James Connolly and the Irish Citizen Army Paul O’Brien The role of the Irish Citizen Army (ICA) be informed where and when you in the 1916 Rising tends to be overlooked, have to attend for training. or is portrayed as an auxiliary movement that played a minor role during the Ris- Within a fortnight the first ‘red army’ ing. The ICA was a revolutionary army that anywhere in the world had been formed; grew out of the trade union movement dur- 1,200 had enrolled and drilling had com- ing the Lockout in 1913. The idea of a de- menced under the command of Captain fence force for workers had been in the air James White in Croydon Park. In reality for some time as the locked-out workers were the difference between those who enrolled subject to assaults and intimidation by the in a fit of enthusiasm and the numbers who police and the hired thugs of the employers. turned up for training was substantial. The After Bloody Sunday in August 1913, both ICA was not exactly a ‘Red Army’ perhaps Larkin and Connolly were convinced that a ‘Red Guard’ is a more apt description. On workers needed an organisation of their own 27 November the ICA held its first march to protect picket lines and union meetings through the Streets of Dublin. Connolly ex- from assault. The actual proposal to form plained the purpose and reasons for the for- a citizen army did not originate in Liberty mation of the ICA in a British socialist news- Hall but in the conservative sheltered clois- paper that December: ters of Trinity College Dublin. At a meeting in the rooms of the Rev. R M Gwynn on As a protection against brutal 12 November 1913, Captain Jack White pro- attacks of the uniformed bullies posed a ‘drilling scheme’ for locked out work- of the police force, as well as a ers and that a fund be opened to buy boots measure possibly for future even- and staves. Jack White was an upper class tualities arising out of the fer- Protestant supporter of Home Rule, pub- ment occasioned by the Carson- lic school educated, and a former member ism in the North. of the British Army who had fought in the Boer War. He approached Connolly with the Connolly may have been conscious of the suggestion, offering his services to train and potential use of such a force when prop- drill any organisation that was set up. The erly trained, ‘but ‘future eventualities’ were next day at a rally to welcome Larkin home far from the mind of the majority of the after his release from jail, James Connolly founders’. addressed the rally and in a dramatic an- The Citizen Army was never central to nouncement told the assembled crowd that the dispute; even if it made the police more they were in a ‘state of war’ and: circumspect about attacking the workers. It also functioned as an outlet to counter the The next time we go out for a demoralising effect of idleness and unem- march I want to be accompanied ployment. It was an army without uniforms by four battalions of our own or rifles, which at times made it an object men. I want them to have their of laughter on the streets of Dublin. But as own corporals and sergeants and Connolly was to recall ‘its presence had kept men who will be able to ‘form the peace at labour meetings and protected fours’. Why should we not drill the workers from the ‘uniformed bullies’. It men in Dublin as well as in Ul- also prevented evictions’. As the dispute pe- ster. When you come down to tered out in early 1914 attendances at pa- draw your strike pay this week rades diminished and the organisation was I want every man who is willing practically moribund. to enlist as a soldier to give his In late January 1914, as the strike pe- name and address, and you will tered out, it seemed to a number of ac- 54 tivists that the ICA had ceased to be rele- If it is lawful for Carson to arm, vant. Republican ideology ran deep in the it is lawful for us – the workers – Dublin working class, and in the changed to arm; if it is lawful for Carson circumstances, a number of workers trans- to drill, it is lawful for us to drill. ferred their support from the ICA to the Irish Volunteers. The active membership Larkin called on the workers of Ireland had fallen to about fifty. On 24 January to rally in Dublin to protest at: 1914 Sean O’Casey, who was the secretary The suggested amputation of of the ICA published in the Irish Worker Ireland’s right hand, the exclu- ‘An Open Letter to the Workers in the Vol- sion of Ulster and the criminal unteers’. O’Casey appealed to the workers and traitorous conduct of a class- of Ireland to stand by the ICA, and not to conscious group masquerading be taken in by the ‘chattering well-fed aris- as Army Officers, who have tocrats’ who run the Volunteers, and not to set themselves up as a military ‘drill or train for anything less than com- Junta evidently determined to plete enfranchisement’ and for ‘the utter al- thwart the will of the people. teration of the present social system’. Over a number of weeks O’Casey argued for the By this time the ICA was in bad shape, independence of the ICA, and its develop- the penalty of dismissal which the employ- ment a force for socialism in Ireland. Larkin ers held over the heads of workers who as- was the driving force behind the ICA at this sociated with the ITGWU frightened hun- stage and would not have published these dreds of men into abandoning their con- articles unless they represented his position. nection with the Citizen Army. That was one aspect of the decline, but the creation of the Volunteers was one of the most ef- Defeat and Reorganisation fective blows which the Irish Citizen Army The decimation of the ITGWU in the course received. Thousands that had originally of the Lockout took its toll on the union attached themselves to the Citizen Army and its leaders. Connolly, as always was passed over into the more attractive and bet- indefatigable; working hard to rebuild the ter organised camp of the Volunteers. union. However, the political ground had Larkin reorganised the ICA and a new shifted. The outbreak of the war in August constitution drafted. Money was raised for 1914 ended the strike wave in Britain. In Ire- uniforms and equipment. Tents were pro- land workers had little fight left in them; and cured and summer training camps were or- for the next while sheer survival and rebuild- ganised in Croydon Park. ing the union was the main priority. Larkin What was significant in the new ICA was physically and mentally exhausted. The constitution was the absence of class politics. terrible defeat had left Larkin in the position Not once is the working class mentioned; of a working class general without an army. instead, vague generalities, about the ‘peo- Never a man to stand still and drawing on ple of Ireland’ and ‘Irish Nationhood’, that his last reserves of strength he threw him- would not be out of place in the constitution self into rebuilding the Irish Citizen Army. of the most conservative nationalist organi- The two strands that made up the core of sation, dominate the document: Larkin’s politics were syndicalism and re- 1. That the first and last principle of the publicanism. Given the dearth of working Irish Citizen Army is the avowal that class militancy Larkin’s republican politics the ownership of Ireland, moral and came to the fore. On 28 March 1914 a material, is vested of right in the peo- Manifesto to the Workers of Ireland was is- ple of Ireland. sued. It was signed by the leaders of the labour movement, but it bears the stamp of 2. That the Irish Citizen Army shall Larkin’s hand, protesting at the proposed stand for the absolute unity of Irish na- exclusion of the North in the Home Rule Bill. tionhood, and shall support the rights 55 and liberties of the democracies of all union red hand badge engraved with the ini- other nations. tials ICA. The first consignment of uniforms engendered a sense of pride among the citi- 3. That one of its objects shall be to sink zen soldiers; it demonstrated that they were all differences of birth, property and in fact a real army that could stand compar- creed under the common name of the ison with the Volunteers at the Bodenstown Irish people. parade or on any other public occasion. 4. That the citizen Army shall be open to all who accept the principle of equal Rebellion in the Air rights and opportunities for the Irish people. Larkin had worked tirelessly over the previ- ous seven years in Ireland, and had reached The original draft was amended so that a point of mental and physical exhaustion clause two included the following: ‘to arm that even his indefatigable spirit could not and train all Irishmen capable of bearing overcome. His friends and comrades urged arms to defend and enforce its first princi- him to take a break. He decided to travel ple’. A fifth clause added at Larkin’s sug- to America, to raise funds for the union and gestion at least nods towards the working to explain to American Labour the position class ethos of the ICA: of the Irish workers.