The Irish Socialist Republican Party was an Irish political party founded in 1896 by James Connolly. Its aim was to establish Ireland as a workers' republic.

Connolly subsequently left Ireland for the United States (he returned in 1910) and the party became inactive. 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.

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.

Further reading

• Communism in Modern Ireland: The Pursuit of the Workers' Republic since 1916, Mike Milotte, Dublin, 1984

External link

• http://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1896/xx/isrp.htm