Forward (Glasgow)}}</ref> Connolly was also dismissive of the appeal to northern workers of the potential parliamentary opposition, Arthur Griffith's [[History of Sinn Féin|Sinn Féin.]]<ref name=":25" />{{rp|98}}  <blockquote>When the Sinn Féiner speaks to men who are fighting against low wages and tells tham that the Sinn Féin body has promised lots of Irish labour at low wages to any foreign capitalist who wishes to establish in Ireland, what wonder it they come to believe that a change from Toryism to Sinn Féinism would simply be a change from the devil they do know to the devil they do not know.<ref>{{Cite web |title=James Connolly: Sinn Fein, Socialism and the Nation (1909) |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1909/01/sfsoclsm.htm |access-date=2025-07-12 |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref></blockquote>Connolly also allowed religious bigotry was not alone the mark of Empire loyalists: he had applauded the even-handedness of the Grand-Master of the [[Independent Orange Order]], [[Robert Lindsay Crawford|Lindsay Crawford]], in castigating sectarian influences — both "[[Orange Order|Orange]] and Green".<ref name=":7" /> The advocates of "national freedom", he conceded, could be "purblind bigots".<ref>{{Cite web |title=James Connolly: Mr. John E. Redmond, M.P. (1911) |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1911/03/redmond.htm |access-date=2025-07-12 |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref> But in an "ill-tempered and discursive" exchange with Walker,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Howell |first=David |title=A Lost Left: Three Studies in Socialism and Nationalism |publisher=Manchester University Press |year=1986 |isbn=9780226355139 |location=Manchester |pages=64}}</ref> Connolly admitted no case for labour sticking with the [[Parliament of the United Kingdom|Imperial Parliament]] in London.<ref name=":24">{{Cite book |last=Mecham |first=Mike |url= |title=William Walker, Social Activist & Belfast Labourist (1870–1918) |date=2019 |publisher=Umiskin Press |isbn=978-1-9164489-6-4 |pages=165–167 |language=en}}</ref><ref name=":5" />{{rp|104}}

Labour unionism was still [[Unionism in Ireland|unionism]] and, no matter how reactionary nationalism might appear under its current leadership, unionism was more reactionary still.<ref name=":022">{{Cite web |last=Matgamna |first=Sean |date=2022 |title=Connolly and the Protestant workers |url=https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2022-07-12/connolly-and-protestant-workers-1 |access-date=14 April 2024 |website=workers' Liberty}}</ref><ref name=":13">{{Cite web |last=Johnson |first=Michael |date=2016 |title=Connolly and the Unionists {{!}} Workers' Liberty |url=https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2017-07-26/connolly-and-unionists |access-date=2024-05-10 |website=www.workersliberty.org |language=en}}</ref> It represented an Orange-inflected Protestantism that had become "synonymous" with what [[Catholic Church|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".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Connolly |first=James |date=1913 |title=British Labour and Irish Politicians |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1913/05/brlabirpol.htm |journal=Forward |issue=3 May}}</ref> It was a spirit that might be expected of prominent Home Rulers, those whom in welcoming [[George V|King George V]] to Dublin in July 1911 Connolly described as "grovelling, dirt eating capitalist traitors".<ref>{{cite book |last=Comerford |first=Marie |url= |title=On Dangerous Ground A Memoir of the Irish Revolution |date=2021 |publisher=Lilliput Press |isbn=9781843518198 |location=Dublin |page=239 |access-date=}}</ref> But suffused by unionism among Protestant workers, it resulted in his encountering in Ireland's industrial capital, not what socialist theory would have predicted, its most politically-advanced working class, but rather those he despairingly characterised as "least rebellious slaves in the industrial world".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Connolly |first=James |date=1913 |title=North East Ulster |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1913/08/neulster.htm |journal=Forward |issue=2 August}}</ref><ref name=":13" /> 

Walker maintained that it was as an internationalist that he supported the union with Great Britain. Connolly replied that the only true socialist internationalism lay in a "free federation of free peoples".<ref name=":9" /><ref>{{Cite web |title=The Connolly/Walker Controversy (1911) |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1911/connwalk/#intro |access-date=2025-01-05 |website=Marxists Internet Archive}}</ref> That the Protestant working people of Ulster could regard themselves as a free people within the United Kingdom, he dismissed, effectively, as "false consciousness".<ref name=":452" />{{rp|21}} But serving the interests of "rack-renting landlords and sweating capitalists",<ref>Connolly, James (1914) "Labour and the Proposed Partition of Ireland", ''Irish Worker'', 14 March.</ref> it could not be long sustained.<ref name=":5" />{{rp|113}}Already, in 1913, in series strikes in Belfast and [[Larne]], Connolly saw evidence of Protestant workers returning to the class struggle.<ref name=":14" />{{rp|16}}<ref name="Connolly 1913"/> He predicted that suspicion of their Catholic fellow workers would "melt and dissolve",<ref name=":54" />{{rp|164–165}} and that their children would come to laugh at the [[Ulster Covenant]].<ref name=":452" />{{rp|485}}

In the interim, a [[partition of Ireland]], which would "help the Home Rule and Orange capitalists and clerics to keep their rallying cries before the public", had to be resisted even at the cost of seeing the Home Rule Bill defeated.<ref name=":25" />{{rp|121}} But Connolly was unable to advance the all-Ireland organisation he believed to be the key.

In April 1912, four of the five Belfast branches of the [[Independent Labour Party|ILP]] had attended a unity conference called by the [[Socialist Party of Ireland (1904)|SPI]] in Dublin and agreed to form an Independent Labour Party of Ireland.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Collins |first=Peter |title=Nationalism & Unionism, Conflict in Ireland 1885–1921 |publisher=The Institute of Irish Studies, Queens University Belfast |year=1994 |isbn=0853894957 |editor-last=Collins |editor-first=Peter |pages=123–154 |chapter=Irish Labour and Politics in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries}}</ref>{{rp|135}} But sensitive to the unpopularity of Home Rule, they did not carry their commitment over, when in May, Connolly secured a resolution at the [[Irish Trades Union Congress]] in favour of an [[Labour Party (Ireland)|Irish Labour Party]] without ties to the ILP or other British groups.<ref name=":10" />{{rp|120–121}} Instead (joined in time by Winifred Carney)<ref name=":723">{{Cite book |last=Woggon |first=Helga |url= |title=Silent Radical – Winifred Carney, 1887–1943: A Reconstruction of Her Biography |date=2000 |publisher=SIPTU, Irish Labour History Society |pages=233 |language=en}}</ref> they adhered to what in Belfast became, after partition, the [[Northern Ireland Labour Party]].<ref name=":4222">{{Cite web |last=Quinn |first=James |date=2009 |title=Carney, Winifred {{!}} Dictionary of Irish Biography |url=https://www.dib.ie/biography/carney-winifred-winnie-a1489 |access-date=2024-03-09 |website=www.dib.ie |language=en}}</ref>

=== Socialism and religion ===
In 1907, Connolly 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".<ref name=":452" />{{rp|679}} Yet he could not accept De Leon's insistence that a socialist party be as "intolerant as science" of deviations from strict materialism. Connolly opposed [[clericalism]].<ref name=":183">{{Cite book |last=Connolly |first=James |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1910/lnr/foreword.htm |title=Labour, Nationality and Religion, Being a discussion of the Lenten Discourses against Socialism delivered by Father Kane, S.J., in Gardiner Street Church, Dublin |date=1910}}</ref> He argued that Irish Catholics could in all conscience reject their bishops' dealings with the British authorities,<ref name=":92"/>{{rp|59}} and proposed that Irish schools be free of church control.<ref name=":7" /> But claiming "conformity with the practice of the chief Socialist parties of the World", he declared religion a private matter outside the scope of socialist action.<ref name=":212">{{Cite web |last=Cork Workers Club |date=1976 |title=The Connolly-DeLeon Controversy – Introduction |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1904/condel/cwcintro.htm |access-date=2024-04-05 |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref><ref name=":6" />{{rp|112–113}}<ref name=":25" />{{rp|62-64}} <blockquote>Socialism, is a bread and butter question. It is a question of the stomach; it is going to be settled in the factories, mines and ballot boxes of this country and is not going to be settled at the altar or in the church.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Connolly |first=James |url=https://archive.iww.org/PDF/history/library/Connolly/SocialismMadeEasy.pdf |title=Socialism Made Easy |publisher=Charles H. Kerr & Co. |year=1909 |location=Chicago |chapter=But Socialism is against Religion. I cannot be a Socialist and be a Christian.}}</ref></blockquote>In 1910, he published ''Labour, Nationality and Religion'' in which he defended socialists against the clerical charge that they are "beasts of immorality". He noted, for example, that the "enormous increase of divorces [in the United States] was almost entirely among the classes least affected by Socialist teaching".<ref name=":183" /> At the same time, he argued that there was an egalitarian and humanitarian impulse in Christianity that provided a moral bridge to socialism, and could positively contribute to its advance.<ref name="Burtenshaw 20193">{{cite news |last=Burtenshaw |first=Ronan |date=22 April 2019 |title=Remembering James Connolly |url=https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/04/remembering-james-connolly |access-date=26 January 2023 |work=[[Tribune (magazine)|Tribune]] |publisher= |quote=}}</ref> (In the ''The Forward'' he was content to publish in a paper that ran a column from [[John Wheatley]]'s Catholic Socialist Society).<ref name=":25" />{{rp|95}} 

In either case, Connolly believed it was an unnecessary and strategic mistake for socialists to risk popular support by deliberately outraging religious opinion.<ref name=":6" />{{rp|112}} He had refused to join De Leon in entertaining [[August Bebel]]'s ideas on [[polyamorous]] marriage.<ref name=":212" /><ref name=":92"/>{{rp|52}} Doing so, he argued, was simply putting "a weapon" into the hands of their enemies "without obtaining any corresponding advantage".<ref name=":282"/>

=== Anti-Colonialism ===
Connolly insisted that his enthusiasm for all resistance to British rule – from the [[Boer republics]], to the [[Dacoits]] of [[Myanmar|Burma]] – was not opportunistic, driven solely by his particularistic concern with the struggle for Irish freedom,<ref name=":28" /> but rather was "consistent with the doctrines we hold as adherents of the Marxist propaganda, and believers in the Marxist economics".<ref name=":26">{{Cite news |last=Connolly |first=James |date=4 November 1899 |title=Imperialism and Socialism |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1899/11/impsoc.htm |work=Worker's Republic}}</ref> 

In a series articles from 1897 on "the coming revolt in India", Connolly argued that such progress that had made under British rule in the sub-continent could have been independently attained “by an intellectual people with a continuity of literary and philosophic activity stretching back for two thousand years or more”.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Connolly |first=James |date=January 1908 |title=The Coming Revolt in India: Its Political and Social Causes |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1908/01/india1.htm |url-status= |work=the Harp}}</ref>  In Connolly’s view the issue was not modernity but "the colonial mode of its ''imposition".''<ref name=":28">{{Cite journal |last=McNally |first=Edward |date=2024 |title=The Irish Idea: James Connolly's Political Thought |journal=Modern Intellectual History |language=en |volume=21 |issue=4 |pages=850–873 |doi=10.1017/S1479244324000507 |issn=1479-2443|doi-access=free }}</ref> In observations that [[Robert J. C. Young|Robert Young]] suggests prefigure [[Mao Zedong|Mao]], [[Frantz Fanon|Fanon]], [[Amílcar Cabral|Cabral]] and [[Che Guevara|Guevara]], Connolly proposed that such impositions could accelerate revolutionary potentialities not only on the periphery but also, given the necessity of "colonial expansion and the conquest of new markets . . . for the prolongation of the life of capitalism",<ref name=":26" /> in the metropolitan centre.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Young |first=Robert J. C. |url= |title=Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction |date=2016 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |isbn=978-1-4051-2094-4 |pages=305 |language=en}}</ref>

Finding similarities with the work of [[José Carlos Mariátegui|José Carlos Mariategui]], founder of the [[Syndicalism|syndicalist]]-influenced Peruvian Socialist Party, others have proposed that, in works such as ''Labour in Irish History'' (1910), Connolly was among the first marxists to attempt an anti-imperialist form of historiography conceptualised from the standpoint of the colonized.<ref>Lloyd, David (2003), “Rethinking National Marxism: James Connolly and ‘Celtic Communism’”, ''interventions'', 5 (3), 345-370, 357.</ref><ref>Dobbins, Gregory (2000), “Whenever Green is Red: James Connolly and Postcolonial Theory”, ''Nepantla'', 1 (3), 605-648, 634.</ref> 

=== Emancipation of women ===
[[File:Winifred carney c 1918.jpg|thumb|[[Winifred Carney]], Secretary of the Irish Textile Workers' Union, 1912; Connolly's aide-de-camp, [[Irish Citizen Army]], [[Easter Rising]], 1916|183x183px|left]]
In a campaign to raise funds for the Dublin strikers in 1913, Connolly shared a platform at London's [[Royal Albert Hall]] with [[Sylvia Pankhurst]].<ref name=":0332"/> He took the occasion to declare that he stood for "opposition to the domination of nation over nation, of class over class, or of sex over sex".<ref name=":10" />{{rp|145}} He had supported the [[Suffragette]] movement, and worked alongside women in the labour movement. His Irish Citizen Army had the distinction of giving women officer rank and duty<ref name=":11" />{{rp|213}}<ref>{{Cite web |last=McCoole |first=Sinéad |date=2021 |title=Women of the Rising: Activists, fighters & widows {{!}} Century Ireland |url=https://www.rte.ie/centuryireland/index.php/articles/women-of-the-rising |access-date=2024-04-20 |website=www.rte.ie}}</ref> [[Francis Sheehy-Skeffington]] was convinced that, of "all the Irish labour men", Connolly was "the soundest and most thorough-going feminist".<ref name="McAuliffe 20162">{{cite web |last=McAuliffe |first=Mary |date=6 September 2016 |title=Our Struggle Too |url=https://jacobin.com/2016/06/irish-women-struggle-easter-rising-cumann-na-mban |access-date=26 January 2023 |work=[[Jacobin (magazine)|Jacobin]] |publisher= |quote=}}</ref>

In ''The Reconquest of Ireland'' (1915), Connolly traced oppression of women, like the oppression of the worker, to “a social and political order based upon the private ownership of property”. If the "worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave".<ref name=":17" />{{rp|292}} He would have little use for any form of Irish state that did not not "embody the emancipation of womanhood?".<ref name="McAuliffe 20162" /> However, socialism would solve only "the economic side of the Woman Question":  "the question of marriage, of divorce, of paternity, of the equality of woman with man are physical and sexual questions, or questions of temperamental affiliation as in marriage," would "still be hotly contested".<ref name=":5" />{{rp|46}} There was still a private sphere in which women themselves would complete the struggle for their own emancipation. "None", he remarked, is "so fit to break the chains as they who wear them, none so well equipped to decide what a fetter is”.<ref name="McAuliffe 20162" />

=== Rejection of antisemitism ===
During his 1902 election campaign in the [[Wood Quay]] ward in Dublin, in which many streets were occupied by [[History of the Jews in Russia|Jewish immigrants]] from [[Russian Empire|Russia]], Connolly's campaign became the first in Irish history to distribute leaflets in [[Yiddish]]. The leaflet condemned antisemitism as a tool of the capitalist class.<ref name=":02">{{Cite journal |last=O'Riordan |first=Manus |date=1988 |title=Connolly Socialism and the Jewish Worker |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23196041 |journal=Saothar |volume=13 |pages=120–130 |jstor=23196041 |issn=0332-1169}}</ref>{{rp|129–130}}<ref name=":452" />{{rp|171}}

Connolly sharply criticised the overtly anti-semitic tone of the British [[Social Democratic Federation]]'s publications during the [[Second Boer War|Boer War]], arguing that they had attempted to "divert the wrath of the advanced workers from the capitalists to the Jews". His own editorship, however, did not exclude the possibility of anti-Jewish tropes. In the ''Workers Republic'' readers were asked to place themselves in the position of the [[Boers]]: "Supposing your country was invaded by a mob of Jews and foreign exploiters ... What would you do?".<ref name=":02" />{{rp|121–122}}During the Cork lock-out of 1909, Connolly's ''Harp'' (the journal of the Irish Socialist Federation) featured an article denouncing "patriotic Irish capitalists" for importing "wholesale scab Jews to break the strike of Irish workers".<ref>Kenny, C. (2017). "James Larkin and the Jew’s Shilling: Irish Workers, Activists and Anti-Semitism Before Independence". ''Irish Economic and Social History'', 44(1), 66–84 [78]</ref>

In 1898, ''Workers Republic'' published an article "The Ideal Government of the Jew", advocating "the establishment of an Isrealitish [sic] nation in [[Palestine (region)|Palestine]]".<ref name=":02" />{{rp|120–121}} But two years later, Connolly himself was to write positively about the "remarkable" development in the [[Russian Empire]] of the [[General Jewish Labour Bund|Jewish Labour Bund]].<ref name=":02" />{{rp|124–125}} Part of [[Russian Social Democratic Labour Party|Russian Social Democracy]], the Bund was anti-[[Zionism|Zionist]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Englert |first=Sai |date=2018 |title=The rise and fall of the Jewish Labour Bund • International Socialism |url=http://isj.org.uk/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-jewish-labour-bund/ |access-date=2024-04-30 |website=International Socialism |language=en-GB}}</ref>

==Family==
James Connolly and his wife Lillie had seven children.<ref>{{cite web |title=Life in 1916 Ireland: Stories from statistics |url=https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-1916/1916irl/cpr/cmp/jc/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200724114614/https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-1916/1916irl/cpr/cmp/jc/ |archive-date=24 July 2020 |access-date=24 July 2020 |publisher=[[Central Statistics Office (Ireland)|Central Statistics Office]]}}</ref> The eldest, Mona, died on the eve of the family's departure to join Connolly in America in 1904 at the age of 13, the result of an accident with scalding laundry water.<ref>{{cite web |date=22 February 2013 |title=Tragedy in the Connolly family |url=http://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/tragedy-in-the-connolly-family/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161202234335/http://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/tragedy-in-the-connolly-family/ |archive-date=2 December 2016 |access-date=2 December 2016 |website=History Ireland}}</ref>

In Belfast, [[Nora Connolly O'Brien|Nora]] and Ina (1896–1980) were active, with [[Winifred Carney]], in [[Cumann na mBan]] and carried reports from the north to Pearse and their father the week before the rising in Dublin. Later, Nora was involved with her younger brother [[Roddy Connolly|Roddy]] in efforts to promote a republican-socialist movement,<ref>{{Cite web |last=White |first=Lawrence |date=2009 |title=O'Brien, Nora Connolly {{!}} Dictionary of Irish Biography |url=https://www.dib.ie/biography/obrien-nora-connolly-a6489 |access-date=2024-04-29 |website=www.dib.ie |language=en}}</ref> but after the splintering of the [[Republican Congress]] in 1934 they went their separate ways. Roddy ended his political life as chairman of the [[Labour Party (Ireland)|Irish Labour Party]]<ref>{{Cite web |last=White |first=Lawrence |date=2009 |title=Connolly, Roderic James ('Roddy') {{!}} Dictionary of Irish Biography |url=https://www.dib.ie/biography/connolly-roderic-james-roddy-a1958 |access-date=2024-04-29 |website=www.dib.ie |language=en}}</ref> and, the year before her death, Nora made an appearance at the [[Ardfheis]] of ([[Provisional Irish Republican Army|Provisional]]) [[Sinn Féin]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Wright |first1=Joanne |title=Terrorist Propaganda: The Red Army Faction and the Provisional IRA, 1968–86 |date=1991 |publisher=Springer |page=209}}</ref>

In Belfast, Aideen (1895–1966) was also in [[Cumann na mBan]].<ref>{{Cite web |date=2016-11-05 |title=Daughters of the Rising |url=https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/daughters-of-the-rising/35189069.html |access-date=2024-04-23 |website=Irish Independent |language=en}}</ref> She married a Hugh Ward in [[Naas]] and had five children.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Hugh Ward + Aideen Lily Connolly – webtrees |url=https://www3.smo.uhi.ac.uk/webtrees/tree/JamesConnolly/family/F919/Hugh-Ward-Aideen-Lily-Connolly |access-date=2024-04-23 |website=www3.smo.uhi.ac.uk}}</ref> Moira (1899–1958) became a doctor and married [[Richard Beech]]<ref name="Moria Connolly">
{{cite web

 | title         = Moira Connolly
 | work          = My Heritage .com

 | url           = https://www.myheritage.com/names/moira_connolly
 | access-date   = 17 March 2024
 | archive-url   = https://web.archive.org/web/20200523145411/https://www.myheritage.com/names/moira_connolly
 | archive-date   = 23 May 2020
 | url-status    = dead
}}</ref> (an English syndicalist who, like Roddy, in 1920 attended the [[2nd World Congress of the Comintern|World Congress of the Comintern)]].<ref name="tosstorff">{{cite book |last1=Tosstorff |first1=Reiner |title=The Red International of Labour Unions (RILU) 1920–1937 |date=2016 |publisher=Brill |isbn=978-9004325579 |page=834}}</ref> Connolly's youngest daughter, Fiona Connolly Edwards (1907–1976) also married in England, was active in the trade-union, and anti-partition, movements and assisted [[C. Desmond Greaves|Desmond Greaves]] in his biographies both of her father and of the executed [[Anglo-Irish Treaty|anti-Treaty]] republican, [[Liam Mellows|Liam Mellowes.]]<ref>{{Cite news |date=10 April 1976 |title=Obituary: Mrs Fiona Edwards |work=Irish Times |pages=13}}</ref>

Brian Samuel Connolly Heron (Brian o h-Eachtuigheirn), the son of Ina Connolly and [[Archie Heron]], Connolly's grandson, was an organiser for the [[United Farm Workers]] in [[California]]. He was also a founding member in the United States of the National Association for Irish Justice which, in 1969, gained recognition as the U.S. support group for the [[Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association]].<ref name=":182"/>{{rp|115–116}}<ref>{{Cite web |title=IN MEMORIAM - Brian o h-Eachtuigheirn (Brian Heron) 1941-2011 |url=http://www.celticartscenter.com/Other/BrianHerron/InMemoriam-BrianHeron.html |access-date=2024-04-28 |website=www.celticartscenter.com}}</ref> Connolly's great grandson, James Connolly Heron, has edited a compilation of his papers,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Heron |first=James Connolly |title=The Words of James Connolly |publisher=Mercier Press |year=1986 |isbn=0853427674 |location=Cork}}</ref> and is active in the campaign to preserve the historical integrity of Moore Street, where Connolly and Pearse took their final stand in 1916.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2024-11-10 |title='The state should have intervened much earlier' – Mary Lou McDonald backs campaign to 'save Moore Street' |url=https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/the-state-should-have-intervened-much-earlier-mary-lou-mcdonald-backs-campaign-to-save-moore-street/a297061365.html |access-date=2024-11-11 |website=Irish Independent |language=en}}</ref>

In their last interview, Connolly urged his wife to return with the younger children to the United States, but she failed to secure the necessary passport. This was despite the assurance of [[John Maxwell (British Army officer)|General Sir John Maxwell]] that she was "a decent humble woman who would be incapable of platform oratory in America".<ref>{{Cite web |last=Curry |first=James |date=2018 |title=Why Was James Connolly's Family Prevented from Emigrating to the United States in 1916? {{!}} Dublin Castle |url=https://www.dublincastle.ie/why-was-james-connollys-family-prevented-from-emigrating-to-the-united-states-in-1916/ |access-date=2024-04-23 |language=en-GB}}</ref>

Remaining in Dublin, in August 1916 Lillie Connolly was received into the Catholic Church, Fiona her sole witness.<ref name="Fiona Connolly" /> She did not make public appearances but when she died in 1938 she was accorded a [[state funeral]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=McCoole |first=Sinéad |url= |title=Easter Widows |date=2014 |publisher=Doubleday Ireland |isbn=978-1-78162-022-9 |pages=352 |language=en}}</ref>

== Memorials ==
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=== Ireland ===
In 1966, to mark 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising, [[Dublin Connolly railway station|Connolly Station]], one of the two main railway stations in Dublin, and [[Connolly Hospital, Blanchardstown]], were named in his honour.

In 1996, a bronze statue of Connolly, backed by the symbol of the Starry Plough,  was erected outside the [[Liberty Hall]] offices of the [[SIPTU]] [[trade union]], in Dublin.

In 2019, [[President of Ireland|Irish President]] [[Michael D. Higgins]] opened the Áras Uí Chonghaile | James Connolly Visitor Centre on the Falls Road in Belfast, close to where the labour leader had lived in the city. Developed with funding from [[Belfast City Council]] and from North American labour unions, the centre offers an interactive exhibit dedicated to Connolly's life and work.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Maxwell |first=Nick |date=2020-04-22 |title=MUSEUM EYE: Áras Uí Chonghaile–James Connolly Visitor Centre |url=https://historyireland.com/museum-eye-aras-ui-chonghaile-james-connolly-visitor-centre/ |access-date=2024-11-11 |website=History Ireland |language=en-US}}</ref> Before it stands a life-size bronze of Connolly, originally unveiled in front of the Falls Community Council offices in 2016 by the Northern Ireland [[Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure (Northern Ireland)|Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure]] minister [[Carál Ní Chuilín]], and by his great-grandson, James Connolly Heron.<ref>{{cite web |date=25 March 2016 |title=James Connolly statue unveiled in honour of 1916 Easter Rising leader |url=http://m.independent.ie/irish-news/news/james-connolly-statue-unveiled-in-honour-of-1916-easter-rising-leader-34572978.html |access-date=2017-05-28 |website=M.independent.ie}}</ref> 

In July 2023, a plaque was unveiled by the [[Dublin City Council]] at Connolly's former residence on South Lotts Road in [[Ringsend]].<ref>{{cite news |last1=Fleming |first1=Rory |title=Plaque commemorating James Connolly unveiled in Dublin |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2023/07/31/plaque-commemorating-james-connolly-unveiled-in-dublin/ |newspaper=[[The Irish Times]]}}</ref>

=== Scotland ===
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.<ref>{{cite web |title=James Connolly gold plaque |url=https://openplaques.org/plaques/10389 |publisher=openplaques.org}}</ref>

=== United States ===
In 1986, a bust of Connolly was erected in Riverfront Park in [[Troy, New York]], where he had lived on first emigrating to the United States in 1904.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Demeter |first1=Richard |title=Irish America: United States (Northern Atlantic States, District of Columbia, Great Lakes Region) and Canada |date=1997 |publisher=Cranford Press |page=352}}</ref>

In 2008, a full-figure bronze of Connolly was installed in Union Park, [[Chicago]] near the offices of the [[United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America|United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Connolly (James) Monument {{!}} Chicago Park District |url=https://www.chicagoparkdistrict.com/parks-facilities/connolly-james-monument |access-date=2024-05-07 |website=www.chicagoparkdistrict.com}}</ref>

==Selected writings==
*Connolly, James. 1897. [https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1897/01/socnat.htm "Socialism and Nationalism"]. [[The Shan Van Vocht|''The Shan van Vocht.'']] '''1''' (1).
*Connolly, James. 1897. ''[https://digitalcollections.tcd.ie/concern/works/rx913r19g Erin's Hope: The End and the Means]'' (republished as ''The Irish Revolution'', c. 1924).
*Connolly, James. 1898. [https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1898/08/fightgrc.htm "The Fighting Race"]. ''Workers' Republic'', 13 August.
*Connolly, James. 1901. ''[https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1901/evangel/ The New Evangel, Preached to Irish Toilers]'' (first appeared in ''Workers' Republic'', June–August 1899).
*Connolly, James. 1909. ''[https://archive.iww.org/PDF/history/library/Connolly/SocialismMadeEasy.pdf Socialism Made Easy]'', Chicago: Charles H. Kerr.
*Connolly, James. 1910. [https://archive.org/details/labourinirishhis0000conn/page/n5/mode/2up ''Labour in Irish history''] (republished 1914).
*Connolly, James. 1910. [https://archive.org/details/labournationalit00conn/page/n5/mode/2up ''Labour, Nationality, and Religion''] (republished 1920).
*Connolly, James. 1911. [https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1911/connwalk/1-socunity.htm "Plea For Socialist Unity in Ireland"]. ''Forward'', 27 May.
*Connolly, James. 1913. [https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1913/05/brlabirpol.htm "British Labour and Irish Politicians"]. ''Forward'', 3 May.
*Connolly, James. 1913. [https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1913/06/awaken.htm "The Awakening of Ulster's Democracy"]. ''Forward'', 7 June.
*Connolly, James. 1913. [https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1913/08/neulster.htm "North East Ulster"]. ''Forward'', 2 August.
*Connolly, James. 1914. [https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1914/07/irish-parl.html "Labour in the new Irish Parliament"]. ''Forward'', 14 July.
*Connolly, James. 1914. [https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1914/08/contrev.htm "A Continental Revolution"]. ''Forward'', 15 August.
*Connolly, James. 1914. [https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1914/10/hopefrie.htm "The Hope of Ireland"]. ''Irish Worker'', 31 October.
*Connolly, James. 1914. [https://archive.org/details/axetorootandoldw00conn/page/n1/mode/2up ''The Axe to the Root, and, Old Wine in New Bottles''] (republished 1921).
*Connolly, James. 1915. [https://archive.org/details/reconquestofirel00conn/page/n5/mode/2up ''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 Publications. {{OCLC|18344793}}.
*Ó Cathasaigh, Aindrias (ed.). 1997. ''The Lost Writings: James Connolly'', London: Pluto Press. {{ISBN|0-7453-1296-9}}.
*Bourke, Richard & Gallagher, Niamh (eds.). 2022. ''The Political Thought of the Irish Revolution'', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. {{ISBN|1-1088-3667-4}}.

=== See also ===
*[[James Connolly bibliography]]

==Biographies==
* 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}}.
* [[Nora Connolly O'Brien|Connolly O'Brien, Nora]]. 1975. ''Portrait of a Rebel Father'' (2nd ed.). Dublin: Four Masters {{ISBN|0-905001-31-1}}
* [[Seán Cronin|Cronin, Seán]]. 2020. ''James Connolly: Irish Revolutionary''. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. {{ISBN|978-1-4766-3997-0}}.
* [[Ruth Dudley Edwards|Edwards, Ruth Dudley]]. 1981. ''James Connolly''. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan. {{ISBN|978-0-7171-1112-1}}.
* Fox, R.M. 1946. ''James Connolly: the Forerunner''. Tralee: The Kerryman.
* [[C. Desmond Greaves|Greaves, C. Desmond]]. 1972. ''The Life and Times of James Connolly'' (2nd ed.). London: Lawrence and Wishart. {{ISBN|978-0-85315-234-7}}.
* Levenson, Samuel. 1973. ''James Connolly, a Biography''. London: Martin Brian and O'Keefe. {{ISBN|978-0-85616-130-8}}.
* McNulty, Liam. 2022. ''James Connolly: Socialist, Nationalist and Internationalist''. London: Merlin Press. {{ISBN|0-8503-6783-2}}.
* Metscher, Priscilla. 2002. ''James Connolly and the Reconquest of Ireland''. Minneapolis: MEP Publications, Univ. of Minnesota. {{ISBN|0-930656-74-1}}.
* Mitchell, Seán. 2016, ''A Rebel's Guide to James Connolly'', London: Bookmarks. {{ISBN|978-1910885086}}
* Morgan, Austen. 1990. ''James Connolly. a Political Biography''. Dublin: Gill & Macmillan. {{ISBN|0-7171-3911-5}}.
* Nevin, Donal. 2005. ''James Connolly: A Full Life''. Dublin: Gill & MacMillan. {{ISBN|0-7171-3911-5}}.
* [[Sean O'Callaghan|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}}.

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

{{Easter Rising}}
{{Labour Party (Ireland)}}
{{Authority control}}

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