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Tag Archives: British Army


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Birth of Irish Republican Army Officer Liam Lynch

Liam Lynch, officer in the Irish Republican Army during the Irish War of Independence and the commanding general of the Irish Republican Army during the Irish Civil War, is born in the townland of Barnagurraha, County Limerick, on November 9, 1893.

In 1910, at the age of 17, he starts an apprenticeship in O’Neill’s hardware trade in Mitchelstown, where he joins the Gaelic League and the Ancient Order of Hibernians. Later he works at Barry’s Timber Merchants in Fermoy. In the aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rising, he witnesses the shooting and arrest of David, Thomas and Richard Kent of Bawnard House by the Royal Irish Constabulary. After this, he determines to dedicate his life to Irish republicanism. In 1917 he is elected First Lieutenant of the Irish Volunteer Company, which resides in Fermoy.

In Cork in 1919, Lynch re-organises the Irish Volunteers, the paramilitary organisation that becomes the Irish Republican Army (IRA), becoming commandant of the Cork No. 2 Brigade of the IRA during the guerrilla Irish War of Independence. He is captured, along with the other officers of the Cork No. 2 Brigade, in a British raid on Cork City Hall in August 1920. He provides a false name and is released three days later. In September 1920, he and Ernie O’Malley command a force that takes the British Army barracks at Mallow. The arms in the barracks are seized and the building is partially burned. In April 1921, the IRA is re-organised into divisions based on regions. Lynch’s reputation is such that he is made commander of the 1st Southern Division.

The war formally ends with the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty between the Irish negotiating team and the British government in December 1921. Lynch is opposed to the Treaty, on the ground that it disestablishes the Irish Republic proclaimed in 1916 in favour of Dominion status for Ireland within the British Empire. He becomes Chief of Staff of the IRA in March 1922, much of which is also against the Treaty.

Although Lynch opposes the seizure of the Four Courts in Dublin by a group of hardline republicans, he joins its garrison in June 1922 when it is attacked by the newly formed National Army. This marks the beginning of the Irish Civil War. The ‘Munster Republic’ falls in August 1922, when Free State troops land by sea in Cork and Kerry. The Anti-Treaty forces then disperse and pursue guerrilla tactics.

Lynch contributes to the growing bitterness of the war by issuing what are known as the “orders of frightfulness” against the Provisional government on November 30, 1922. This General Order sanctions the killing of Free State Teachta Dála (TDs) and Senators, as well as certain judges and newspaper editors in reprisal for the Free State’s killing of captured republicans. Lynch is heavily criticised by some republicans for his failure to co-ordinate their war effort and for letting the conflict peter out into inconclusive guerrilla warfare. Lynch makes unsuccessful efforts to import mountain artillery from Germany to turn the tide of the war.

In March 1923, the Anti-Treaty IRA Army Executive meets in a remote location in the Nire Valley. Several members of the executive propose ending the civil war. However, Lynch opposes them and narrowly carries a vote to continue the war.

On April 10, 1923, a National Army unit is seen approaching Lynch’s secret headquarters in the Knockmealdown Mountains. Lynch is carrying important papers that could not fall into enemy hands, so he and his six comrades begin a strategic retreat. To their surprise, they run into another unit of 50 soldiers approaching from the opposite side. Lynch is hit by rifle fire from the road at the foot of the hill. Knowing the value of the papers they carry, he orders his men to leave him behind.

When the soldiers finally reach Lynch, they initially believe him to be Éamon de Valera, but he informs them, “I am Liam Lynch, Chief-of-Staff of the Irish Republican Army. Get me a priest and doctor, I’m dying.” He is carried on an improvised stretcher manufactured from guns to “Nugents” pub in Newcastle, at the foot of the mountains. He is later brought to the hospital in Clonmel and dies that evening. He is laid to rest two days later at Kilcrumper Cemetery, near Fermoy, County Cork.


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Death of Frederick Hugh Crawford, Ulster Loyalist

Colonel Frederick Hugh Crawford, staunch Ulster loyalist and officer in the British Army, dies on November 5, 1952. He is most notable for organising the Larne gun-running which secures guns and ammunition for the Ulster Volunteers in 1914, making him a hero for Northern Ireland‘s unionists.

Crawford is born in Belfast on August 21, 1861, into a Methodist family of Ulster Scots roots. He attends Methodist College Belfast and University College London.

Crawford works as an engineer for White Star Line in the 1880s, before returning from Australia in 1892. In 1894 he enlists with the Mid Ulster Artillery regiment of the British Army, before being transferred to the Donegal Artillery, with which he serves during the Boer Wars, earning himself the rank of major.

In 1898, Crawford is appointed governor of Campbell College in Belfast. In 1911 he becomes a member of the Ulster Unionist Council. On September 28, 1912, he is in charge of the 2,500 well-dressed stewards and marshals that escort Edward Carson and the Ulster unionist leadership from the Ulster Hall in Belfast to the City Hall for the signing of the Ulster Covenant, which he is alleged to sign in his own blood. With the formation of the Ulster Volunteers in 1913, he is made their Director of Ordnance.

In World War I Crawford is officer commanding of the Royal Army Service Corps and is awarded the Royal Humane Society‘s Bronze Medal for saving life. He also becomes a Justice of the Peace for Belfast.

Crawford in regard to Irish Home Rule is strongly partisan and backs armed resistance in opposing it, being contemptuous of those who use political bluffing. In 1910 the Ulster Unionist Council plans for the creation of an army to oppose Home Rule, and approaches Crawford to act as their agent in securing weapons and ammunition. He tries several times to smuggle arms into Ulster, however vigilant customs officials seize many of them at the docks. Despite this, the meticulously planned and audacious Larne gun-running of April 1914, devised and carried out by Crawford, is successful in bringing in enough arms to equip the Ulster Volunteers.

By the 1920s Crawford remains as stoic in his belief’s remarking in a letter in 1920 that “I am ashamed to call myself an Irishman. Thank God I am not one. I am an Ulsterman, a very different breed.” In 1921 he attempts to create an organisation called the Ulster Brotherhood, the aims of which are to uphold the Protestant religion, political and religious freedom as well as use by all means to “destroy and wipe out the Sinn Féin conspiracy of murder, assassination and outrage.” However, this organisation only lasts completely unofficially for a few months after failing to gain acceptance with the political authorities. Also, in 1921 he is included in the Royal Honours List and granted a CBE. In 1934 he writes his memoirs, entitled Guns for Ulster.

Frederick Hugh Crawford dies November 5, 1952, and is buried in the City Cemetery, Falls Road, Belfast. Upon news of his death, he is described by the then Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Sir Basil Brooke, as being “as a fearless fighter in the historic fight to keep Ulster British.”

(Pictured: Colonel Crawford is shown second from the left in this loyalist mural in East Belfast’s Ballymacarrett Road)


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The Guildford Pub Bombings

The Guildford pub bombings occur on October 5, 1974, when the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) detonate two 6-pound gelignite bombs at two pubs in Guildford, Surrey, southwest of London. The pubs are targeted because they are popular with British Army personnel stationed at the barracks in Pirbright. Four soldiers and one civilian are killed, while 65 others are wounded.

The bomb in the Horse and Groom pub detonates at 8:30 PM. It kills Paul Craig, a 22-year-old plasterer, two members of the Scots Guards and two members of the Women’s Royal Army Corps. The Seven Stars pub is evacuated after the first blast, and thus there are no serious injuries when the second bomb explodes at 9:00 PM.

These attacks are the first in a year-long campaign by an IRA Active Service Unit who are eventually captured after the Balcombe Street siege. A similar bomb to those used in Guildford, with the addition of shrapnel, is thrown into the Kings Arms pub in Woolwich on November 7, 1974. Gunner Richard Dunne and Alan Horsley, a salesclerk, die in that explosion. On August 27, 1975, the same IRA unit detonates a bomb in Surrey at the Caterham Arms pub which injures over 30 people. Surrey police say it is “a carbon copy of the Guildford bombs.”

The bombings occur at the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The Metropolitan Police Service is under enormous pressure to apprehend the IRA bombers responsible for the attacks in England. The bombings contribute to the speedy and unchallenged passing of the Prevention of Terrorism Acts in November 1974.

In December 1974 the police arrest Gerry Conlon, Paul Hill, Patrick Armstrong and Carole Richardson, later known as the Guildford Four. The Guildford Four are falsely convicted of the bombings in October 1975 after the Metropolitan Police use the Prevention of Terrorism Acts to force false confessions. All four are sentenced to life in prison.

The Guildford Four are held in prison for fifteen years, although Gerry Conlon dies near the end of his third year of imprisonment. All the convictions are overturned years later in the appeal courts after it is proved the Guildford Four’s convictions had been based on confessions obtained by torture, while evidence specifically clearing the Four is not reported by the police.


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Death of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, Anglo-Irish soldier and statesman who was one of the leading military and political figures of 19th-century Britain, dies on September 14, 1852. His defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 puts him in the first rank of Britain’s military heroes.

Wellesley is born in Dublin, into the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. He is commissioned as an ensign in the British Army in 1787, serving in Ireland as aide-de-camp to two successive Lords Lieutenant of Ireland. He is also elected as a Member of Parliament in the Irish House of Commons. He is a colonel by 1796, and sees action in the Netherlands and in India, where he fights in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War at the Siege of Seringapatam. He is appointed governor of Seringapatam and Mysore in 1799 and, as a newly appointed major-general, wins a decisive victory over the Maratha Confederacy at the Battle of Assaye in 1803.

Wellesley rises to prominence as a general during the Peninsular War of the Napoleonic Wars and is promoted to the rank of field marshal after leading the allied forces to victory against the First French Empire at the Battle of Vitoria in 1813. Following Napoleon’s exile in 1814, he serves as the ambassador to France and is granted a dukedom. During the Hundred Days in 1815, he commands the allied army which, together with a Prussian army under Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, defeats Napoleon at Waterloo. Wellesley’s battle record is exemplary, and he ultimately participates in some 60 battles during the course of his military career.

Wellesley is famous for his adaptive defensive style of warfare, resulting in several victories against numerically superior forces while minimising his own losses. He is regarded as one of the greatest defensive commanders of all time, and many of his tactics and battle plans are still studied in military academies around the world.

After the end of his active military career, Wellesley returns to politics. He is British prime minister as part of the Tory party from 1828 to 1830, and for a little less than a month in 1834. He oversees the passage of the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 but opposes the Reform Act 1832. He continues as one of the leading figures in the House of Lords until his retirement and remains Commander-in-Chief of the British Army until his death.

Wellesley dies at Walmer Castle in Deal, Kent, his residence as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, on September 14, 1852. He is found to be unwell on that morning and is aided from his military campaign bed, the same one he used throughout his historic military career and seated in his chair where he dies. His death is recorded as being due to the aftereffects of a stroke culminating in a series of seizures.

Although in life Wellesley hates travelling by rail, his body is taken by train to London, where he is given a state funeral, one of only a handful of British subjects to be honoured in that way, and the last heraldic state funeral to be held in Britain. The funeral takes place on November 18, 1852. He is buried in a sarcophagus of luxulyanite in St. Paul’s Cathedral next to Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson.


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Lord Killanin Becomes President of the International Olympic Committee

Michael Morris, 3rd Baron Killanin, journalist, author, and sports official, becomes the first Irish president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on August 23, 1972.

Morris is born in London on July 30, 1914, the son of Irish Catholic Lt. Col. George Henry Morris who is from Spiddal in County Galway. The Morrises are one of the fourteen families making up the “Tribes of Galway.”

Morris is educated at Summerfields, St. Leonards-on-Sea, Eton College, the Sorbonne in Paris and then Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he is President of the renowned Footlights dramatic club. He succeeds his uncle as Baron Killanin in the Peerage of the United Kingdom in 1927, which allows him to sit in the House of Lords at the Palace of Westminster as Lord Killanin upon turning 21. In the mid-1930s, he begins his career as a journalist on Fleet Street, working for the Daily Express, the Daily Sketch and subsequently the Daily Mail.

In November 1938, Lord Killanin is commissioned into the Queen’s Westminsters, a territorial regiment of the British Army, where he is responsible for recruiting fellow journalists, including future The Daily Telegraph editor Bill Deedes, and friends who are musicians and actors. He reaches the rank of major and takes part in the planning of D-Day and the Invasion of Normandy in 1944, acting as brigade major for the 30th Armoured Brigade, part of the 79th Armoured Division. He is appointed, due to the course of operations, a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE). After being demobilised, he goes to Ireland. He resigns his TA commission in 1951.

In 1950, Lord Killanin becomes the head of the Olympic Council of Ireland (OCI) and becomes his country’s representative in the IOC in 1952. He becomes senior vice-president in 1968, and succeeds Avery Brundage, becoming President-elect at the 73rd IOC Session (August 21–24) held in Munich prior to the 1972 Summer Olympics. He takes office soon after the Games.

During Lord Killanin’s presidency, the Olympic movement experiences a difficult period, dealing with the financial flop of the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal and the boycotts of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. Denver, originally selected to host the 1976 Winter Olympics, withdraws and has to be replaced by Innsbruck. The cities of Lake Placid, New York and Los Angeles are chosen for 1980 Winter Olympics and 1984 Summer Olympics by default due to a lack of competing bids. He resigns just before the Moscow Olympics in 1980, and his position is taken over by Juan Antonio Samaranch. He is later unanimously elected Honorary Life President.

Lord Killanin serves as Honorary Consul-General of Monaco in Ireland from 1961 to 1984 and as Chairman of the Race Committee for Galway Racecourse from 1970 to 1985. A keen horse racing enthusiast, he also serves as a steward of the Irish Turf Club on two occasions and on the National Hunt Steeplechase Committee. In his business life Lord Killanin is a director of many companies including Irish Shell, Ulster Bank, Beamish & Crawford and Chubb Ireland. He is a founder member of An Taisce (The National Trust for Ireland) and is chairman of the National Monuments Advisory Council until his death.

Lord Killanin dies at his home in Dublin on April 25, 1999, at the age of 84 and, following a bilingual funeral Mass at St. Enda’s Church in Spiddal, County Galway, he is buried in the family vault in the New Cemetery, Galway.

(Pictured: Lord Killanin by Bert Verhoeff / Anefo (Nationaal Archief) [CC BY-SA 3.0 nl (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/nl/deed.en)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons)


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Death of Winston Dugan, 1st Baron Dugan of Victoria

Winston Joseph Dugan, 1st Baron Dugan of Victoria and known as Sir Winston Dugan between 1934 and 1949, dies in Marylebone, London, England, on August 17, 1951. He is a British administrator and a career British Army officer. He serves as Governor of South Australia from 1934 to 1939, then Governor of Victoria until 1949.

Dugan is the son of Charles Winston Dugan, of Oxmantown Mall, Birr, County Offaly, an inspector of schools, and Esther Elizabeth Rogers. He attends Lurgan College in Craigavon from 1887 to 1889, and Wimbledon College, Wimbledon, London.

Dugan is a sergeant in the Royal Sussex Regiment but transfers to the Royal Lincolnshire Regiment as a second lieutenant on January 24, 1900. He fights with the 2nd battalion of his regiment in the Second Boer War and receives the Queen’s South Africa Medal with three clasps. Following the war, he is appointed adjutant of his battalion on June 28, 1901, and is promoted to lieutenant on November 1, 1901. He later fights with distinction in World War I, where he is wounded and mentioned in despatches six times. He is awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) in 1915 and appointed a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (CMG) in 1918. In 1929 he is made a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) and the following year is promoted to major general. From 1931 to 1934 he commands the 56th (1st London) Division, Territorial Army.

In 1934, Dugan is appointed Governor of South Australia. He is appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (KCMG), retires from the Army and moves to Adelaide with his wife. They become an extremely popular and glamorous vice-regal couple. Sir Winston and Lady Dugan are both excellent public speakers and travel widely in order to bring problems to the attention of the ministers of the day. Upon the expiration of his term, there is bipartisan parliamentary support for him to serve a second term, but he has already accepted an appointment to be Governor of Victoria.

Sir Winston and Lady Dugan arrive in Melbourne on July 17, 1939. They continue their active role in community affairs, promoting unemployment reduction and making the ballroom of Government House available for the Australian Red Cross.

Dugan has an active role stabilising state politics during the tumultuous 1940s. Upon the disintegration of Albert Dunstan‘s Country Party in 1943, he installs Australian Labor Party leader John Cain as Premier. Four days later, Dunstan forms a coalition with the United Australia Party. Following the collapse of that ministry in 1945, Dugan dissolves parliament and calls a general election for November, which results in the balance of power being held by independents. Dugan commissions Cain to form the ministry of a minority government.

Dugan’s term as Governor is extended five times. He returns to England in February 1949. On July 7, 1949, he is raised to the peerage as Baron Dugan of Victoria, of Lurgan in County Armagh.

Winston Dugan dies at Marylebone, London, on August 17, 1951, at the age of 74. As there are no children from his marriage, the barony becomes extinct.


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Birth of Arthur Colahan, Doctor & Songwriter

Arthur Nicholas Whistler Colahan, Irish doctor, British Army officer and songwriter, is born in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, on August 12, 1884. The eldest child of Professor Nicholas Whistler Colahan and Elisabeth Quinn of Limerick, the family moves to Galway, and he grows up there.

After completing his secondary education at St. Joseph’s College, Galway, he enrolls at University College Dublin in 1900 where he receives an arts degree and then studies medicine. He transfers to University College, Galway and graduates in 1913. He is a member of the college Literary and Debating Society and participates in drama.

He begins his medical career in the County Infirmary in Galway and then moves to Holles Street Hospital. He joins the Royal Army Medical Corps and is badly affected by mustard gas in India. After the war he settles in Leicester, where he spends the rest of his career as a neurological specialist.

Colahan is also a composer of popular songs. He is a quiet man who is often homesick for his beloved Galway Bay. These feelings lead him to write his most famous work, “Galway Bay.” Popularised by Bing Crosby, it becomes the biggest selling record of all time at one point. Theories abound as to where the song is written or where it is first heard. Some say it is in the home of Dr. Morris at 1 Montpelier Terrace, while others believe it is in The Vicars Croft on Taylor’s Hill, from where one can see Galway Bay.

Other songs written by Colahan include “Maccushla Mine,” “Asthoreen Bawn,” “Until God’s Day,” “The Kylemore Pass” and “The Claddagh Ring.” Sadly, before his music is selling in the High Street he dies on September 15, 1952, and is buried in an unmarked grave back in his Irish birthplace.


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The Beginning of the Battle of the Somme

On July 1, 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, twenty thousand soldiers of the British Army are killed and forty thousand are wounded. The 36th (Ulster) Division suffers heavy casualties.

The Battle of the Somme, also known as the Somme Offensive, is a battle of the World War I fought by the armies of the British and French empires against the German Empire. It takes place between July 1 and November 18, 1916, on both sides of the upper reaches of the river Somme in France. The battle is intended to hasten a victory for the Allies and is the largest battle of World War I on the Western Front. More than 3 million men fight in this battle and one million men are wounded or killed, making it one of the bloodiest battles in human history.

The French and British commit themselves to an offensive on the Somme during Allied discussions at Chantilly, Oise, in December 1915. The Allies agree upon a strategy of combined offensives against the Central Powers in 1916, by the French, Russian, British and Italian armies, with the Somme offensive as the Franco-British contribution. Initial plans call for the French army to undertake the main part of the Somme offensive, supported on the northern flank by the Fourth Army of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). When the Imperial German Army begins the Battle of Verdun on the Meuse on February 21, 1916, French commanders divert many of the divisions intended for the Somme and the “supporting” attack by the British becomes the principal effort.

The first day on the Somme, July 1, sees a serious defeat for the German Second Army, which is forced out of its first position by the French Sixth Army, from Foucaucourt-en-Santerre south of the Somme to Maricourt on the north bank and by the Fourth Army from Maricourt to the vicinity of the Albert–Bapaume road. The first day on the Somme is, in terms of casualties, also the worst day in the history of the British army, which suffers 57,470 casualties. These occur mainly on the front between the Albert–Bapaume road and Gommecourt, where the attack is defeated, and few British troops reach the German front line. The British troops on the Somme comprise a mixture of the remains of the pre-war standing army, the Territorial Force, and Kitchener’s Army, a force of volunteer recruits including many Pals Battalions, recruited from the same places and occupations.

The battle is notable for the importance of air power and the first use of the tank. At the end of the battle, British and French forces have penetrated 6 miles into German-occupied territory, taking more ground than in any of their offensives since the First Battle of the Marne in 1914. The Anglo-French armies fail to capture Péronne and halt three miles from Bapaume, where the German armies maintain their positions over the winter. British attacks in the Ancre valley resume in January 1917 and force the Germans into local withdrawals to reserve lines in February, before the scheduled retirement to the Siegfriedstellung (Hindenburg Line) begins in March.

Debate continues over the necessity, significance and effect of the battle. David Frum opines that a century later, “‘the Somme’ remains the most harrowing place-name” in the history of the British Commonwealth.


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Assassination of Field Marshal Sir Henry Hughes Wilson

Field Marshal Sir Henry Hughes Wilson is shot and killed by two Irish Republican Army (IRA) men in London on June 22, 1922.

Wilson is born in County Longford and a long-time opponent of the Irish Home Rule movement. He joins the British army in 1884 and sees action during the Boer War. He is assigned to British army headquarters during the infamous Curragh incident and supports the near-mutiny of British officers who refuse to lead troops against Ulster opponents of home rule. He serves in France during the World War I and, when the war ends, continues his staunch support of the Unionist cause while serving as Chief of General Staff. He is a strong supporter of the coercion tactics of the British in Ireland during the Irish War of Independence, even suggesting that the leaders of Sinn Féin be executed. He leaves the army when David Lloyd George decides not to renew his term as chief of staff and is elected Member of Parliament (MP) for North Down as a Conservative in 1922. In Parliament, he urges even stronger coercion methods than those then being carried out by the Black and Tans.

On June 22, 1922, two London-based volunteers of the Irish Republican Army, Reginald Dunne and Joseph O’Sullivan, assassinate Wilson outside his house at 36 Eaton Place at approximately 2:20 PM. He is in full uniform as he is returning from unveiling the Great Eastern Railway War Memorial at Liverpool Street station at 1:00 PM. He has six wounds, two of them fatal wounds to the chest.

Stories later circulate that the first shot misses but rather than taking shelter in the house, he draws his sword and advances on his attackers, who are able to shoot and kill him. These stories often stress that he dies a martyr. His housemaid testifies that she found his drawn sword lying by his side. These details do not feature in the witness accounts by Reginald Dunne, which is smuggled out of prison, the inquest testimony of one of two road menders working nearby, and the taxi driver who had just dropped Wilson off. One of the road mender’s accounts, as published in the Daily Mail, mentions Wilson turning on his attackers with the words “you cowardly swine!” but this is believed to be a possible embellishment by the newspaper.

Two police officers and a chauffeur are also shot as the men attempt to avoid capture. They are then surrounded by a crowd and arrested by other policemen after a struggle. Dunne and O’Sullivan are convicted of murder and hanged on August 10, 1922. On the day Wilson’s killers were hanged, Currygrane, the family homesite in Ballinalee, County Longford is burned to the ground, possibly as a reprisal although possibly as an unrelated part of the unrest in that county.

Wilson’s widow blames the government for his death and is only persuaded to allow government representation at the funeral on the grounds that not to do so would be disrespectful to the King. Wilson’s funeral is a public affair attended by David Lloyd George and the cabinet, Ferdinand Foch, Robert Nivelle and Maxime Weygand from France as well as many of his former army colleagues including John French, Nevil Macready, Douglas Haig and William Robertson. He is buried in the crypt of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.


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Birth of James Connolly, Republican & Socialist Leader

James Connolly, Irish republican and socialist leader, is born to Irish-born parents in the Cowgate area of Edinburgh, Scotland, on June 5, 1868. He spoke with a Scottish accent throughout his life.

Connolly has an education up to the age of about ten in the local Catholic primary school. He then leaves and works in labouring jobs. Due to economic difficulties, he joins the British Army at age 14, falsifying his age and giving his name as Reid. He serves in Ireland with the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Scots Regiment for nearly seven years, during a turbulent period in rural areas known as the Land War.

Connolly develops a deep hatred for the British Army that lasts his entire life. Upon hearing that his regiment is being transferred to India, he deserts. He meets a young woman by the name of Lillie Reynolds, and they marry in April 1890, settling in Edinburgh. There, Connolly begins to get involved in the Scottish Socialist Federation, but with a young family to support, he needs a way to provide for them. He briefly establishes a cobbler‘s shop in 1895, but this fails after a few months.

By 1892 Connolly is involved in the Scottish Socialist Federation, acting as its secretary from 1895. During this time, he becomes involved with the Independent Labour Party which Keir Hardie had formed in 1893.

Connolly and his family move to Dublin, where he takes up the position of full-time secretary for the Dublin Socialist Club. At his instigation, the club quickly evolved into the Irish Socialist Republican Party (ISRP). The ISRP is regarded by many Irish historians as a party of pivotal importance in the early history of Irish socialism and republicanism.

While active as a socialist in Great Britain, Connolly is the founding editor of The Socialist newspaper and is among the founders of the Socialist Labour Party which splits from the Social Democratic Federation in 1903.

A combination of frustration with the progress of the ISRP and economic necessity causes Connolly to emigrate to the United States in September 1903. While in America he was a member of the Socialist Labor Party of America (1906), the Socialist Party of America (1909) and the Industrial Workers of the World, and founded the Irish Socialist Federation in New York City, 1907.

On his return to Ireland in 1910 he is right-hand man to fellow-syndicalist James Larkin in the Irish Transport and General Workers Union. In 1913, in response to the Great Dublin Lockout, he, along with an ex-British officer, Jack White, found the Irish Citizen Army (ICA), an armed and well-trained body of labour men whose aim is to defend workers and strikers, particularly from the frequent brutality of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. He also founds the Irish Labour Party as the political wing of the Irish Trade Union Congress in 1912 and is a member of its National Executive.

When the Easter Rising begins on April 24, 1916, Connolly is Commandant of the Dublin Brigade. As the Dublin Brigade has the most substantial role in the rising, he is de facto commander-in-chief. His leadership in the Easter Rising is considered formidable. Michael Collins says of Connolly that he “would have followed him through hell.”

Connolly is sentenced to death by firing squad for his part in the rising. On May 12, 1916, he is taken by military ambulance to Royal Hospital Kilmainham, across the road from Kilmainham Gaol, and from there taken to the gaol, where he is to be executed.

Connolly has been so badly injured from the fighting that he is unable to stand before the firing squad. He is carried to a prison courtyard on a stretcher. Instead of being marched to the same spot where the others had been executed, at the far end of the execution yard, he is tied to a chair and then shot.

His body, along with those of the other leaders, is put in a mass grave without a coffin. The executions of the rebel leaders deeply anger the majority of the Irish population, most of whom had shown no support during the rebellion. It is Connolly’s execution that causes the most controversy. The executions are not well received, even throughout Britain, and draw unwanted attention from the United States, which the British Government is seeking to bring into the war in Europe. Prime Minister H. H. Asquith orders that no more executions are to take place, an exception being that of Roger Casement as he has not yet been tried.