Nora Connolly O'Brien

Connolly O'Brien was heavily influenced in her political beliefs by her father James Connolly, who was a committed Republican and Socialist. From a young age she attended her father's political meetings, accompanying him on a four-month Scottish lecture tour at age 8.[4]

After moving to Belfast in 1911, she began to get more involved in the labour and republican movements while her father James remained in Dublin and became an organizer of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU) in Dublin.[5] She was a founding member of the Young Republican Party, advocating against Partition of Northern Ireland as the Home Rule Crisis increased. She also helped to found the Belfast branch of Cumann na mBan, the women's section of the Irish Volunteers [4]

At eight years old, she saw her father speak at many socialist clubs in Glasgow, she thereafter became a devotee of socialist politics. She moved to Belfast in 1910 for work, and her family followed soon after.[6] She participated in her first strike whilst working in Belfast over the conditions in which factory workers were being forced to work under.[7] While she was in Belfast she became a founding member of the Young Republican Army and of the girl's branch of the Fianna.[6] She was also a founding member of Cumann na mBan in Belfast. In 1914, plans were being put in place for a rebellion in Ireland. She and her sister helped courier ammunition and arms to hiding places for Erskine Childers and were then rewarded with two rifles. She was then sent to America with a message from her father about the rising planned for 1916.

When Connolly O'Brien returned to Dublin she met members of the Military Council who were planning the rising. In the days before the rising, she was sent back to Belfast to try and convince the leading activist there to join the fight. Under the command of a 23-year-old Connolly O'Brien, she and nine other members of Cumann na mBan returned to Dublin to take part in the fight and were the only organised group to leave Ulster to take part in the rising.

In her statement to the Bureau of Military History, she described "the rare privilege" of cooking breakfast for the leaders of the rising at Liberty Hall on the morning of the rising.[8] She was sent back to Co.Tyrone for their safety and to re-muster the Northern Division of the Irish Volunteers, under orders from Patrick Pearse.[4] After the attempt failed, she returned to Dublin with her sister, but due to train disruptions walked from Dundalk, and spending a night in a field near Balbriggan only to arrive hours after the leaders of the Easter Rising surrendered.[4] She vividly remembers visiting her father James Connolly, in Dublin Castle the night before his execution, where she smuggled out statements to the court martial; Before they said goodbye, as he feared for his family, he advised them that there would be resentment against them and advised them to go to the United States [9]

While in Boston she spoke for hours at Faneuil Hall in order to gain American support and recognition of the Irish Republic.[10] She furthered her efforts by writing a book titled "The Unbroken Tradition" in which she describes the events of the Easter Rising, which was subsequently banned as President Woodrow Wilson entered the United States in World War One and it was labelled "anti-British" [11] In 1917 she returned anonymously to Ireland, and remained quiet for some time. She disagreed with the Labour Party's policy on neutrality, and canvassed for Sinn Féin in the 1918 general election.[4]

Connolly O'Brien working alongside members of the Labour movement in Liberty Hall, 1919. Standing L-R: William O'Brien and Cathal O'Shannon. Sitting L-R: Thomas Foran, Nora Connolly O'Brien, David O'Leary, Seamus Hughes and Patrick O'Kelly

Following her return to Ireland in 1917, she remained active in Cumann na mBan and fought during the War of Independence from 1919 to 1921. Following the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, Cumann na mBan had sided on the anti-treaty side. Following the outbreak of the Irish Civil War, she supervised an Anti-Treaty first aid post at Tara Hall. Cumann na mBan was outlawed by the Free State government and in November 1922 she was arrested and imprisoned in Kilmainham Gaol, with many other members.[4] She was released in 1923 on the writ of Habeas corpus on the grounds her arrest had been unlawful.

In the years after the Irish Revolutionary period, O'Brien, who had gone back and forth ideologically between prioritising Irish Nationalism and Socialism, came to believe as her father did that the two causes could be wed as one. She thus began set about trying to gain influence over the Irish Republican Army.[12] However, this stance brought her into conflict with her brother Roddy, who publicly accused her of "regressing from Marxism towards Republicanism". Despite this, in 1926, she, along with her brother, founded the short-lived Irish Workers' Party from 1926 to 1927.

Following the meeting of the Republican Congress on 29–30 September 1934 in Rathmines Town Hall, the Socialist movement in Ireland was divided on whether the Congress should resolve itself into a new revolutionary Socialist Party, or remain as a united front of all progressive forces against Fascism.[13] She supported forming a new political party, but when a resolution was passed to remain as a united front, she and her group withdrew from the congress. Following the collapse of the Republican Congress, O'Brien joined the Labour Party.

In the summer of 1936, O'Brien wrote to Leon Trotsky, offering to report to him on the actions of the ‘National Revolutionaries’ of the IRA, as well any developments in the Labour Party, whom O'Brien still believed could take ‘the leading role in the revolutionary movement in Ireland’.[12]

O'Brien operated the Labour Party's Drimnagh, Dublin Branch, but resigned from the party when the workers-republic cause was deleted from its constitution in 1939. During the 1930s, she was a statistician in the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU) and a telegraph agent during the Second World War, until ill-health forced her retirement.[4]

In 1940 O'Brien was briefly involved with Córas na Poblachta, an attempt by the IRA to create its own political party. The venture didn't go far. For whatever reason, O'Brien did not show much interest in the much more successful organisation of the same concept, Clann na Poblachta, which featured many of Ireland's Republican and left-wing figures amongst its ranks.[12]

She was nominated to the Seanad Éireann in 1957 by nomination of the Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera, and stressed that she would not join his Fianna Fáil Party and remain independent, although she is listed as a Fianna Fáil senator.[14][9] During her time, she blocked many bills, including the 1959 proposal to abolish Proportional Representation and a church-promoted bill to consign female juvenile offenders to Magdalene Laundries. She was renominated in 1965 by Seán Lemass, but his successor Jack Lynch failed to re-nominate her, ending her political career.

Connolly O'Brien supported the Provisional IRA during The Troubles,[15] suggesting "the present fight in the North of Ireland [is] the continuation of the battle for which [Connolly] died".[12]

In 1977, she gave the funeral oration of INLA chief of staff Seamus Costello, saying, "Of all the politicians and political people with whom I have had conversations, and who called themselves followers of Connolly, he was the only one that truly understood what James Connolly meant when he spoke of his vision of the freedom of the Irish people."[16]

Shortly before her death in 1981, she spoke at the 1980 Ardfheis of Sinn Féin.