The
Connolly Association is an organisation based among Irish emigrants in Britain which supports the aims of
Irish republicanismIrish republicanism is an ideology based on the belief that all of Ireland should be an independent republic.In 1801, under the Act of Union, the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland merged to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland...
. It takes its name from
James ConnollyJames Connolly was an Irish republican and socialist leader. He was born in the Cowgate area of Edinburgh, Scotland, to Irish immigrant parents and spoke with a Scottish accent throughout his life. He left school for working life at the age of 11, but became one of the leading Marxist theorists of...
, an socialist
republicanIrish republicanism is an ideology based on the belief that all of Ireland should be an independent republic.In 1801, under the Act of Union, the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland merged to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland...
, born in
EdinburghEdinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
,
ScotlandScotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
and executed by the
British ArmyThe British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
in 1916 for his part in the
Easter RisingThe Easter Rising was an insurrection staged in Ireland during Easter Week, 1916. The Rising was mounted by Irish republicans with the aims of ending British rule in Ireland and establishing the Irish Republic at a time when the British Empire was heavily engaged in the First World War...
of the same year. It was formed in London in 1938 by members of various Irish organisations, such as
Republican CongressThe Republican Congress was an Irish republican political organisation founded in 1934, when left-wing republicans left the Irish Republican Army. The Congress was led by such IRA veterans as Peadar O'Donnell, Frank Ryan and George Gilmore. It was a socialist organisation and was dedicated to a...
and the
Irish Self-Determination LeagueThe Irish Self-Determination League of Great Britain was established in London in 1919. Membership peaked at around 20,000 in and was confined to those of Irish birth or descent resident in Great Britain....
. It was originally named the
Connolly Club, and its aims were: to work for a united and independent Ireland and complete freedom for the
IrishIreland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
people and to provide a social and cultural centre for those promoting the teachings of James Connolly and to show solidarity with oppressed nations and peoples throughout the world - sentiments continued in the present CA constitution.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s the CA through the pages on the Irish Democrat, influenced those trade unionists in
BelfastBelfast is the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland. By population, it is the 14th biggest city in the United Kingdom and second biggest on the island of Ireland . It is the seat of the devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly...
who first proposed the idea of establishing a civil rights movement to expose unionism in
the six countiesNorthern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
. The Association continued to organise meetings throughout Britain and a number of new branches were established.
The Connolly Association produced a newspaper from 1939, known first as
Irish Freedom and then from 1945 as the
Irish Democrat. It supports the
Good Friday Agreement (1998)The Good Friday Agreement or Belfast Agreement , sometimes called the Stormont Agreement, was a major political development in the Northern Ireland peace process...
but continues to press for an end to the partition of Ireland, and for the
unificationA united Ireland is the term used to refer to the idea of a sovereign state which covers all of the thirty-two traditional counties of Ireland. The island of Ireland includes the territory of two independent sovereign states: the Republic of Ireland, which covers 26 counties of the island, and the...
of Northern Ireland with the
Republic of IrelandIreland , described as the Republic of Ireland , is a sovereign state in Europe occupying approximately five-sixths of the island of the same name. Its capital is Dublin. Ireland, which had a population of 4.58 million in 2011, is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy,...
.
Notable members of the Connolly Association included
C. Desmond GreavesCharles Desmond Greaves was an Irish activist and historian. He wrote a number of books on Irish history as a Marxist historian....
,
Anthony CoughlanAnthony Coughlan is a left-wing academic, retired Senior Lecturer Emeritus in Social Policy at Trinity College and Secretary of the The National Platform for EU Research and Information Centre....
Roy JohnstonRoy Johnston is an Irish physicist. He was a Marxist who as a member of the IRA in the 1960s argued for a National Liberation Strategy to unite the Catholic and Protestant working classes...
,
and Derry Kelleher.