James Gralton
| James Gralton | |
|---|---|
Gralton in 1944
|
|
| Nickname(s) | Jim, Jimmy |
| Born |
17 April 1886 Effrinagh, County Leitrim, Ireland |
| Died |
29 December 1945 Bellevue Hospital, New York City, United States |
| Allegiance |
 United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland United States
|
| Service/branch |
British Army U. S. Navy |
| Unit | Royal Irish Regiment |
James Gralton (17 April 1886 – 29 December 1945) was an Irish socialist leader, who became a United States citizen after emigrating in 1909, and later, the only Irishman ever deported from Ireland.
James Gralton was born on 17 April 1886 in the townland of Effrinagh, Parish of Kiltoghert, about six miles from Carrick-on-Shannon in County Leitrim. His parents were Micheal Gralton and Alice Campbell. There were four girls and three boys in the family: Winnie, Mary Ann, Alice and Maggie Kate were the girls, and the boys were Jimmy, Charles and a little boy who died young.
Gralton was reared on a small farm of about twenty-five acres of bad land, which was surrounded by some good land. The people were too poor to buy fertiliser for the crops so they had to burn some of the topsoil, and this left the land poor and shallow.
Gralton emigrated to the United States in 1909, but returned to Ireland to fight in the Irish War of Independence, and later in 1932 to look after his mother, where he led the Revolutionary Workers' Group in Leitrim, a predecessor of the Communist Party of Ireland. He ran a dance hall in Effrinagh where he organised free events and expounded his political views. There were violent protests against these dances, led by Catholic priests, which culminated in a shooting incident. Following this, on 9 February 1933, he was arrested, and later deported to the United States of America, on the basis that he was an alien. This led to public protests organised by the Irish Republican Army.
Shortly before his death from stomach cancer, in New York on 29 December 1945, he married Bessie Cronogue (d. 1975), a woman from Drumsna, County Leitrim, only a few miles from where he had been brought up.
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