JAMES CONNOLLY James Connolly was co-founder (with James Larkin) of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU), founder of the Irish Citizen Army, Union leader in the great Dublin lock-out of 1913, Marxist (and friend of Lenin) and one of the leaders of the Easter Rising 1916, for which he was subsequently executed in Kilmainham jail by the British Authorities. He is revered as a hero in Ireland, but his position is a bit strange because the nationalists are irritated by his socialism and the socialists by his nationalism. Let's just say he was an Irishman.