James Connolly

James Connolly ( born June 5, 1868 in Edinburgh, † May 12 1916 in Dublin, ir Seamas Ó Conghaile ) was an Irish trade unionist, Marxist socialist theorist and revolutionary. Connolly is honored today by both socialists, trade unionists and Irish republicans as a pioneer. He was executed after the failure of the Easter Rising in 1916 as leader of the Irish Citizen Army of the British occupiers in Dublin. Connolly lived from 1903 to 1910 in the U.S., where he left traces both in the labor movement and in the Irish community. Connolly's mother tongue was English; despite his early education he spoke broken French, Italian, Esperanto and a little Gaelic. He was also active for the revival of Gaelic.

He stood in a special friendship - admiring relationship with Lenin, although the two have probably never met each other.

Life

He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, the son of Irish immigrants. At age eleven, he left school to work. Despite - or because of - this starts in life he became one of the leading theorists of his time left. With 14 years of Connolly joined the British Army and was stationed in Dublin. There he met his future wife. In 1889, he quit the service and established the Irish Socialist Republican Party ( ISRP ) on. During his activity as a socialist in England, he was one of the founders of the Socialist Labour Party, which broke away in 1903 by the British Socialist Party.

In the United States

James Connolly toured in 1902 as a guest speaker Socialist Labor Party of America to great acclaim by the U.S., a year later, he returned as an immigrant back there. He lived with his wife and children Nora and Ina first in the New York City borough of Troy ( in the Ingalls Avenue 55), from 1905 in Newark, New Jersey. From 1906 he was active in both the SLP and the union Industrial Workers of the World. He was an important protagonist in the dispute with the influential American Marxist Daniel De Leon. Due to personal and thematic controversies with De Leon Connolly left the SLP in 1907 and drove the exclusion of the trailer De Leon from the IWW ahead in 1908. In 1907, Conolly in New York, the Irish Socialist Federation and edited the journal " The Harp ". When he moved in 1910, the editors of Harp to Dublin, the American episode ended in Connolly's life.

Preparation for the uprising

In the Irish Transport and General Workers ' Union, he was a close associate of James Larkin. In response to the lockout in 1913, he founded the Irish Citizen Army (ICA ), an armed, well trained group for the protection of workers and strikers. Although their number only about 250 men was quickly came up with the idea of ​​establishing an independent, socialist Republic of Ireland.

Connolly distanced himself from the bourgeois in his eyes leadership of the Irish Volunteers. In 1916, he did not believe that they were willing to put decisive actions against the United Kingdom in transition. Therefore, he was obliged to put them under pressure by signaling a willingness, if necessary, only his small force opposed to throw the British Empire.

Of the learned members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, who had infiltrated the Volunteers and were planning to use them in that year as a weapon. To dissuade Connolly of vorschnellem action, met him the IRB leaders, including Thomas James Clarke and Patrick Pearse, to explore the possibility of an agreement. An alleged abduction by the IRB was later denied; the corresponding rumor was based perhaps on a pun. In fact, he disappeared for three days without telling anyone about it. At this meeting decided ICA and IRB to stand together on Easter Sunday 1916 the plan.

On April 24, 1916, Connolly commander of the Dublin Brigade of the Army of the Irish Republic. This brigade was the only one who played a remarkable role in this uprising. After the signing of the surrender after about a week Connolly was tied to a chair in the courtyard of Kilmainham Gaol executed - to a halt, he was severely wounded.

Summary

His legacy in Ireland is primarily its contribution to a Marxist reflection of the Irish national consciousness and the development of a revolutionary socialist Irish republicanism, which influenced the Irish independence movement up to the present time into it. Even today, there is an Irish Republican Socialist Party, which claimed his inheritance, just as a Socialist Party, a Communist Party of Ireland, a Workers Party of Ireland ( Workers' Party of Ireland ) and a Labour Party. His writings show him to be convinced Marxist thinkers, which is not without controversy. Some of his writings are also directed against the bourgeois nationalism of those who regard themselves as Irish patriots.

Monuments, naming

• Chicago: Union Park, near the premises of the United Electrical Workers union and the IWW
• Dublin: statue in front of Liberty Hall, Beresford Place, in which the offices of the union SITPU are. The Connolly Station and the Hospital Connolly Hospital, Blanchardstown are named after James Connolly.
• Edinburgh: Commemorative Plaque on the George IV Bridge arch, Cowgate ( NT2573 )
• New York: Statue at Riverfront Park in Troy, opened on August 17, 1986 The local chapter of the IWW in upstate New York called James Connolly Upstate New York Branch.