The Irish Citizen Army After 1916
By Rafiq Jamal Jihad
Irish republicanism has for so long been in the habit of inventing its history and then falling prey to its own fabrications. We’re told that Sinn Fein has always been the party of the Republican Movement, when it actually began life as advocates of a dual-monarchy for Britain and Ireland on the model of Austro-Hungary and as early as the mid-1920s there were three different parties, at the same time, that had received sanction from the IRA to function as its political party.
We’re told that the Republican Movement was involved in the 1930s formation of the Irish Republican Congress, when the reality is the entire left-wing on the IRA’s army council was purged precisely because of their support for the Republican Congress, which was therefore formed with no sanction or official participation of the IRA.
We’re told that the 1969-1970 split by the Republican Movement into Official and Provisional wings took place over the issue of armed struggle, when in fact, up until 1972 both the OIRA and PIRA were militarily active at about the same rate, though the Provisionals found it useful to augment the number of military actions they were perceived as participating in by issuing statements claiming responsibility for actions undertaken by rural independent active service units with no formal affiliation with either the PIRA or OIRA. The reality is that the 1969-1970 split was fundamentally a Left/Right split, waged by proxy over the issue of abstentionism.
We’re told that the IPLO was born out of a split in the INLA, when the reality is that the two of the three factions which made up the IPLO had been kicked out of the INLA years before, while the third had gone on its merry way at the end of 1986 and the reality that the leading military figure from the Flynn faction and the head of the “Revolutionary Command faction” which went into forming the IPLO immediately took positions of prominence in the Provisional IRA after the IPLO leader Steenson was killed by the INLA, providing additional evidence to support the view that the IPLO was largely a creation of the PIRA, intended to remove its competition on the Left, having just jettisoned their opposition on the Right through the 1986 RSF split.
The point is that Irish republican history, much like history in general, is essentially the story as seen by those who came through a given period on top and no matter how often a given perspective has been asserted, some critical thinking is required to assess whether this ‘received truth’ is accurate, or a mythology whose perpetuation is useful to the counter-revolutionary forces at work within the arena.
Many have come to accept as historically accurate the claim that upon joining the forces of the Irish Volunteers and the ICA on Easter Monday 1916, both organizations were liquidated into a single Irish Republican Army. It must be acknowledged that this view is supported by a statement of Connolly that, “From the moment the first shot is fired there will be no longer Volunteers or Citizen Army but only the Army of the IrishRepublic.” However, we cannot ignore that this is directly countered by his words to the members of the ICA on Easter Monday to hang on to their guns, because, were the Rising successful, they would very likely need them against the Volunteers in its aftermath. Accordingly, the much repeated words of Connolly must be read within their context—Connolly was a propagandist and was no doubt seeking to ensure an advantage by publicly proclaiming unity of their forces; but he was also a shrewd tactician and his words spoken privately to his own forces cannot be easily dismissed.
There is, however, no indication in any of Connolly’s writings to reflect that he perceived the cooperation of the two paramilitary organizations in the Easter Rising to be anything other than that, cooperation of two, distinct paramilitary bodies. Were the two organizations merged into a single organization, there could be no evidence of a continued independent existence of the ICA following the defeat of the Easter Rising, but this is not the case.
There are a number of sources that make plain that the ICA continued to exist as a distinct paramilitary body into the 1920s, and as late as 1935 we find in a letter from Ken Johnstone to Leon Trotsky a report on a meeting between C.L.R. James and Nora Connolly O Brien and the prospects for a Trotskyist party being formed in Ireland the following description of the ICA:
Last week, Com[rade C.L.R] James had the opportunity of speaking in Dublin, where he met Mrs Connolly O'Brien, daughter of the Irish Revolutionary, James Connolly who was executed in 1916 by the English. He succeeded in having Mrs O'Brien speak to the MG when she was here this week, on the Irish movement, and at the same time, Comrade Robertson pressed her to establish regular connections with our movement. She is on the General Council of the Irish Citizen's Army, a military working class organisation founded by Connolly at the time of the 1913-14 Transport Strike in Dublin. This army has continued to exist, functioning in strikes and in organising work among the Irish workers and poor farmers. Its basis is the struggle for Political and Economic Freedom in Ireland, that is, the linking up of the republican national movement with the struggle for socialism.
I had the opportunity yesterday of a long talk with Mrs O'Brien on the ICA and the Irish movement generally. During the talk, I broached the question of International affiliation, as on many questions the ICA approximates our position. Comrade O'Brien stated that they felt the need badly at times of a connection internationally, for instance now when they are the only Irish working class party to oppose Sanctions and the League. . .
The ICA is frankly a military working class organisation of between 600 and 800 members, 200 of which are in Dublin. Every member is a member of a trade union; that is a condition of membership. The basis of membership in the ICA is the acceptance of the joint struggle for political and economic freedom; against British Imperialism and against Capitalism, whether it be British or the Local Capitalism of de Valera. Every member accepts the doctrine of physical force. Every member must be prepared to carry arms when necessary, and all are skilled in the use of arms.
Women have equal status and responsibility, even to the bearing of arms. The selection of the ICA had been a rigid one, numbers are discouraged for the sake of quality; with the result (according to her) that the ICA is made up of tested revolutionaries who have occupied a leading role in the working class struggles over the last twenty years and more. Members of the ICA tend to become the key men in Trade Union and other working class organisations. (Emphasis by the present author)
Lest it be thought that the ICA existed only in Nora Connolly O Brien’s imagination, Johnstone provides a report on the ICA’s relations with other bodies and actions it had recently undertaken, which make plain that it had continued to exist as a distinct, armed organization of the working class:
The ICA has representatives on the central council of the Trade Union Congress, which is the only All-Irish organisation in Ireland... Here also the ICA fights for a left policy and receives support for its line. An interesting strength-test took place recently, with the application of the ICA to a place in the Connolly Commemoration Parade on May 12. This parade is supposed to be open only to organisations affiliated to the TU Congress. But the ICA does not affiliate as an organisation. However, when the vote took place in the TU Congress, they had a 57 majority in a voting of approximately 110 delegates.
Besides its work in the TUs and working class organisations, the ICA has had signal success with the poor farmers. A year ago, a unit of the ICA attended an auction sale of land. They picked out a choice bit of around 100 acres, made their offer, and stated simply that if it was not accepted there would be no further auctioning. As they had the sympathy of the other poor farmers and the arms to enforce their threat, their offer was accepted. They farmed the 100 acres co-operatively and after paying union wages to themselves, they marketed the produce direct, clearing 400 pounds by abolishing the middle-man profit.
Moderating his enthusiasm for attempting to create closer ties to the ICA with an expression of some reservations, Johnstone added further testimony to the specifically military character of the organization as late as 1935 in a post script:
I would say that they lean over backwards in their endeavours to be inconspicuous. They have no illusions about the CP and debàcle of the CI has had a bad effect on their inter-national perspective. Their relations to the Irish Republican Army are not formal, but not unfriendly. Comrade O'Brien would seem to be the most internationally minded of them, and I would think that she is still somewhat naive, I am inclined to the belief, as is Comrade Robertson, that the organisation emphasised the military side of its character to the cost of its ideological side. However, to us, the ICA seems closer than any other organisation in Ireland.
That this appears to contradict the generally accepted perspective that the Irish Citizen Army ceased to exist at the very outset of the Easter Rising should really come as no surprise. The demise of the ICA is but one of many myths that populate the history of the Irish national liberation struggle as told within the circle of Irish republicanism.
It would be serious overstatement to assert that the Irish Citizen Army retained the sort of vibrant life it had known between its creation as a labour militia during the 1913 lock-out in Dublin and its participation in the Easter Rising in 1916 as a force for national liberation and social revolution. However, the real history of the ICA in the wake of the Easter Rising is a part of the legacy of republican socialist struggle and those of us engaged in carrying forward this tendency have an interest in setting the record straight. Had the ICA and the Irish Volunteers merged into the Irish Republican Army on Easter Monday 1916, we might conclude from this that history had eclipsed the importance of its role as an armed body representing the distinct interests of Irish workers. The reality of its continuation as a distinct organization in the decades following the Easter Rising instead speaks to the recognition by Irish revolutionaries of the need for the working class of Ireland to maintain a separate body in arms to ensure that the unique interests of our class.
Irish republicanism has for so long been in the habit of inventing its history and then falling prey to its own fabrications. We’re told that Sinn Fein has always been the party of the Republican Movement, when it actually began life as advocates of a dual-monarchy for Britain and Ireland on the model of Austro-Hungary and as early as the mid-1920s there were three different parties, at the same time, that had received sanction from the IRA to function as its political party.
We’re told that the Republican Movement was involved in the 1930s formation of the Irish Republican Congress, when the reality is the entire left-wing on the IRA’s army council was purged precisely because of their support for the Republican Congress, which was therefore formed with no sanction or official participation of the IRA.
We’re told that the 1969-1970 split by the Republican Movement into Official and Provisional wings took place over the issue of armed struggle, when in fact, up until 1972 both the OIRA and PIRA were militarily active at about the same rate, though the Provisionals found it useful to augment the number of military actions they were perceived as participating in by issuing statements claiming responsibility for actions undertaken by rural independent active service units with no formal affiliation with either the PIRA or OIRA. The reality is that the 1969-1970 split was fundamentally a Left/Right split, waged by proxy over the issue of abstentionism.
We’re told that the IPLO was born out of a split in the INLA, when the reality is that the two of the three factions which made up the IPLO had been kicked out of the INLA years before, while the third had gone on its merry way at the end of 1986 and the reality that the leading military figure from the Flynn faction and the head of the “Revolutionary Command faction” which went into forming the IPLO immediately took positions of prominence in the Provisional IRA after the IPLO leader Steenson was killed by the INLA, providing additional evidence to support the view that the IPLO was largely a creation of the PIRA, intended to remove its competition on the Left, having just jettisoned their opposition on the Right through the 1986 RSF split.
The point is that Irish republican history, much like history in general, is essentially the story as seen by those who came through a given period on top and no matter how often a given perspective has been asserted, some critical thinking is required to assess whether this ‘received truth’ is accurate, or a mythology whose perpetuation is useful to the counter-revolutionary forces at work within the arena.
Many have come to accept as historically accurate the claim that upon joining the forces of the Irish Volunteers and the ICA on Easter Monday 1916, both organizations were liquidated into a single Irish Republican Army. It must be acknowledged that this view is supported by a statement of Connolly that, “From the moment the first shot is fired there will be no longer Volunteers or Citizen Army but only the Army of the IrishRepublic.” However, we cannot ignore that this is directly countered by his words to the members of the ICA on Easter Monday to hang on to their guns, because, were the Rising successful, they would very likely need them against the Volunteers in its aftermath. Accordingly, the much repeated words of Connolly must be read within their context—Connolly was a propagandist and was no doubt seeking to ensure an advantage by publicly proclaiming unity of their forces; but he was also a shrewd tactician and his words spoken privately to his own forces cannot be easily dismissed.
There is, however, no indication in any of Connolly’s writings to reflect that he perceived the cooperation of the two paramilitary organizations in the Easter Rising to be anything other than that, cooperation of two, distinct paramilitary bodies. Were the two organizations merged into a single organization, there could be no evidence of a continued independent existence of the ICA following the defeat of the Easter Rising, but this is not the case.
There are a number of sources that make plain that the ICA continued to exist as a distinct paramilitary body into the 1920s, and as late as 1935 we find in a letter from Ken Johnstone to Leon Trotsky a report on a meeting between C.L.R. James and Nora Connolly O Brien and the prospects for a Trotskyist party being formed in Ireland the following description of the ICA:
Last week, Com[rade C.L.R] James had the opportunity of speaking in Dublin, where he met Mrs Connolly O'Brien, daughter of the Irish Revolutionary, James Connolly who was executed in 1916 by the English. He succeeded in having Mrs O'Brien speak to the MG when she was here this week, on the Irish movement, and at the same time, Comrade Robertson pressed her to establish regular connections with our movement. She is on the General Council of the Irish Citizen's Army, a military working class organisation founded by Connolly at the time of the 1913-14 Transport Strike in Dublin. This army has continued to exist, functioning in strikes and in organising work among the Irish workers and poor farmers. Its basis is the struggle for Political and Economic Freedom in Ireland, that is, the linking up of the republican national movement with the struggle for socialism.
I had the opportunity yesterday of a long talk with Mrs O'Brien on the ICA and the Irish movement generally. During the talk, I broached the question of International affiliation, as on many questions the ICA approximates our position. Comrade O'Brien stated that they felt the need badly at times of a connection internationally, for instance now when they are the only Irish working class party to oppose Sanctions and the League. . .
The ICA is frankly a military working class organisation of between 600 and 800 members, 200 of which are in Dublin. Every member is a member of a trade union; that is a condition of membership. The basis of membership in the ICA is the acceptance of the joint struggle for political and economic freedom; against British Imperialism and against Capitalism, whether it be British or the Local Capitalism of de Valera. Every member accepts the doctrine of physical force. Every member must be prepared to carry arms when necessary, and all are skilled in the use of arms.
Women have equal status and responsibility, even to the bearing of arms. The selection of the ICA had been a rigid one, numbers are discouraged for the sake of quality; with the result (according to her) that the ICA is made up of tested revolutionaries who have occupied a leading role in the working class struggles over the last twenty years and more. Members of the ICA tend to become the key men in Trade Union and other working class organisations. (Emphasis by the present author)
Lest it be thought that the ICA existed only in Nora Connolly O Brien’s imagination, Johnstone provides a report on the ICA’s relations with other bodies and actions it had recently undertaken, which make plain that it had continued to exist as a distinct, armed organization of the working class:
The ICA has representatives on the central council of the Trade Union Congress, which is the only All-Irish organisation in Ireland... Here also the ICA fights for a left policy and receives support for its line. An interesting strength-test took place recently, with the application of the ICA to a place in the Connolly Commemoration Parade on May 12. This parade is supposed to be open only to organisations affiliated to the TU Congress. But the ICA does not affiliate as an organisation. However, when the vote took place in the TU Congress, they had a 57 majority in a voting of approximately 110 delegates.
Besides its work in the TUs and working class organisations, the ICA has had signal success with the poor farmers. A year ago, a unit of the ICA attended an auction sale of land. They picked out a choice bit of around 100 acres, made their offer, and stated simply that if it was not accepted there would be no further auctioning. As they had the sympathy of the other poor farmers and the arms to enforce their threat, their offer was accepted. They farmed the 100 acres co-operatively and after paying union wages to themselves, they marketed the produce direct, clearing 400 pounds by abolishing the middle-man profit.
Moderating his enthusiasm for attempting to create closer ties to the ICA with an expression of some reservations, Johnstone added further testimony to the specifically military character of the organization as late as 1935 in a post script:
I would say that they lean over backwards in their endeavours to be inconspicuous. They have no illusions about the CP and debàcle of the CI has had a bad effect on their inter-national perspective. Their relations to the Irish Republican Army are not formal, but not unfriendly. Comrade O'Brien would seem to be the most internationally minded of them, and I would think that she is still somewhat naive, I am inclined to the belief, as is Comrade Robertson, that the organisation emphasised the military side of its character to the cost of its ideological side. However, to us, the ICA seems closer than any other organisation in Ireland.
That this appears to contradict the generally accepted perspective that the Irish Citizen Army ceased to exist at the very outset of the Easter Rising should really come as no surprise. The demise of the ICA is but one of many myths that populate the history of the Irish national liberation struggle as told within the circle of Irish republicanism.
It would be serious overstatement to assert that the Irish Citizen Army retained the sort of vibrant life it had known between its creation as a labour militia during the 1913 lock-out in Dublin and its participation in the Easter Rising in 1916 as a force for national liberation and social revolution. However, the real history of the ICA in the wake of the Easter Rising is a part of the legacy of republican socialist struggle and those of us engaged in carrying forward this tendency have an interest in setting the record straight. Had the ICA and the Irish Volunteers merged into the Irish Republican Army on Easter Monday 1916, we might conclude from this that history had eclipsed the importance of its role as an armed body representing the distinct interests of Irish workers. The reality of its continuation as a distinct organization in the decades following the Easter Rising instead speaks to the recognition by Irish revolutionaries of the need for the working class of Ireland to maintain a separate body in arms to ensure that the unique interests of our class.