To popular memory, James Connolly and Jim Larkin are not only the two pillars of Irish socialism, they have become its founders.

While both had a transformative effect on the political landscape, they did not invent the wheel of Irish socialism, but rather made very significant contributions towards the form it would take in the early 20th century. The history of socialist thought and organising in Ireland before Connolly’s arrival warrants study, as an examination of it reveals the transformative effect of Connolly’s thought, and his vision that understood the national and social questions to be deeply intertwined and inseparable.

Before there were significant socialist organisations in Ireland, condemnation of socialist agitation on the European continent defined such politics as something fundamentally un-Irish. When the barricades of the Paris Commune were raised in 1871, the Freeman’s Journal condemned the manner in which “ the women of Paris have been prominent in the streets, with a red flag, demanding arms…and conducting themselves like ugly fiendish sisters of the witches in Macbeth.”