The ‘Labour Hercules’: A study of the  relationships between the Irish labour  movement, the Irish Citizen Army and  republicanism, 1913-23

This thesis examines the development of the Irish Citizen Army within the ten-year revolutionary situation from 1913 to 1923. It reveals the levels of sympathy and support held for it within the Irish republican spectrum and within the emergent Larkinist trade union movement. It also highlights the ICA’s own espousals for these two ideological paradigms as well as their military evolution. The thesis exposes the dynamic in which Dublin’s militant socialist republicans operated during the revolutionary decade. Through the use of a variety of newly released sources it fills a void in the current historiography of both the Irish question and the emergence of radical labour.

The research concludes that while the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union and the Citizen Army shared a commonality of leadership from May 1914 to April 1916 this was not when they were the most closely aligned. With the primacy of republicanism established within Citizen Army aspirations in March 1914, the close patronage of the ITGWU in winter 1913 marked the point labour trade unionism and labour militarism were closest. A divergence in militancy led to a gradual cooling of their relationship, notably after the Easter Rising. Early animosity between the ICA and the Irish Volunteers centred on issues of class as well as the presence of moderate nationalists in the Volunteers. However, the ICA typically shared an ideological space with the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and remained supportive of the most belligerent nationalists up to and including the Irish Civil War. Through the continued propagation of revolutionary ideology in pre-rebellion Ireland, the commanding of three bases during Easter Week, and the implementation of a strategy of structural and resource support for the Irish Republican Army during the Anglo-Irish War of Independence, the ICA was able to offer a significant contribution to the struggle for independence which continuously belied its typically weak numerical and geographical remit. Through a systematic analysis of previously unseen sources the thesis presents a detailed periodization and contextualising of the development of the ICA within the wider revolutionary period.