Labour Party president Michael D Higgins paid tribute yesterday to the "brave and courageous people who stood against the tide" over the years and "were proud to say they were of Labour".
Giving the oration at Arbour Hill to mark the 90th anniversary of James Connolly's death, Mr Higgins said that in the years since there had been others who stood for the same values, right up to the present time. "These include, for example, a young woman, Joanne Delaney, who risked her job by insisting on her right to wear a union badge."
When founding the Labour Party in 1912, Connolly "was conscious of the need to establish a party that could take into account the immediate and historic struggles of his country". The labour movement - as opposed to the party - could not address fully the aspiration for independence, he said. "It was not just any independence that was sought, but independence that recognised equality and justice in its definition. This is what was needed in the circumstances of the early 20th century."
He said Connolly, and the founder of the Land League, Michael Davitt, before him, "were powerful internationalists and it has been part of their legacy to our party that it has been the pre-eminent internationalist party in modern Irish history".
Connolly's internationalism involved "a powerful opposition to empire and the wars of empires. It is this that led him to see the importance of striking a blow at the grip of empire so as to clear the ground for the tasks of creating a workers' republic."
Through all of Connolly's preparations for 1916, there was "a powerful humanism at work", he said. "James Connolly was the major thinker among the leaders of 1916. At one point or another, all of the others came to realise this. They saw that he combined qualities of analysis, leadership and imagination with an organisational genius."