-by
Nicola Coote.
Connolly’s career was cut short because
of this execution and remains the most influential personality in the Irish
left wing politics. Many of his writings have been read world wide and all influential to this day, even in an Ireland
that embrace the market economy.
James Connolly was born in the year of 1868, at Cow gate, Edinburgh.
His mother Mary and his father John were Irish emigrants. His father was a
manure carter, removing dung from the streets at night, and his mother was a
domestic servant. The Cow gate and the adjacent area known as Grass market were
the Irish slums. The Irish were forced to live here otherwise known as ‘little
Ireland’. When he was 10, Connolly left
school and got a job at the Evening News
where he worked like a servant cleaning ink rollers and running errands for
adults. At 14 he joined the British army and was moved to Ireland. There he
witnessed abominable treatment of the Irish people by the British. He also met
his wife there, a protestant named Lillie Reynolds. By 1888 they got engaged
and then got married two years later.
In
1902 Connolly went on a five-month lecture tour in the USA and when he returned
to Dublin he found that the Irish Socialist Republican Party existed in name
only. He returned to Edinburgh were he worked for the Scottish district of the
Social democratic federation. In 1910,
he returned to Ireland and by the following year he became the Belfast
organiser for James Larkin’s Irish Transport and General Workers Union. In 1913
he co found the Labor Party. Larkin travelled to the USA for a lecture tour and
then Connolly as a result became the key figure in the Irish labor movement.
In October 1914,
Connolly returned to Dublin and revived the newspaper, The Workers Republic. In this newspaper, Connolly worked on
articles Guerilla Warfare. The Irish Volunteers were urged to support the
English in the World War 1 against Germany. Many of them were on John Redmond
side that was a leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party –and was later known as
the National Volunteers.
In January 1916, the
Irish Republican Brotherhood (those who didn’t go with the National Volunteers
at the spilt) decided to take Connolly into their confidence. The following
months, he took part in the preparation for a rising and was appointed military
commander of the republican forces. This included his own Irish Citizen Army.
During Easter week he was in command of the republican HQ at the GPO and there
was many wounded and then he got arrested.
James Connolly was
one of the seven signatories of the proclamation in 1916.
On May 1916, James
Connolly was up in bed before a court martial and he was sentenced to death by
a firing squad. He was at that time being held in military hospital in Dublin
castle. In an article in the Irish independent may 10, William martin Murphy
urged the British government to execute Connolly.
On the 12 of May,
James Connolly was taken in to Kilmainham
Jail from Dublin castle carried in by a stretcher into the prison. He was
strapped into a chair in a corner and he was executed by a firing squad.
Connolly’s body like the other 14 executed leaders was brought to a military
cemetery.
The fact that he was
one of seven signatories of the 1916 proclamation bears evidence of his
influence. All the executions made many people angry even those who showed
little support over the rebellion. The circumstances of Connolly’s execution
created the most anger. Many people who have been at the best to the rebels and
their desires when they had been alive.
As a post script,
James Connolly’s words for the army on the 16 of April 1916.
“The odds are a thousand
to one against us, but in the event of victory, holds onto your rifles, as
those with whom we are fighting may stop before our goalies reached.”
To them people whom
the sin Fein would consider having “stopped before the goal is reached”, the
fact that Connolly died on the chair but he wanted the chair to be placed at a
table
Like the other
leaders of the uprising, Connolly took on even greater significance in death.
Connolly remains not only among the members of the general trade union movement
in Ireland. His son and daughter carried on his work in politics into the
middle decades of the century.
The Irish left,
Connolly remains a hero. The Irish people many would not share all his views.
His role in the Irish history is now a statue which stands in Beresford Place
in Dublin near the new liberty hall. Times change and even trade unions change
with them.
This was the
statement of James Connolly,
Believing that the
British Government has no right in Ireland, and had never any right in Ireland.
In any one generation of Irishmen ready to die to affirm that truth.
I would personally
thank God that I have lived to see the day when thousands of Irish men and
boys, and hundreds of Irish woman and girls, were ready to affirm that truth
and to attest it with their live if need be.
Q1. Short Questions
One of the books used
for this essay was The Easter Rising
by Connor Kostick and Lorcan Collins. This book tells the history of the Dublin
Easter Rising of 1916 and also includes a built in walking tour of the sights
connected with uprising. I found this book to be a very useful source of a
number of reasons. It was written in a clear and easy to understand manner. The
authors gave a comprehensive account of the lead up to the uprising and the
people involved. The book also contained a large number of photographs and a
useful bibliography at the back.
Q2. Bibliogarphy;
Brady,
C . Encyclopedia of Ireland ,Helicon
Publishing ltd,Oxford,2000.
Bouillion, H .A Dictionary of Irish Biography. Gill
and Macmillan, Dublin 1999.
Ward, J, A. The Easter Rising Harlan Davidson, 2003.
Litton, H. Irish Rebellions. Wolfhound Press Ltd.,
Dublin, 1998.
Caufield, M, The Easter Rebellion, Gill and Macmillan
Ltd, Dublin 1995.
Mc Redmond , L.
Modern Irish lives. Gill and
Macmillan, Dublin 1999.
Q3. Skills;
Two
skills that I have learnt doing this project were:
(1)Computer
Skills: I learnt how to use Microsoft Word, how to use the internet to find
information and how to print out documents.
(2)I
learned how to write Leaving Certificate essays properly with footnotes, and
bibliography at the end (a list of books).
Reasons for studying this topic:
Two
reasons for studying this topic are as follows:
(1)James
Connolly played a very important role in the 1916 rising and
(2)He
had a very interesting life before the rising and I thought it would be an
interesting topic to study.