Irish Citizen Army
Irish Citizen Army | |
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Arm Cathartha na hÉireann | |
Leaders |
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Dates of operation | 1913–1947 |
Headquarters | Liberty Hall, Dublin |
Ideology | |
Size |
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Allies | |
Opponents | British Empire British Army Royal Irish Constabulary Dublin Metropolitan Police Industrialists |
Battles and wars |
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The Irish Citizen Army (
Following the Easter Rising, the death of James Connolly and the departure of Jim Larkin, the ICA largely sidelined itself during the Irish War of Independence by choosing to only offer material support to the Irish Republican Army and not become directly involved itself. Following the ICA's declaration in July 1919 that members could not be simultaneously members of both the ICA and the IRA, combined with the ICA's military inactivity, there was a steady stream of desertion from the ICA. During the Irish Civil War, the ICA declared itself "neutral", resulting in further departures from the organisation.[3]
The ICA ceased to hold any military importance from 1920 until 1934 when the newly formed Republican Congress attempted to revive it. However, when the Republican Congress split and collapsed over ideological in-fighting, so too did the ICA.[3]
The Lockout of 1913
The Citizen Army arose out of the great strike of the
This strike caused most of Dublin to come to an economic standstill; it was marked by vicious rioting between the strikers and the
Re-organisation
The Irish Citizen Army underwent a complete reorganisation in 1914.[5] In March of that year, police attacked a demonstration of the Citizen Army and arrested Jack White, its commander. Seán O'Casey, the playwright, then suggested that the ICA needed a more formal organisation. He wrote a constitution, stating the Army's principles as follows: "the ownership of Ireland, moral and material, is vested of right in the people of Ireland" and to "sink all difference of birth property and creed under the common name of the Irish people".[5]
Larkin insisted that all members also be members of a trade union, if eligible. In mid-1914, White resigned as ICA commander in order to join the mainstream nationalist Irish Volunteers, and Larkin assumed direct command.
The ICA armed itself with
James Larkin left Ireland for America in October 1914, leaving the Citizen Army under the command of James Connolly. Whereas during the Lockout the ICA had been a workers' self-defence militia, Connolly conceived of it as a revolutionary organisation dedicated to the creation of an Irish socialist republic. He had served in the British Army in his youth, and knew something about military tactics and discipline.
Other active members in the early days included the Secretary to the council, Seán O'Casey, who tried to have Constance Markievicz expelled for her close associations with the Irish Volunteers.[7] He described the formation of the nationalist force as "one of the most effective blows" that the ICA had received. Men who might have joined the ICA were now drilling—with the blessing of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB)—under a command that included employers who had stood with Murphy against those trying to "assert the first principles of Trade Unionism".[8] When in the late summer of 1914, it became apparent that Connolly was gravitating towards the IRB, O'Casey and Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, vice-president, resigned from the ICA.[9]
In May 1914, Jack White had also withdrawn from ICA, replaced as chairman of the executive by Larkin,[10] but it was to join Volunteers. Explaining that he had always "to link the Labour and National Causes as soon as they can be linked", White, who had clashed with O'Casey, insisted that the nationalist militia was an allied force.[11] It was a move for which later, as a socialist, he was to express regret.[12] What White failed to appreciate, according ICA veteran and trade unionist, Frank Robbins, was that, despite the guiding presence of Connolly, the men he had drilled in Dublin, "while trade unionists, were not by any measure socialists".[13]
The ICA was grossly under-funded.
In October 1915, armed ICA pickets patrolled a strike by dockers at Dublin port. Appalled by the participation of Irishmen in the First World War, which he regarded as an imperialist, capitalist conflict, Connolly began openly calling for insurrection in his newspaper, the Irish Worker. When this was banned he opened another, the Worker's Republic.
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
British authorities tolerated the open drilling and bearing of arms by the ICA, thinking that to clamp down on the organisation would provoke further unrest. A small group of IRB conspirators within the Irish Volunteers movement had started planning a rising. Worried that Connolly would embark on premature military action with the ICA, they approached him and inducted him into the IRB's Supreme Council to co-ordinate their preparations for the armed rebellion which became known as the Easter Rising.
Easter Rising
On Monday, 24 April 1916, 220 members of the ICA (including 28 women) took part in the Easter Rising, alongside a much larger body of the Irish Volunteers. They helped occupy the
Sean Connolly, an ICA officer and Abbey Theatre actor, was both the first rebel to kill a British soldier and the first to be killed.[18]
A total of eleven Citizen Army men were killed in action in the rising, five in the City Hall/Dublin castle area, five in St Stephen's Green and one in the GPO.[citation needed]
James Connolly was made commander of the rebel forces in Dublin during the Rising and issued orders to surrender after a week. He and Mallin were executed by British Army firing squad some weeks later. The surviving ICA members were interned, in English prisons or at Frongoch internment camp in Wales, for between nine and 12 months.
Inactivity during the War of Independence and Civil War
War of Independence
Following the Easter Rising, the ICA had lost most of their most dynamic and militant leaders. James Connolly and Michael Mallin had been executed, while Jim Larkin was in America and later imprisoned in Sing Sing from 1920 until 1923. The ICA was largely left in the hands of James O'Neill. By the time of the Irish War of Independence, there were never more than 250 people actively involved in the ICA, and these were mostly concentrated in Dublin city. By this stage, the ICA could not nor would not engage directly British forces in Ireland; Instead the organisation chose to operate as a support organisation to the IRA, provide weapons, medical aid and other material support. On one occasion ICA members stewarding a proscribed Connolly commemoration fired on police, wounding four of them.[3] While at first the ICA was content to allow members to both in the IRA and ICA, in July 1919 they declared members could only be in one or the other.[3] This caused much resentment with the ICA's own membership and resulted in a number of people choosing the IRA over the ICA.
In April 1919 the ICA choose to take no action in relation to the establishment of the
Civil War
Following the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the ICA adopted a stance of "neutrality" between the pro and anti-treaty sides of now emerging Irish Civil War. In a view of a majority of the ICA, neither side was working towards a "Workers' Republic", which was the ICA's aim. Their views matched that of the mainstream labour movement such as the Labour Party, who campaigned for peace between both sides in the face of the civil war. However, what direction the ICA should move towards lead to ideological in-fighting, with different factions arguing in favour of following Jim Larkin, others supporting Roddy Connolly and his newly formed Communist Party of Ireland (a renamed version of his father's Socialist Party of Ireland), while others wanted to keep the ICA in line with the mainstream Labour Party.[3]
In the end, a majority choose to stand by the Labour Party and to campaign for peace between the Pro and Anti Treaty sides. This led to many defections from the ICA, with a majority joining the Anti-Treaty IRA while a minority joined the newly formed National Army of the Free State.[3]
Post Revolutionary Period
In the 1920s and 1930s, the ICA was kept alive by veterans such as Seamus McGowan, Dick McCormack and Frank Purcell, though largely as an old comrades association by veterans of the Easter Rising. Uniformed Citizen Army men provided a guard of honour at Constance Markievicz's funeral in 1927.[19]
In 1929 Roddy Connolly and Helena Molony encouraged the formation of a "Workers' Defence Corps" that was to be a "New ICA"—an idea that British Intelligence was also associating with Jack White.[20] However, this new group was to comprise both ICA veterans and the remnants of the anti-treaty IRA, who were still a much larger group than the ICA, and thus out of fear of being simply absorbed and annexed by the IRA, the ICA passed on the idea.[3]
Brief revival under the Republican Congress
In 1934, spurred by events in Spain,
However, the Congress itself split in September 1934, which led to a corresponding split in the ICA. One fraction, which had left the Congress, were led by Michael Price and Nora Connolly O'Brien, while the opposing faction led by O'Donnell and Roddy Connolly were loyal to those who stayed.
The ICA's last public appearance was to accompany the funeral procession of union leader and ICA founding figure James Larkin in Dublin in 1947.[citation needed]
Name used during the Troubles
In December 1974 when the INLA was at its founding meeting in Dublin while deciding what to name the new paramilitary organization the name "Irish Citizens Army" had been suggested, this it was hoped would make the new group seem like the true inheritors of James Connolly's legacy & ideology, but it was ultimately passed on as a group had used the name to carry out several sectarian attacks in Belfast during the early 1970s.[22]
Uniforms and banners
The ICA uniform was dark green with a slouched hat and badge in the shape of the Red Hand of Ulster.[23] As many members could not afford a uniform, they wore a blue armband, with officers wearing red ones.[citation needed]
Their banner was the
The banner, and alternative versions of it, is also used by Anti-Imperialist Action Ireland the Workers' Party, Republican Sinn Féin, Connolly Youth Movement, Labour Youth, Ógra Shinn Féin, the Irish Republican Socialist Party, the Republican Socialist Youth Movement and the Republican Socialist Collective (IPLO's political wing).
Gallery
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Plaque
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ICA recruitment document
References
- ISBN 978-0-7139-9690-6.
- ^ Townshend, p.46.
- ^ JSTOR 23199762. Retrieved 27 December 2020.
- ^ Yeates, P Lockout: Dublin 1913, Gill and Macmillan, Dublin, 2000, Pages 497-8
- ^ ISBN 0-00-633200-5.
- ^ a b Townshend, p.93.
- JSTOR 20557441.
- S2CID 154269595.
- ^ Michael Higgins, President of Ireland (22 March 2016). "Speech at a Reception to Mark the 102nd Anniversary of the Irish Citizen Army". president.ie. Retrieved 27 October 2022.
- ^ McGarry, Fearghal (2009). "White, James Robert ('Jack') | Dictionary of Irish Biography". www.dib.ie. Retrieved 22 October 2022.
- ^ Captain Jack White to Roger Casement ,17th November 1913, National Library of Ireland, MS,13073 (16)
- ^ Mulhall, Ed (2016). "Punching the Wind: Captain Jack White, the misfit of the Irish Revolution | Century Ireland". www.rte.ie. Retrieved 19 October 2022.
- ISBN 978-0-906187-00-5.
- ^ Dudley Edwards, "Patrick Pearse", pp.184-197.; Sean Farrell Moran, "Patrick Pearse and the Politics of Redemption", (Washington, DC, 1994); Townshend, p.50.
- ^ Townshend, p.111.
- ^ "The Pooles of 1916 Documentary". Archived from the original on 9 October 2016. Retrieved 12 September 2016.
- ^ Townshend, pp.156-7.
- ISBN 978-1-60384-741-4. Archivedfrom the original on 6 May 2016. Retrieved 16 October 2015. footnote 62
- ^ Perry, Cieran. "The Irish Citizen Army Labour clenches its fist!". struggle.ws. Archived from the original on 24 March 2019. Retrieved 27 December 2020.
- ISBN 978-1843833765.
- ^ "The Irish Citizens' Army". SIPTU.ie. Archived from the original on 1 December 2020. Retrieved 27 December 2020.
- ISBN 978-1898142058.
- ^ Michael McNally, Peter Dennis, Easter Rising 1916: Birth of the Irish Republic, Osprey Publishing [1] Archived 7 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine
Bibliography
- Anderson, W.K., James Connolly and the Irish Left (Dublin 1994). ISBN 0-7165-2522-4.
- Fox, R.M., The History of the Irish Citizen Army (Dublin 1943)
- Greaves, C. Desmond, Life and Times of James Connolly, (London 1972)
- Haswell, Jock, Citizen Armies (London 1973)
- Hart, Peter, The IRA at War 1916-1923 (Oxford 2003)
- Hayes-McCoy, G.A., 'A Military History of the 1916 Rising', in K.B.Nowlan (ed.), The Making of 1916. Studies in the History of the Rising (Dublin 1969)
- Mac An Mháistir, Daithí, The Irish Citizen Army: The World's First Working-Class Army Third Edition (Dublin 2023)
- Martin, F.X., Leaders and Men of the Easter Rising: Dublin 1916 (London 1967)
- O'Casey, Sean (as P. Ó Cathasaigh) Story of the Irish Citizen Army (Dublin 1919)
- O'Drisceoil, Donal, Peadar O'Donnell (Cork 2000)
- Perry, Ciaran, The Irish Citizen Army, Labour clenches its fist!
- Phelan, Mark, 'World War I and the Legacy of the Dublin Lockout, 1914-1916', in Éire-Ireland (Winter, 2016)
- Robbins, Frank. 1978. Under the Starry Plough: Recollections of the Irish Citizen Army. Dublin: The Academy Press. ISBN 0-906187-00-1.