He raised the workers' flag and the republic's on a single staff
Too wounded to stand, he was shot tied to a chair — Kilmainham Gaol, 12 May 1916
A socialist revolutionary who fused Marxism with Irish national liberation. He founded the Irish Citizen Army, commanded the Dublin Brigade in the 1916 Easter Rising, and was executed by the British after its suppression.
Career Timeline
- 1896Founds the Irish Socialist Republican Party
- 1903–1910IWW organizer in America
- 1910–1914Leads the ITGWU through the 1913 Dublin Lockout
- 1910Published Labour in Irish History
- 1913Founds the Irish Citizen Army
- 1915Published The Re-Conquest of Ireland
- 1916.4Easter Rising — Dublin commandant, signatory of the Proclamation
- 1916.5Shot at Kilmainham Gaol
Fusing Marxism with anti-colonial national liberation
Connolly was almost unique among European socialists in fusing Marxist class struggle and anti-colonial national liberation into a single fight. In Labour in Irish History (1910) he reinterpreted the Irish national movement through a class lens, presenting Gaelic traditions of common land ownership as the historical foundation for a socialist future.
The core of his thought was the recognition that class emancipation without national liberation was incomplete. And so was national independence without class emancipation. As early as 1897 in Erin's Hope he warned: "If you hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain."
Connolly's socialism was not state socialism. In The Re-Conquest of Ireland (1915) he defined the workers' republic as an industrial commonwealth in which "workshops, factories, docks, railways, shipyards shall be owned by the nation, but administered by the industrial unions of the respective industries." Nationalisation without democratic union control, he insisted, "is not Socialism — it is only State capitalism."
This revolutionary syndicalism was shaped during his years as an organiser for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in the United States. He valued mass self-activity and direct action, believing that workers acquire organisational strength and class consciousness through the daily struggle against capital.
His anti-colonialism extended well beyond Ireland. He consistently supported the anti-British struggles of Indians, Boers, and Egyptians, asserting the right of colonised peoples to self-liberation as a Marxist principle. This internationalist anti-imperialism remains a pioneering model for postcolonial Marxism today.
The Easter Rising commandant shot tied to a chair
Easter Monday, 24 April 1916. The Proclamation of the Irish Republic went up at the General Post Office in Dublin. Among its seven signatories was James Connolly, styled Vice-President of the Provisional Government.
Connolly commanded the Irish Citizen Army and, as Dublin Brigade commandant, shouldered military leadership of the Rising. His lifelong conviction: 'The cause of labour is the cause of Ireland.'
Six days of fighting ended in surrender. Connolly was badly wounded in the ankle and could not stand. The British took him to Kilmainham Gaol.
At dawn on 12 May 1916 he was brought before the firing squad unable to walk. They tied him to a chair. After a final cigarette and a priest's blessing he was shot, reportedly with the words, 'I am going now, with a glad heart.'
The manner of his execution swung Irish public opinion decisively. The image of the commandant shot in a chair turned the Easter Rising from a reckless putsch into a martyrdom, persuading the masses of the legitimacy of the war of independence that followed in 1919.
Connolly was almost unique among European socialists in fusing anti-colonial national liberation and class struggle into a single fight.