James Connolly (trade unionist)

James Connolly

Statue of James Connolly in Dublin.

James Connolly ( Irish Séamus Ó Conghaile ; born June 5, 1868 in Edinburgh , † May 12, 1916 in Dublin ) was an Irish trade unionist, Marxist socialist, theorist and revolutionary. Connolly is now honored as a champion by socialists, trade unionists and Irish Republicans alike. After the failure of the Easter Rising in 1916, he was executed as the leader of the Irish Citizen Army by British occupiers in Dublin. Connolly lived in the United States from 1903 to 1910, where he left his mark on both the labor movement and the Irish community. Connolly's mother tongue was English; despite his early drop out of school, he spoke French , Italian , Esperanto and some Irish . He was also committed to the revival of Irish.

Life

James Connolly was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, to Irish immigrants . At the age of eleven he left school to work. Despite - or because of - this start in life, he became one of the leading left theorists of his time. At the age of 14 Connolly joined the British Army and was stationed in Dublin . There he met his future wife. In 1889 he resigned and built the Irish Socialist Republican Party (ISRP). During his activity as a socialist in England he was one of the founding members of the Socialist Labor Party , which split off from the British Socialist Party in 1903 .

In the United States

James Connolly toured the United States in 1902 as a guest speaker at the Socialist Labor Party of America . His speeches attracted a large number of Irish people. A year later he returned to the USA as an emigrant. He lived with his wife and children Nora and Ina first in Troy , New York (at 55 Ingalls Avenue), from 1905 in Newark , New Jersey . From 1906 he was active in both the SLP and the Industrial Workers of the World union . He was a major protagonist in the confrontation with the influential American Marxist Daniel De Leon . Due to personal and content-related controversies with De Leon, Connolly left the SLP in 1907 and drove the exclusion of De Leon's supporters from the IWW in 1908. In 1907, Connolly founded the Irish Socialist Federation in New York and edited their journal "The Harp". When he moved the editorial office of Harp to Dublin in 1910, the American episode in Connolly's life ended.

Preparation for the uprising

In the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union he was a close confidante of James Larkin . In response to the 1913 lockout , he founded the Irish Citizen Army (ICA), an armed, well-trained group to protect workers and strikers . Although they were only about 250 men, the idea of ​​establishing an independent, socialist Republic of Ireland quickly arose .

Connolly distanced himself from what he saw as the bourgeois leadership of the Irish Volunteers . In 1916 he did not believe that they were willing to take decisive action against the United Kingdom. He therefore felt compelled to put pressure on them by signaling his readiness to throw his small troops against the British Empire if necessary .

This was learned by the members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood who had infiltrated the volunteers and planned to use them as weapons that year. To dissuade Connolly from acting too hastily, IRB leaders including Thomas James Clarke and Patrick Pearse met him to explore the possibilities of an agreement. An alleged kidnapping by the IRB was later denied; the rumor may have been based on a play on words. In fact, he disappeared for three days without telling anyone. At this meeting, the ICA and the IRB decided to come together on Easter Monday 1916 .

On April 24, 1916 Connolly was in command of the Dublin Brigade , the Army of the Irish Republic . This brigade was the only one that played a notable role in this uprising. About a week after the signing of the surrender , Connolly was executed tied to a chair in the courtyard of Kilmainham Gaol - he was too badly wounded to stand.

Résumé

His legacy to Ireland is primarily his contribution to a Marxist reflection on Irish national consciousness and the development of revolutionary socialist Irish republicanism that has influenced the Irish independence movement to the present day. Even today there is an Irish Republican Socialist Party , which claims its legacy, as well as a Socialist Party , a Communist Party of Ireland (whose youth organization bears his name: Connolly Youth Movement ), a Workers Party of Ireland and a Labor Party . His writings show him to be a staunch Marxist thinker, which is not undisputed. Some of his writings are also directed against the bourgeois nationalism of those who consider themselves Irish patriots .

Monuments, naming

Memorial plaque in Edinburgh

• Chicago: Union Park, near the United Electrical Workers' union hall and the Industrial Workers of the World
• Dublin: Statue in front of Liberty Hall, Beresford Place, which houses the offices of the SITPU union. The station Connolly Station and the hospital Connolly Hospital , Blanchardstown are named after James Connolly.
• Edinburgh: memorial plaque on the George IV Bridge arch , Cowgate
• New York: Statue in Riverfront Park in Troy, opened on August 17, 1986. The IWW branch in Upstate New York is called the James Connolly Upstate New York Branch

literature

• Bill Anderson: James Connolly and the Irish Left , Irish Academic Press, Dublin 1994.
• Bill Anderson: Syndicalism in Ireland: 1896–1940 , James Conolly Society of Canada and the United States, accessed April 6, 2011. [1]
• John Arden : The Non-Stop Connolly Show (26 hour cycle), premiered at the Dublin Theater Festival, 1975.
• Michael Naumann : Identity Problems of a Modern Revolutionary: James Connolly and the Irish Revolutionary History. A case study in: Structural Change of Heroism. From sacred to revolutionary heroism , Königstein / Taunus 1984, pp. 109–222.
• Helga Woggon: Integrative Socialism and National Liberation. James Connolly's politics and influence in Ireland. Göttingen / Zurich 1990. ISBN 3-525-36309-5

Web links

• Literature by and about James Connolly in the catalog of the German National Library
• James Connolly Internet Archive at marxists.org
• James Connolly and Syndicalism in Ireland in the slow motion section of direct action magazine

Individual evidence

1. ^ Syndicalism in Ireland: 1896-1940 , Bill Anderson, James Connolly Society Canada and USA website, accessed April 6, 2011.
2. ↑ Desmond Ryan: James Connolly, His Life, Work and Writings, Dublin 1924
3. ↑ Gaelic Revival on irishhistorylinks.net
4. ↑ Austen Morgan: James Connolly: a political biography . Manchester University Press, Manchester 1990, ISBN 978-0-7190-2958-5 , p. 15.
5. ^ Text of Connolly Bio from IALC , website of the James Connolly Society Canada and USA, accessed April 6, 2011.
6. ^ Syndicalism in Ireland: 1896-1940 , Bill Anderson, James Connolly Society Canada and USA website, accessed April 6, 2011.
7. ↑ Who was James Connolly and why is our branch named in his honor? ( Memento of the original from November 21, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , IWW Upstate NY website, accessed April 6, 2011.