The 'Labour Hercules': The Irish Citizen Army and Irish Republicanism, 1913–23

Jeffrey Leddin

• Publisher: Irish Academic Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781788550741
• eBook ISBN: 9781788550765
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Irish History
• Index: History

The Irish Citizen Army (ICA) was born from the Dublin Lockout of 1913, when industrialist William Martin Murphy 'locked out' workers who refused to resign from the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union, sparking one of the most dramatic industrial disputes in Irish history. Faced with threats of police brutality in response to the strike, James Connolly, James Larkin and Jack White established the ICA in the winter of 1913.

By the end of March 1914, the ICA espoused republican ideology and that the ownership of Ireland was 'vested of right in the people of Ireland'. The ICA was in the process of being totally transformed, going on to provide significant support to the IRA during the 1916 Rising.

Despite Connolly's execution and the internment of many ICA members, the ICA reorganised in 1917, subsequently developing networks for arms importation and 'intelligence', and later providing operative support for the War of Independence in Dublin.

The most extensive survey of the movement to date, The 'Labour Hercules' explores the ICA's evolution into a republican army and its legacy to the present day.

1

‘THE ARMED NATION’: EUROPEAN
CITIZEN ARMY THEORIES AND THE IRISH
REPUBLICAN NEXUS, 1866–1913

Variously referred to as the Transport Union Citizen Army, the Citizen Army, and Árm Lucta Oibre na h-Éireann (Army of the Working Class of Ireland), the Irish Citizen Army (ICA) was the most distinctly leftist element of Dublin’s revolutionary republicans between 1913 and 1923.1 This book explores the ideological and military development of the ICA, and identifies the extent to which the army can be understood as having been a bridging point between the ideologies and aspirations of militant trade unionism and militant nationalism and republicanism. Neither of these political spheres were homogenous groupings throughout this period, and this work examines whether the force, at various points, was best defined as a workers’ defence corps or as a republican extra-parliamentary unit. Given this, the relationship it held with organs such as the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU), the Irish Trades Union Congress (ITUC), the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), and Óglaigh na hÉireann (which manifested itself as both the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Republican Army (IRA)) acts as a central thread within the study. Concurrently, the militia has previously been referred to as a ‘vanguard’2 of the rebellion in 1916. Its bona fides as a revolutionary body over the ten years are also assessed. Areas such as the use of military terminology; development of martial structure; the use of practices such as drill, recruitment, and arms procurement, as well as active engagement in live warfare are also key. This period has been understood as an Irish revolution.3

R.F. Foster argued for an understanding of the role of the ‘tipping point’ in revolutions: ‘the moment when substantive change becomes possible, building on an alteration of “hearts and minds” as well as the “presenting problem” of an immediate crisis’.4 In essence, these are moments which make possible radical changes in the behaviour of a group. In order to assert these ‘tipping points’ this book presents a periodisation of the force which centres on moments of either significant change or rapid escalation. The collapse of the 1913 strike and lockout and the promotion of James Connolly to the commander of the ICA are examples of these. Similarly, theorists such as James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, as well as James Ron reasoned that the example of ‘weak central governments’ or ‘indiscriminate state responses’ create grievances and ‘escalatory tipping points’.5 Under this theoretical framework, the importance of events such as the Home Rule crisis and the Bachelor’s Walk shootings are assessed. However, these moments must also be contextualised within the long gestation of the currents which they helped to escalate. For Foster, Ireland experienced a pre-revolutionary period between the death of Charles Stewart Parnell in 1891 and the week-long rebellion in 1916.6 He posited that during this phase extremism flourished in a variety of seedbeds, such as feminism and socialism.7

The nascent radicalisation of nationalism was a key factor in the evolution of Árm Lucta Oibre na h-Éireann. However, other contexts were also important. The force was defined by the two labour titans, James Larkin and James Connolly. Both lived and worked in Britain and America, and were ‘international’ men. Wider pan-national socialist and syndicalist thought must be understood in order to properly assess the force in which they were so influential. A key component of this was the development of an ‘armed nation’ theory which began to be expressed by European socialists and social democrats from the 1860s.8

In 1925, J.D. Clarkson described the force as ‘the first “red army” in modern Europe’.9 Given the prevalence of Spartacus and Bolshevik revolutionaries, this was distinguished company. Historians also connected the ICA with socialist expositions on the ‘armed nation’. In 1975, Bernard Campbell Ransom argued that the title Citizen Army paid deference to Harry Quelch’s pamphlet Social Democracy and the Armed Nation (1900).10 Likewise, D.R. O’Connor Lysaght viewed the Irish militia as rooted in the theories of the French thinker Jean Jaurés and his work on L’armée Nouvelle (1911).11 The theory of the ‘nation in arms’ began earlier than these two works. From the middle of the nineteenth century onwards there developed within the European left a vocal criticism of the militarism which manifested itself in standing armies. This led to an attempt to formulate and implement an alternative system that did not incorporate the often-seen impracticable pacifism. For example, in an article for the 1896 International Workers’ Congress, Professor Albert Russell argued that while preferring passive resistance ‘it is not, however necessary or advisable to refuse military training’.12

Naturally, the first manifestation of this occurred in the Socialist International gatherings. The International in Geneva in 1866 discussed the French delegates’ submission that ‘an armed people’ should be implemented by the world’s countries instead of professional troops. The proposal was carried.13 While resolutions at the congress in Brussels in 1868 did not mention such theories of citizen-led armed forces, a plethora of writings appeared over the following half-century discussing the merits of the notion.14 For instance, in 1869 the Advocate of Peace published Andrew P. Peabody’s polemic ‘Standing Armies: Unnecessary’ which described that particular military system as a ‘vampire-drain made on the vitals of a nation’.15

The majority of writing on the theory was disseminated from the First and Second International, and other bodies closely linked with those socialist organisations. The immediate question which faced the various bodies of the International was that of their attitude to the military arrangements of their respective countries as well as the question of the best means in which war could be avoided. There was no simple answer arrived at because the majority of countries had followed Prussia’s example and implemented universal compulsory military service, something from which Quelch was at pains to dissociate his ‘armed nation’ concept.16 However, as Joll argued, while the ‘socialists may have disapproved of whole system, they could not remain indifferent to the conditions under which they themselves, their sons, brothers and comrades passed some two years of their life; any more than they could remain indifferent to the conditions which they were working in factories’.17

On 9 April 1872, the First International’s general council listened to a translation of the address of the Parisian delegates ‘Ferré’ which drew upon the collapse of the Paris Commune, a forbearer to the socialist utopian ideals which Lysaght connected to the ICA. The address brimmed with vivid imagery of citizen forces: ‘citizens, the proletarian army, scattered by late events, must rally and reorganise itself … among the soldiers of our cause …’18 Furthermore, in 1896, the war commission of the International Socialist Congress argued for the establishment of the ‘armed nation’. The International Workers’ Congress in London in 1896 published the war commission’s report on the ‘standing armies’:

Standing armies, whose maintenance even in times of peace exhausts the nation, and the cost of which is borne by the working class, increase the danger of war between nations, and at the same time favour the brutal oppression of the proletariat of the world. This is why the cry ‘lay down your arms’ is no more listened to than other appeals to humanitarian sentiments raised by the capitalist classes. The working class alone have the serious desire, and they alone possess the power to realise universal peace. They demand:

a. The simultaneous abolition of standing armies and the establishment of a national citizen force.

b. The establishment of tribunals of arbitration, to regulate peaceably disputes between nations.

c. The final decision on the question of war or peace to be vested directly in the people in cases where the governments refuse to accept the decision of the tribunal of arbitration.19

Even after the formation of the so-called ‘first red army’, the Citizen Army in Ireland in 1913, and the outbreak of World War I in Europe in 1914, the terminology continued to be used. In 1916, Granville Fortescue published Fore-Armed: How to Build a Citizen Army and argued that the regular army of the United States of America was a ‘mercenary force’.20 In 1915, Harry Hyndman, the founder of the Social Democratic Federation, referenced ‘the democratic citizen army’ and wrote how ‘at international congress after international congress, continental socialists who know well what conscription means, and who are thoroughly versed in the English voluntary system, have voted in favour of a democratic national citizen army’.21

Ó’Catháin has stated that debates on the value of a citizen army had long been part of Glasgow’s socialist circles.22 He contended that both Jack White and James Connolly had important contacts in the city which increased the potential for such a force to be created there. It is also true that after the rebellion in 1916 some within wider Irish labour connected Connolly’s soldiers to this wider philosophy. During the twenty-second annual Irish Trades Union Congress in 1916 the president of the congress stated that the events of Easter Week had cured him of ‘the ideal of a “nation in arms”’.23 Clearly, leading ICA figures were not isolated from the wider debate in Europe.

The Easter Rising should be viewed not solely as a national insurgent movement against a colonial power but should also be read within a wider international framework of decades of social unrest and revolution.24 The belief that ‘national liberation movements could contribute to the overthrow of capitalism’ was central to Connolly’s thought.25 He was most clear on the relationship between the national struggle and the international situation when he wrote in 1914 ‘Ireland may yet set the torch to a European conflagration that will not burn out until the last throne and the last capitalist debenture are shrivelled in the war pyre of the last warlord.’26 He viewed the Citizen Army as a potential catalyst for a trans-national workers’ revolt. Indeed, in 1887, Engels discussed the possible effects of a world war on Europe and its working class:

eight to ten million soldiers will swallow each other up and in doing so eat all Europe more bare than any swarm of locusts … crowns will roll by dozens in the gutter and no one be found to pick them up … only one result is absolutely certain: general exhaustion and the establishment of the conditions for the final victory of the working class.27

There was a clear similarity of thought between Connolly and Engels. However, as Emmet O’Connor contended, from the outbreak of the war until the Easter Rising, Connolly was consumed by revolutionary pessimism. Connolly was brought to a sense of near fatalism as the Westminster Government’s failure to adequately respond to Edward Carson’s threats of revolt, combined with the failure of the European socialists to criticise the outbreak of the war.28 He argued, in August 1914, that through the continuation of the war ‘civilisation [was] being destroyed before our eyes’.29 This attitude is studied within the context of the Second International’s treatises on how global war was to be opposed by the working class, such as the report on...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Author Bio
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Maps
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1. ‘The Armed Nation’: European Citizen Army Theories and the Irish Republican Nexus, 1866–1913
• 2. ‘Glorious times’: The Formation of the Pre-Constitutional Citizen Army
• 3. ‘So arm and I will arm’: The Pre-Constitutional Citizen Army
• 4. ‘Changed from an airy nothing’: The Army Revitalised
• 5. ‘Closer communion in thought, principle and action’: Relations with the Irish Volunteers
• 6. ‘For a republican freedom of Ireland’: Political Developments under Connolly
• 7. ‘To enlighten and instruct our members’: Military Developments under Connolly
• 8. ‘Under arms in Liberty Hall’: Final Preparations for the Easter Rising
• 9. ‘Baptism of fire’: Stephen’s Green and the Royal College of Surgeons
• 10. ‘That small garrison carried out their orders’: Dublin Castle and its Environs
• 11. ‘Left wheel, charge’: The General Post Office
• 12. ‘Swept up’: Executions and Internment
• 13. ‘We were preparing’: Reorganising the Army
• 14. ‘We stand solid for an Irish Workers’ Republic’: The War of Independence
• 15. ‘Irish workers’ republic, without fear and without compromise’: Split and Civil War
• 16. ‘The Place it Carved Out’: Legacies
• Appendix 1. ICA Constitution, 22 March 1914
• Appendix 2. Revised ICA Constitution
• Appendix 3. Outline History of 1917–23 by O/C John Hanratty
• Appendix 4. South County Dublin ICA Memorandum of Active and General Service, 1920–3
• Appendix 5. Deportation of ICA Members, 1916, to British Prisons
• Appendix 6. Irish Transport Union and General Workers’ Union Branch
• Endnotes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Plates