The Connolly name rings down through the years of Irish politics, back to the pioneering socialist leader and commander of the Easter Rising, James Connolly, who was executed by the British on 12 May 1916 while wounded and tied to a chair. Ireland’s newly elected president Catherine Connolly claims no family connection to the Scottish-born James but, as a fiercely independent figure of the pacifist socialist left, the ideological comparisons are inevitable.
Now 68 years old, Connolly started her political life in County Galway as a member of Ireland’s Labour Party. After serving as the mayor of Galway City between 2004 and 2005, she split with Labour the following year over their electoral manipulations of Galway constituencies. In 2016, after several failed attempts, she was finally elected to the national parliament in Dublin as an independent, amid the collapse of Labour’s support across Ireland.
