AS Ireland once again moves to commemorate another anniversary of the 1919-21 War of Independence, we have a collective duty to preserve the memories of both the participants and the significant events that solidified the reawakening of national and anti-imperialist sentiment.
 
With that comes a responsibility to articulate an accurate depiction of the period that is often overlooked: the activities and aftermath of 1916’s Easter Rising continued to expose the ideological fault-lines of economic and political liberalism embodied by the Irish Parliamentary Party [IPP], with local communities across the island throwing off the shackles of poor political representation to self-organise towards a national sovereignty fused with a radical political economy.

April’s Limerick Soviet became the personification of this new-found industrial consciousness that began to sweep Ireland during early 1919, with its urban population organising against colonial protocol to became an inspirational symbol of resistance that resonated throughout the island.

As radical thought began to gather momentum throughout the island in the aftermath of Easter Week 1916, contradictions between local inhabitants and an ongoing British colonial administrative presence began visibly to heighten towards lasting and irrefutable tensions.