Happy birthday, James Connolly! (June 5, 1868)
Born in the Irish ghetto of Cowgate in Edinburgh, James Connolly became a laborer at a young age, and joined the British Army to improve his prospects. However, he developed a hatred for the institution which he would hold his entire life, and eventually deserted. Becoming influenced by the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Connolly came to identify as a socialist, and would become one of the leading figures in the socialist republican movement in Ireland, and a socialist theorist in his own right. In Ireland, he would become a leader in both the Irish Socialist Republican Party and the Labour Party, which he helped to found. Associated with the syndicalist current known as De Leonism, Connolly spent some time in the United States where he affiliated with the Socialist Labor Party and helped to found the Industrial Workers of the World and the Irish Socialist Federation. Returning to Ireland, he was a leader along with Jim Larkin in the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union, and continued to agitate for Irish independence and a socialist republic. He was a leader in the Easter Rising of 1916, commanding the Dublin Brigade. The rebellion was crushed, and Connolly captured, with his execution coming soon afterward. He has become a national hero in Ireland, with numerous statues and memorials erected to honor his memory and legacy. His dream of an Irish republic united in socialism remains, for now, unfulfilled.
“Revolution is never practical – until the hour of the revolution strikes. Then, it alone is practical, and all the efforts of the conservatives, and compromisers become the most futile and visionary of human imaginings.”
