Gralton, James (1886–1945), communist, was born 17 April 1886 at Effernagh, Gowel, Co. Leitrim, one of three sons and four daughters of Michael Gralton, an old Fenian and prominent supporter of the cooperative movement, who farmed 25 acres, and Alice Gralton (née Campbell). His mother acted as an agent for a small circulating library in Gowel, which ensured that James was well read from an early age. He received his only schooling at Kiltoghert national school, leaving at the age of 12 to work as a grocery boy in Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim. He then went to work in Dublin as a bartender and subsequently joined the British army, serving first in the Royal Irish Regiment, but after being disciplined for refusing to serve with his regiment in India, he deserted and spent some time working in the Liverpool docks and Welsh coalmines, after which he travelled widely on a tramp steamer. Gralton returned home briefly to Effernagh in 1907 before emigrating to America, where in 1909 he briefly joined the US navy, automatically assuming US citizenship, and also worked as a taxi-driver and barman. Blunt, articulate, and politically active, he became disillusioned with the social conservatism of the Fenian movement and chose to join the American communist party, as well as founding a James Connolly club in the aftermath of the 1916 rising.
He returned to Ireland on 2 June 1921, having raised funds for the IRA, and began training Volunteers in Leitrim, placing a strong emphasis on social issues. Land on the family's farm was used for the construction of a Pearse–Connolly memorial hall, built with local voluntary labour and used to provide educational classes for young school-leavers and social events. The committee established to run the hall consisted of republicans, farmers, and trade unionists, and the hall was also used for Sinn Féin courts, where a Gowel land committee settled land disputes. Following the treaty Gralton's activities, though supported locally, were viewed with hostility by the new national army, which imprisoned him briefly for taking forcible possession of disputed land. Shortly after the beginning of the civil war he returned to America and again worked in various jobs, including selling ice for the Hygeia company, and also joined the Leitrim Republican Club of New York in 1927, where he registered his objection to the formation in Ireland of ‘sectarian boy scouts’.
In March 1932 he returned to Ireland, partly due to the death of his brother Charles, who had run the farm, and the poor health of his parents. He reopened the hall, began to improve the farm, and became involved in establishing cells of revolutionary workers and sold copies of the Workers' Voice. After joining Fianna Fáil (May 1932), hoping to obtain a platform for his political activities, he urged the party to create employment in local areas, but was expelled shortly afterwards for his radical beliefs. In August 1932 he joined an IRA group. Local priests spoke out regularly against the hall and its social activities, decrying it as a den of prostitution as well as criticising Gralton's communist sympathies, and the hall was subsequently burnt down (24 December 1932), after which Gralton was served with a deportation order as an undesirable alien, with effect from 4 March 1933. The government file on his activities also deliberately lied about his presence in Ireland during the war of independence, to strip him of any patriotic credentials.
Gralton then went on the run, demanding a fair trial and seeking maximum publicity, supported by republicans such as Peadar O'Donnell (qv) and George Gilmore (qv), though the local units of the IRA in Leitrim, while opposing his deportation, refused to support his case actively. There were even suggestions that the IRA itself had been involved in the burning of the hall. The army council of the IRA, reluctant to be identified with communism, refused to allow Mick Price (qv) and Frank Ryan (qv) to address a meeting on his behalf. Peadar O'Donnell travelled to Drumsna in Leitrim for a public meeting in support of Gralton but was violently attacked by locals led by the parish priest. Another (Dublin-based) revolutionary workers group came to his defence, holding a meeting chaired by Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington (qv). The local Fianna Fáil TD, B. J. Maguire, condemned Gralton for ‘propagating English ideas’. Most joined in the witch-hunt, though some Fianna Fáil, labour, and trade-union branches were divided on the issue. The Co. Leitrim board of health passed a condemnatory resolution on the deportation order, and a Leitrim Defence Committee was formed to brief the national and provincial press. In his absence, locals worked Gralton's farm and he spent his time on the run in Leitrim, sheltered by neighbours. On 10 August 1933 he was arrested at the home of a neighbour, and deported to the US from Galway the following day.
In October 1933 Gralton stood unsuccessfully as a candidate for the communist party in the 13th district of Manhattan, New York. He continued to devote time to workers’ clubs and established an egg and tea business in New York, which foundered during the second world war; he subsequently worked for a brief period on a local radio station. Shortly before his death in Bellevue Hospital, NY, from stomach cancer on 29 December 1945, he married Bessie Cronogue (d. 1975), from Drumsna, Co. Leitrim.