The Irish Socialist Republican Party was a small, but pivotal Irish political party founded in 1896 by James Connolly. Its aim was to establish an Irish workers' republic. The party split in 1904 following months of internal political rows.
Despite its small size (According to the ISRP historian Lynch, the party never had more than 80 members) the ISRP is regarded by many Irish historians as a party of seminal importance in the early history of Irish socialism and republicanism. It is often described as the first socialist and republican party in Ireland, and the first organisation to espouse the ideology of socialist republicanism on the island. During its lifespan it only had one really active branch, the Dublin one. There were several attempts to create branches in Cork, Belfast, Limerick, Naas, and even in northern England but they never came to much.
The party produced the first regular socialist paper in Ireland the Workers' Republic, ran candidates in local elections, represented Ireland at the Second International agitated over issues such as the Boer War and the 1798 commemorations. Politically the ISRP was before its time, putting the call for an independent "Republic" at the centre of its propaganda before Sinn Féin or others had done so.
A public meeting held by the party is described in Irish socialist playwright Sean O'Casey's autobiography Drums under the Window.
Connolly who was the full time paid organiser for the party subsequently left Ireland for the United States in 1903 following internal conflict; in fact it seems to have been a combination of the petty infighting and his own poverty that caused Connolly to abandon Ireland (he returned in 1910). After a further split, where a small number of members established an anti-Connolly micro organisation called the Irish Socialist Labour Party, the party became inactive and wound up in March 1904. Connolly had clashed with the party's other leading light, Edward Stewart, over trade union and electoral strategy. It was revived in 1909 with the new name Socialist Party of Ireland, but once more fell into inactivity as Connolly, who was more inclined to see revolution as proceeding from 'one big union' than from a revolutionary party, became mainly engaged in the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union and the union-based Irish Citizen Army.
Connolly compared the collapse of the party to 'losing a child'.
Other notable figures in the 'first' ISRP included William X. O'Brien who became a leading figure in the Irish Trade Union movement, Cork man Con Lehane, future Northern Irish Senator Robert Dorman and Tom Lyng.
The legacy of the ISRP was to have an impact on the left-wing and republican movements in Ireland for many decades following its demise in 1904.
Following Connolly's execution by the British in 1916 and the 1917 February Revolution in Russia, the party was once more revived and in 1921 it became the first Communist Party of Ireland.
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