Seamus Costello: Fallen Comrade of the IRSM

  1. Danielle Ni Dhighe
    Danielle Ni Dhighe
    Fallen Comrade of the Irish Republican Socialist Movement

    Seamus Costello
    Chairperson - Irish Republican Socialist Party
    Chief of Staff - Irish National Liberation Army
    Assassinated on 5 October 1977

    Seamus Costello was born in Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland in 1939,
    the eldest of nine children.

    His interest in politics began in his early teens. At the age of
    sixteen he joined Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army. Within a
    year he was commanding an Active Service Unit of the IRA in South
    Derry, where his leadership skills earned him the nickname of "The
    Boy General". His unit carried out many successful operations,
    including the destruction of bridges and the burning of a British
    courthouse.

    He was arrested in Glencree, County Wicklow in 1957 and sentenced to
    six months in Mountjoy Prison. On his release he was immediately
    interned in the Curragh prison camp for two years.

    He spent his time in prison studying, becoming particularly inspired
    by his studies of the Vietnamese struggle. He became a member of the
    escape committee which engineered the successful escapes of Ruari
    O'Bradaigh and Daithi O'Connell among others. Costello would later
    refer to this time as his "university days."

    After his release from the Curragh, Costello worked to rebuild the
    Republican Movement, beginning by building a local base of support in
    County Wicklow as Sinn Fein's local organiser. He helped form a strong
    Tenants Association in Bray, and also became involved with the Credit
    Union movement, farmers' organisations, and trade unions. He stood for
    election to the Bray Urban District Council and the Wicklow County
    Council in 1967 and successfully won election to both seats.

    During this period, he found time to marry a Tipperary woman,
    Maeliosa, who also became active in the Republican Movement.

    As both a trade unionist (in the Irish Transport and General Workers'
    Union) and an elected representative, he never wavered from advocating
    the necessity of a socialist revolution carried out by the working
    class itself - nor did he waver from his belief that the class
    struggle and the national liberation struggle are necessarily
    intertwined in colonised and/or occupied nations such as Ireland.

    During the split of the Republican Movement into Official and
    Provisional factions in 1969, Costello remained with the Officials,
    serving as Official Sinn Fein's Vice-President and the Official IRA's
    Director of Operations.

    As the Officials began their slide into reformist politics,
    Costello's principled opposition led to his being dismissed from the
    OIRA and suspended from OSF. His dismissal from OSF came in 1974
    after the OSF leadership undemocratically blocked his supporters
    from attending the party convention.

    At a meeting in the Lucan Spa, a hotel near Dublin, on 8 December
    1974, the Irish Republican Socialist Party was formed by republicans,
    socialists, and trade unionists with Costello as the Chairperson.

    At a secret meeting later the same day, the Irish National Liberation
    Army was formed with Costello as the Chief of Staff, although its
    existence was to be kept hidden for a time.

    Within days of its founding, the fledgling Irish Republican Socialist
    Movement was to begin a baptism of fire at the hands of the OIRA.
    Members of the IRSM would be attacked and even killed. Before a truce
    was reached, three members of the young movement were dead.

    Despite the truce, Costello was shot and killed by a member of the
    OIRA in Dublin on 5 October 1977.

    At the time of his death, he was a member of the following bodies:
    Wicklow County Council, County Wicklow Committee of Agriculture,
    General Council of Committees of Agriculture, Eastern Regional
    Development Organisation, National Museum Development Committee, Bray
    Urban District Council, Bray Branch of the Irish Transport and
    General Workers' Union, Bray and District Trade Unions Council (of
    which he was president 1976-77), and the Cualann Historical Society,
    as well as still holding the positions of Chairperson of the IRSP
    and Chief of Staff of the INLA.

    At his funeral, Nora Connolly O'Brien (daughter of James Connolly)
    said Costello "was the only one who truly understood what James
    Connolly meant when he spoke of his vision of the freedom of the
    Irish people."

    *******

    "I owe my allegiance to the working class." - Seamus Costello

    He died as he lived: a Republican Socialist. Remember him with
    honour and pride.

    *******

    First Allegiance - A Socialist Republic
    By Bernadette Devlin McAliskey

    My personal acquaintance and friendship with Seamus Costello began in
    1973. Before then I knew him only, as most people in Ireland, by
    reputation.

    On hearing of his death, I could find no words of my own to express
    the deep sense of loss I felt, both personally and as a revolutionary
    socialist committed to the struggle for Irish freedom. I took
    therefore the words of a fellow revolutionary on the death of Malcolm
    X, the black revolutionary champion of black liberation and socialism
    in the U.S.A.: "Without him, we feel suddenly vulnerable, small and
    weak, somewhat frightened, not by the prospect of death, but of life
    and struggle without his contribution, his strength and inspiration."

    There is no doubt that the struggle continues and its victory or
    defeat is not measured solely by the number or quality of our fallen
    comrades individually. Yet it is equally true that in every
    generation of struggle the combination of circumstances, history and
    the nature of the struggle itself, produces from the ranks of its
    rebels a few, and a very few individuals who, notwithstanding the
    fundamental principles of organisation, political correctness and
    practical ability, common to many, rise head and shoulders above the
    rest, with a potential for leadership, far beyond the ranks of the
    already committed. Such a comrade was Seamus Costello.

    Brutally murdered by petty, small-minded men of no vision whose only
    place in history is to serve as a warning to others how
    revolutionaries gone wrong can degenerate into worse than
    nothingness, Seamus Costello, for all that he was and did in his
    lifetime, was only at the beginning of his potential contribution to
    the achievement of national liberation and socialism in this
    generation. That is not to say that Seamus was above making mistakes
    or that he was always politically correct. There were many questions
    on which I disagreed with him, and which I considered crucial to the
    development of the struggle. These remain unresolved.

    Nonetheless, in leaving the Official Republican Movement and taking
    the initiative of forming the IRSP, Seamus Costello proved his
    ability in practice - once convinced that the approach of the
    organisation to which he belonged was wrong and could not be altered
    from within - to take on the daunting, but necessary task of building
    an organisation capable and willing to carry the struggle forward.
    The fact that he was capable of it underlined his key position in the
    struggle, and his recognition of the need to forge a revolutionary
    force in Ireland from the unification of the republican and labour
    movements.

    If I did not accept his arguments on how it could be done, I remained
    confident that he, again, if he found himself mistaken, would move
    further in his political analysis to another approach. He did not
    live to see the test of theory in practice.

    Much is said of his single mindedness, his ruthlessness and
    organisational ability. At his hardest, Seamus Costello was never
    hateful, nor was there a fibre of his being that was petty or
    personally malicious, and despite the slanders of his enemies, he was
    neither politically nor religiously sectarian.

    He owed his first allegiance to an ideal - a 32 county socialist
    republic. His enemies he defined only as those who consciously strove
    to suffocate, distort or deny expression to that goal, and prevent
    its achievement. As an orator, he was brilliant and inspiring. In
    debate, he was uncompromising, skilled and learned. As an organiser,
    he was efficient and did not easily tolerate idleness or half-hearted
    effort.

    Yet in my mind's eye, when I think of him, I see him laughing. A
    sense of humour, the ability to laugh at oneself, and the predicament
    in which we find ourselves, is sadly too rare a quality among
    revolutionaries. Seamus possessed it in good measure.

    His single greatest attribute was, however, his ability to relate to
    the mass of the people. His potential as a leader of mass struggle is
    not easily replaced. He could inspire not only the dream but the
    confidence of its achievement, and the commitment to work towards
    that end.

    From the ranks of mass struggle, others will come. From the
    experience of struggle, the political programme, organisation and
    method of struggle will come. But another Seamus Costello may never
    come again. When our freedom has been won, let us guard it well,
    remembering it was paid for in the blood and the lives of those now
    dead, but whose memory lives forever in the hearts of us who loved
    them for all that they were and all they might have been, had they
    been allowed to live.

    *******

    Related Website:

    http://www.irsp.ie/Background/costello.html