James Connolly, born on this day in 1868, was an Irish socialist revolutionary, founder of the Irish Citizen Army (ICA), and leader of the Easter Rising rebellion, for which he was executed by the British government.

Connolly was born in a poor Edinburgh neighborhood and spoke with a Scottish accent. He joined the British Army at age 14 to escape poverty and developed a hatred for the institution from firsthand experience. He deserted when his regiment was set to deploy to India.

He was also member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and founder of the Irish Socialist Republican Party. With labor radical James Larkin, he was centrally involved in the Dublin lock-out of 1913, after which the two men formed the Irish Citizen Army (ICA) the same year.

Connolly was opposed to British rule in Ireland and played a leading role in the Easter Rising of 1916, signing the “Proclamation of the Irish Republic” and serving as Commandant of the Dublin Brigade, the regiment that played the most substantial role in the Rising. Connolly was executed by firing squad following the Rising’s defeat.

“If you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organization of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs.”

James Connolly

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