James "Jemmy" Hope (25 August 1764-1847) was a United Irishmen leader who fought in the 1798 and 1803 Rebellions against British rule in Ireland. He was known as an early socialist, being the most egalitarian of the Irish republican revolutionaries of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Biography[]
James "Jemmy" Hope was born in Templepatrick, County Antrim, Ireland on 25 August 1764 to a Presbyterian Ulster Scots family, and he joined the United Irishmen in 1795. He was elected to its central committee in Belfast, and he targeted manufacturers and landowners as the enemies of all radicals. In 1796, he was sent to Dublin to mobilize working-class support for the revolutionary cause, and, during the Irish Rebellion of 1798, he fought at the Battle of Antrim. He refused to avail to Charles Cornwallis' amnesty, even after his friend Henry Joy McCracken was captured and executed, and he went on to take part in Robert Emmet's 1803 Rebellion. He went on to secure employment from a sympathetic friend in England, and he died in 1846.