Republican Congress

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The Republican Congress was an Irish Republican political organisation founded in 1934, when left wing republicans left the Irish Republican Army. The Congress was led by such IRA veterans as Peadar O'Donnell, Frank Ryan and George Gilmore. It was a socialist organisation and was dedicated to a "Worker's Republic" in Ireland. The group viewed the sincere principles of Irish socialist republicanism as: "We believe that a republic of a united Ireland will never be achieved except through a struggle which uproots capitalism on its way."^[1]

Two Councillors were elected as Republican Congress candidates in Westmeath and Dundalk in 1934. However, the organisation split during its first general meeting at Rathmines town hall in 1934 and failed to become major political party. At the Republican rally at Bodenstown in 1934, clashes occurred between Republican Congress supporters and IRA members. Congress supporters among the crowd of about 17,000 were estimated at between 600 and 2000. The IRA leadership did not authorise banners other than its own and ordered the Congress banners to be seized. The clash was given a sectarian element by the attack on 36 Congress members from the predominantly loyalist parts of West Belfast - they formed the Shankill Road branch - who carried a banner reading, "Unite Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter to break the connection with Capitalism". The banner was objected to by the IRA leaders as communist.

[edit] Sources

^ Athlone Manifesto (8 April 1934), quoted in Republican Congress 5 May, 1934

Brian Hanley, The IRA 1926-1936.
Paddy Bryne - Memoirs of the Republic Congress
Eugene Downing, a CPI member was interviewed and describes the Bodenstown episode of 1934

Defunct Political Parties in Ireland

To 1918: