Irish Revolutionary History

Leading Socialist Republican Peadar O'Donnell. An Phoblacht, 12 January 2014. Continued from  previous post . The first interpretation The first interpretation of socialist republicanism’s lack of success involves the idea that there was no real appetite for radical socialist measures in Ireland during the period in question (the first three decades of the twentieth century). According to this interpretation, the mainstream Labour movement, as constituted by the Irish Trade Union Congress and Labour Party (from November 1918 renamed the Irish Labour Party and Trade Union Congress), had little choice but to allow the dominant stream of political ideology in Ireland at that time – that of separatist nationalism – to have its head. Once the question of national independence was settled, the rational course for Labour was to settle into the role of a social democratic movement within the new Irish Free State. Republican socialism, on this reading, was destined never to b...

Irish Socialist Republican Party members (Phoenix Park, 1901). Picture from UCC Multitext Project . Introduction Socialist republicanism The socialist republican movement is that tendency within Irish politics which combines a wish to overthrow capitalism and replace it with a socialist economic system, with a desire to end British rule on the island of Ireland. It has a history going back at least as far as the Fenian movement in the mid-nineteenth century, when the Irish Republican Brotherhood incorporated certain aspects of socialist ideology into its vision for an independent Ireland. [1] It took on a more explicit form with the formation, in 1896, of the Irish Socialist Republican Party, by James Connolly. Although this party never achieved electoral success, being wound up only eight years after its formation, its brief existence helped give shape to a more developed and coherent socialist republican doctrine. In 1909, the Irish Transport and General Workers’ U...