May 1916 - James Connolly is Executed. In 1916 James Connolly was Acting General Secretary of the ITGWU, Commandent of the Irish Citizen Army, a member of the Military Council and the Provisional Government, and Commandent-General of the Dublin Division of the insurgents in the Rising. He was the last of the leaders to be executed for his part in the 1916 Rising in Kilmainham Jail on the 12th of May, 1916. "The most admirable man in modern Irish revolutionary history"- John A.Murphy, UCC.