Sixteen men were executed in the aftermath of the Easter Rising – the seizure of the General Post Office in Dublin by Irish volunteers that took place one hundred years ago this week. Among those executed was James Connolly: leader of the Irish Citizen Army, trade unionist, revolutionary Marxist, de facto commander-in-chief of the Easter Rising.

Connolly has been canonized in the century since his death. That death – at the hands of an occupying British Army – is by itself enough to command respect of anyone concerned with self-determination, but there is also a certain tragedy in how overlooked his eloquent words and ideas can be, even today.