James Connolly

James Connolly
Born	(1868-06-05)5 June 1868 Cowgate, Edinburgh, Scotland
Died	12 May 1916(1916-05-12) (aged 47) Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin, Ireland
Cause of death	Execution by firing squad
Organization	Industrial Workers of the World (1905–1910) Irish Transport and General Workers Union (1910−1916)
Political party	Scottish Socialist Federation/SDF (1892−1903) 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 (1910–1914) Irish Labour Party (1912–1916)
Spouse	Lillie Connolly ​ (m. 1890)​
Children	7, including Nora and Roddy
Military service
Buried	Arbour Hill Prison, Dublin
Service / branch	British Army Irish Citizen Army Irish Republic
Years of service	British Army (1882 to 1889) Irish Citizen Army (1913 to 1916)
Rank	Commandant General
Unit	King's Regiment (Liverpool) 2nd Battalion of the Royal Scots Regiment
Battles / wars	Easter Rising

James Connolly (Irish: Séamas Ó Conghaile;^[1] 5 June 1868 – 12 May 1916) was a Scottish-born Irish republican, socialist, and trade union leader, executed for his part in the 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 Britain's Crown and 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 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, first in Belfast and then in Dublin.

In Belfast, he was frustrated in his efforts to draw Protestant workers into an all-Ireland labour and socialist movement but, in the wake of the 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 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.