Introduction

Abstract

A photograph of a socialist demonstration in the early days of the First World War shows a good-natured crowd, mainly women and children, gathered around a wagon on which are displayed the banners of the local Labour Representation Committee, the Socialist Sunday School and The Independent Labour Party.¹ Such gatherings would have been common in British industrial cities; at this time, however, this demonstration was not taking place on the British mainland but in Ormeau Park, Belfast. Such displays of Labour activism are not considered typical of Irish politics, where the dominant issues of Irish Home Rule and Unionism, remained locked in apparently insoluble conflict as the socialists assembled around their banners in the park.