Nora Connolly O'Brien

Nora Connolly O'Brien (14 November 1892 – 17 June 1981) was an Irish politician, activist and writer. She was a member of Seanad Éireann from 1957 to 1969.

Early life Nora Connolly was the daughter of Irish republican and socialist leader James Connolly and his wife Lillie Connolly . She was born in Edinburgh, one of seven children. She moved with her family to Dublin when she was three years old. Her formal education in Dublin extended to weekly Gaelic League classes to learn the Irish language. Otherwise, her mother, a former nursery maid, taught her how to read by the age of three and how to write, and arithmetic. She participated in her first strike whilst working in Belfast over the conditions in which factory workers were being forced to work under. While she was in Belfast she became a founding member of the Young Republican Army and of the girl's branch of the Fianna. She was sent back to County Tyrone for their safety and to re-muster the Northern Division of the Irish Volunteers, under orders from Patrick Pearse. 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 I and it was labelled "anti-British".

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. 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. 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, Connolly O'Brien joined the Labour Party.

In the summer of 1936, Connolly 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 Connolly O'Brien still believed could take "the leading role in the revolutionary movement in Ireland".

Connolly 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. suggesting "the present fight in the North of Ireland [is] the continuation of the battle for which [Connolly] died".

On 8 July 1978, Connolly O'Brien opened James Connolly House on Chamberlain Street in Derry, the headquarters of the Irish Republican Socialist Party in Derry city.

Shortly before her death in 1981, she spoke at the 1980 Ardfheis of Sinn Féin. During her appearance she shook the hand of blanketman Martin Lawlor and praised the 1980 hunger strike.

Death Nora Connolly O'Brien died in Meath Hospital, Dublin, on 17 June 1981, ten days after being admitted due to failing health. She is buried in Dublin's Glasnevin Cemetery.

Before she died, she asked to be given a Republican funeral. More than 200 people gathered at her graveside in Glasnevin on that date, and her life was celebrated in the Church of Our Lady of Good Counsel, Drimnagh. The Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, did not attend her funeral, even though he had planned to do so; when asked to comment on his absence, he refused, but sources claimed that Haughey decided to avoid the funeral because of its overtly Republican nature.

In the book Studies in Irish radical leadership, Máirtín Ó Cadhain suggests that following the collapse of the Republican Congress, Connolly O'Brien took a dim view of Communists and that she came to reject the idea of Irish republican legitimism in favour of accepting the reality of the Irish state, evidenced by her acceptance of the position as a senator. For this, Ó Cadhain suggests Connolly O'Brien was a representation of "Republican Labour" in search of a party.