Labour clenches its fist!

by Cieran Perry (Red Action)

" An armed organisation of the Irish working class is a phenomenon in Ireland. Hitherto the workers of Ireland have fought as parts of the armies led by their masters, never as a member of any army officered, trained and inspired by men of their own class. Now, with arms in their hands, they propose to steer their own course, to carve their own future. "

( James Connolly, Workers' Republic 30 October 1915)

One of the most notable aspects of researching this article was the lack of material to be found on the IRISH CITIZEN ARMY. An issue as important, and unique, as the formation of an armed militia of workers for their own protection against the State and scabs is something that one would expect to be well recorded and documented. The opposite is in fact true. Apart from " The History of The I. C. A. " by R. M. Fox, produced in 1943, there does not seem to be a documented history of the Irish Citizen Army. There are a number of personal recollections from individuals who were members of the Citizen Army, including Sean O Casey's overly opinionated version in " The Story of The I. C. A. " which he wrote in 1919. By definition, a personalised account is seen through the eyes of a particular individual and, while adding to our knowledge of the events, will naturally incorporate a persons prejudices/beliefs/interpretations. Compared with the acres of print detailing the Republican history of 1916, the scarcity of an equivalent history of the Labour Movement's contribution to the events leading to, during and after the Rising is all the more remarkable. Perhaps a neglected history of Labour militancy is more suitable to the conservative ethos of Irish society, especially in the light of the lack of militancy within the Labour Movement.

The Irish Citizen Army was born out of the struggle between the workers and the employers during the Great Lockout of 1913. According to William O' Brien's recollections in the book 'Forth The Banners Go', the name of the Citizens Army came from the Social Democratic Federation, who in the early 1880's planned to form a Citizens Army to replace the States army.

Considering the strong working class character of the Irish Citizen Army, it is surprising that members of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy were involved in it's formation. The diversity in the backgrounds of, on the one hand, Countess Constance Markievicz and Jack White and those of James Connolly and Jim Larkin, could not be more pronounced.

Jack White was the son of Field Marshal Sir George White V. C. who had won almost every honour possible in the British Army and was famous as the man who defended Ladysmith against the Boers. Coming from a military family with a Protestant ascendancy background it was strange that White should find himself organising the defence of the Dublin working class during the 1913 lockout. Having fought against the Boers himself, White subsequently began to oppose militarism and left the army to travel around Europe. This travelling led to his increasing liberalism and on returning to Ireland he opposed Sir Edward Carson's sectarian version of Protestantism along with the likes of Sir Roger Casement.

Countess Constance Markievicz was also of an Anglo-Irish ascendancy background. Her grandfather, Sir Robert Gore-Booth was an M. P. in the House of Commons in the mid 1800's. As a landlord he was responsible for evicting some of his tenants so as to use their land for pasture, a situation commonplace in those days for the native Irish. It is all the more remarkable that Markievicz, coming from such a comfortable existence, would, while in her forties, throw herself into the struggle of the Irish working class against their employers and the Irish people against their British rulers. During this period of her life she became the first woman M. P. in the British Parliament and also the first Minister for Labour in the first Dail Eireann.

In complete contrast, Jim Larkin's background was that to be expected of most working class people of the time. Born of Irish parents in Liverpool in 1876, he began working at the age of nine. It was during this time that he began to read and listen to the socialists of the day. Having experienced the grinding poverty inflicted on the working class by capitalism, he joined the Independent Labour Party when he was only sixteen. Four years after joining the National Union of Dock Labourers (N. U. D. L. ) he became their National Organiser. In 1907 Larkin came to Ireland to organise his union. After organising the dock workers in Belfast in 1907 and Cork in 1909, Larkin clashed with the General Secretary of the N. U. D. L. over his confrontational methods and particularly the tactic of the sympathetic strike. After being sacked by the N. U. D. L. he formed the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (I. T. G. W. U. ) on January 6th 1909. So began one of the most militant periods of Irish Labour history.

James Connolly, like Larkin, had experienced the extreme poverty that was the lot of most working class people. Born in Edinburgh in 1868 to Irish parents, Connolly began working at the age of eleven. At the age of fourteen, like many before him, lack of work drove him to join the British Army. Connolly choose the Kings Liverpool Regiment, then considered an Irish regiment. His first visit to Ireland was in a British uniform and lasted seven years. Already a socialist at this time, his desertion from the army enabled him to begin his involvement with active socialism. In 1896 the Dublin Socialist Club offered him a job as a full time organiser on the strength of his writings in Justice, the journal of the Social Democratic Federation.

After arriving in Dublin he set up the Irish Socialist Republican Party (I. S. R. P. ) but in 1903 he and his family were again on the move due to poverty, this time to the U. S. A., where he was to remain for seven years. By 1910 he was again back in Ireland, this time as an organiser for the Socialist Party of Ireland, which had been formed by William O'Brien a former member of the I. S. R. P. In 1911 Connolly became Belfast's secretary of the I. T. G. W. U.. After Larkin's arrest in August 1913 Connolly returned from Belfast to take over the organisation of the strike, and so into the industrial battleground that was Dublin of the time, came James Connolly.