Irish Socialist Republican Party

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For the party founded in Belfast in 1944, see Socialist Republican Party (Ireland).

The Irish Socialist Republican Party was an Irish political party founded in 1896 by James Connolly. Its aim was to establish an Irish workers' republic. It split in 1904 following months of internal political rows.

Despite its small size (According to the ISRP historian Lynch, the party never had more than 80 members) the ISRP is regarded by many Irish historians as a party of seminal importance in the early history of Irish socialism and republicanism. During its lifespan it only had one really active branch, the Dublin one. There were several attempts to create branches in Cork, Belfast, Limerick, Naas, and even in northern England but they never came to much.

The party produced the first regular socialist paper in Ireland the Workers' Republic, ran candidates in local elections, represented Ireland at the Second International agitated over issues such as the Boer War and the 1798 commemorations. Politically the ISRP was before its time, putting the call for a independent "Republic" at the centre of its propaganda before Sinn Fein or others had done so.

A public meeting held by the party is described in Irish socialist playwright Sean O'Casey's autobiography Drums under the Window.

Connolly who was the full time paid organiser for the party subsequently left Ireland for the United States in 1903 (he returned in 1910 ) following internal conflict, in fact it seems to have been a combination of the petty infighting and his own poverty that caused Connolly to abandon his homeland, and the party became inactive. Connolly clashed with the party's other leading light, Edward Stewart over trade union and electoral strategy. It was revived in 1909 with the new name Socialist Party of Ireland, but once more fell into inactivity as Connolly, who was more inclined to see revolution as proceeding from 'one big union' than from a revolutionary party, became mainly engaged in the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union and the union-based Irish Citizen Army.

Connolly compared the collapse of the party to 'losing a child'.

Other notable figures in the 'first' ISRP included William O'Brien who became a leading figure in the Irish Trade Union movement, Cork man Con Lehane and Tom Lyng.

The legacy of the ISRP was to have an impact on the left-wing and republican movements in Ireland for many decades following it's demise in 1904.

Following Connolly's execution by the British in 1916 and the 1917 February Revolution in Russia, the party was once more revived and in 1921 it became the first Communist Party of Ireland.

[edit] Further reading

Radical Politics in Modern Ireland: A History of the Irish Socialist Republican Party (ISRP) 1896-1904 David Lynch, Dublin, Irish Academic Press 2005. ISBN 0-7165-3356-1.

Communism in Modern Ireland: The Pursuit of the Workers' Republic since 1916, Mike Milotte, Dublin, 1984

[edit] External links

http://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1896/xx/isrp.htm

Radical Politics in Modern Ireland: A History of the Irish Socialist Republican Party (ISRP) 1896-1904 By David Lynch published by Irish Academic Press. see www.iap.ie