Where is our James Connolly?

James Connolly



Patrick Galvin, the renowned Cork poet, writer and socialist, died earlier this year. Patrick wrote many great poems and songs, among them James Connolly covered memorably by my old buddy Liam Weldon.



http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/09/liam-weldon.html







James Connolly (1868 – 1916) was a revolutionary socialist, a trade union leader and a political theorist. His execution by firing squad after the 1916 Easter Rising, supported by a chair because of his wounds, significantly contributed to the mood of bitterness in Ireland. He was co-founder (with Jim Larkin) of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union and of the Irish Citizen Army (ICA), the most effective force in the 1916 Rising.





Countess Markiewicz in the uniform of The Irish Citizen Army



The ICA numbered among its members Constance Gore-Booth, The Countess Markiewicz, who was the first female M.P. and the playwright Seán O'Casey whose plays dealt with the plight of Dublin’s working classes.



http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/10/first-female-member-of-parliament.html



Connolly was born in Edinburgh, the son of Irish parents. He was brought up in poverty, largely self-educated, attracted into politics by the labour movement and drawn through it to Ireland. In 1896, he was invited to become paid organiser of the Dublin Socialist Society. By the time he emigrated to the US in 1903 his ideas had developed, fusing together both his socialist and nationalist principles. When he returned to Ireland in 1910 he found the Irish political environment more receptive. Connolly rose to prominence during the Dublin Lockout in 1913 and in October 1914, after Larkin’s departure for America, became General Secretary of the Irish Transport and General Workers` Union and commander of the Irish Citizen Army (ICA). Liberty Hall was the headquarters of both and this became his power base. He welded the ICA into a potent force and potential weapon for his own use. Though small, just 220 members in 1912, it was well disciplined and trained and ideologically united; its goal was an independent Irish republic.









Liberty Hall, Dublin - Before and after the 1916 Easter Rising





The Starry Plough - Flag of the Irish Citizen Army



Connolly was a prolific author and pamphleteer whose ‘Labour, Nationality and Religion’ is still relevant to modern Ireland and its woes. Connolly was sentenced to death by firing squad for his part in the 1916 rising. On 12 May 1916 he was transported by military ambulance to Kilmainham Gaol, carried to a prison courtyard on a stretcher, tied to a chair and shot. His body (along with those of the other rebels) was put in a mass grave without a coffin. The executions of the rebels deeply angered the majority of the Irish population, most of whom had shown no support during the rebellion. It was Connolly's execution, however, that caused the most controversy. Historians have pointed to the manner of execution of Connolly and similar rebels, along with their actions, as being factors that caused public awareness of their desires and goals and gathered support for the movements that they had died fighting for.







Patrick Galvin was born in Cork in 1927. He has had an amazing life rising from the obscurity of the Cork slums of the 1920s to becoming one of Ireland's most lauded writers and singers with many and varied adventures along the way. Galvin was a committed socialist and was never afraid to let his political convictions show in his writing. A dramatist too (he wrote eight plays, the best-known of which, The Last Burning dealt with witchcraft) it was as a poet that he will be, and would have wished to have been remembered.





Patrick Galvin



Here he is singing his own song in 1981.







Patrick Galvin (1927-2011)





Eamonn O’Doherty’s sculpture of James Connolly opposite Liberty Hall, Dublin



"THE CAUSE OF LABOUR IS THE CAUSE OF IRELAND – THE CAUSE OF IRELAND IS THE CAUSE OF LABOUR"





Finally this is Andy Irvine’s (of Planxty) excellent version with an equally excellent short video by Ciarán O’Brolocháin telling the story of James Connolly. It culminates in a shot of Eamonn O’Doherty’s memorial to James Connolly opposite Liberty Hall, Dublin.



http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2011/08/eamonn-odoherty.html