Connell was born in the townland of Rathniska near the village of Kilskyre, to the north of Kells, County Meath and as a teenager became involved in land agitation and joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Aged 18 and a signatory to the Fenian Oath, he moved to Dublin where he worked as a docker until he became blacklisted for attempting to unionise the workers. In 1875, he moved to London. He held a variety of jobs, including time as a staff journalist on Keir Hardie's newspaper The Labour Leader, and was secretary of the Workingmen's Legal Aid Society during the last 20 years of his life. For 10 years he was a member of the Social Democratic Federation led by Henry Hyndman, which supported the cause of Irish land reform and self-determination; both Connell and Hyndman were on the executive of the National Land League of Great Britain, which aimed to promote the need for land reform in Ireland amongst the workers in England. In the late 1890s, however, Connell left the SDF and joined the Independent Labour Party. He also wrote for the SDF's newspaper 'Justice' Although Vladimir Lenin dismissed the Independent Labour Party as bourgeois, he later awarded Connell the Red Star Medal in 1922.
Workers of England why crouch ye like cravens? Why clutch an existence of insult and want? Why stand to be plucked by an army of ravens, Or hoodwinked forever by twaddle and cant?”
Connell was inspired to write a socialist anthem after attending a lecture at a meeting of the SDF during the London Dock Strike of 1889. He set down the words while on a train journey from Charing Cross railway station to his home in Honor Oak, south London. It is generally accepted that he gained inspiration as he watched the train guard raise and lower the red signal flag on the platform. It is normally sung to the tune of "Lauriger Horatius" though Connell had wanted it sung to "The White Cockade", an old Scottish Jacobite song. Connell disapproved of the new rendition of it calling it “church music… composed to remind people of their sins and frighten them into repentance.” Connell's favourite part of the song was “it well recalls the triumphs past / it gives the hope of peace at last / the banner bright, the symbol plain / of human right and human gain.” which he saw as expressing the goal of the socialist movement. Nevertheless both the original and newer version of the song has been performed. In 1920 in How I Wrote "The Red Flag" he commented:
Memorials
Connell died in south London, and his funeral was held in Golders Green. He is commemorated by a plaque at 22a Stondon Park, SE23 in Crofton Park/Honor Oak, South-East London. On 26 April 1998 a monument to Jim Connell was unveiled in Crossakiel, County Meath, Ireland - on the spot where he addressed a crowd of 600 in 1918. In 1997, a local committee was formed to erect a memorial, and from 1998 there has been an annual memorial parade on May Day, in the village of Crossakiel, near Kilskyre. The parade attracts a large number of Irish and British trade unionists. In 2011 a Jim Connell School of Political Discussion was also held in the town of Kells.
