Peter Daly

On this day - 10th October 1971; Margaret Skinnider, Irish Revolutionary, Easter Rising Sniper at the Royal College of Surgeon's Garrison, Teacher, Trade Unionist, Socialist & Suffragette dies aged 79.

Margaret was born in Coatbridge, Scotland to Irish parents. She studied and became a mathematics teacher in Scotland. She joined Cumann na mBan in Glasgow and the Suffragette movement. She was an extremely active member of Cumann na mBan, and had learnt, ironically how to shoot at a shooting club in defence of Empire. She travelled back and forth to Ireland, where she met Constance Markievicz and joined the Irish Citizen Army. She would smuggle detonators and bomb-making equipment into Dublin before the Rising. Markievicz had shown her around some of the slums of Dublin, to her disbelief, that people could live in conditions "full of sewage and refuse"... also writing "I do not believe there is a worse place in the world."

Margaret played an active role in the Easter Rising. She operated as scout and messenger, dressed as a man. But it was her sharp shooting skills that won her accolades. Under the Command of Commandant Michael Mallin and Constance Markievicz, she took up position in the College of Surgeon's building where she was a sniper. She even killed some soldiers, and was noted as being a great markswoman. When attempting to burn down houses on Harcourt Street to try to cut off the retreat of British soldiers' she was shot three times, nearly fatally, being seriously wounded from where the British had stationed a machine gun at Church University. She wrote: "It's all over,' I muttered as I felt myself falling. A moment later, when I knew I was not dead, I was sure I should pull through." Margaret spent several weeks in hospital before a daring plan to escape to Scotland.

She fled to the US in fear of internment and while there, she collected much needed funds for the Republican cause. She gave lectures about the Rising to other women and wrote her biography 'Doing My Bit for Ireland'. She returned to Dublin in late 1917 and during the Tan War, Skinnider was arrested and imprisoned by Crown Forces. By 1923 she was arrested and held at North Dublin Union for her part as an Anti-Treaty Paymaster General for the IRA. Imprisoned, she became Director of Training for the prisoners.

After release from prison in 1924, she worked as a teacher in a primary school. She was a member of the Irish National Teachers' Organisation (INTO) becoming its President in 1956. She retired from teaching in 1961. In the aftermath of the revolutionary period, she fought for women's rights until her latter years. Margaret died in Glenageary, County Dublin and was buried next to her old comrade Constance Markievicz in the Republican Plot at Glasnevin Cemetery.

The Peter Daly Society would like to send our deepest condolences to our friend and comrade Sean MacInnes in Liverpool on the passing of his mother kitty , may she rest in peace

Today, Anti Imperialist Action Ireland proudly remembers the legendary Irish Socialist Republican and Guerrilla leader, Vol. Seamus Costello from Bray, Co. Wicklow, who was assassinated on this day in 1977 by counter revolutionaries.

Active in the IRA from the age of 16, Costello was a true disciple of James Connolly and saw the National Liberation struggle and the class struggle as the same fight.

A veteran of Operation Harvest, Costello rose through the ranks to become the IRA’s director of operations, a role he used to oppose the slide to reformism and counter revolution.

In 1974, with the war for National Liberation at its height, Costello founded the Irish Republican Socialist Party and the Irish National Liberation Army to continue the fight for a 32 County Irish Socialist Republic, and served as the parties first chairperson and the Army’s first Chief of Staff.

Though assassinated, through his life’s example and revolutionary writings Costello has left behind key lessons for Socialist Republicans today that should be read by all genuine revolutionaries.

We remember him with pride.

Fuair sé bás ar son Saoirse na h-Éireann.

Together again, still rejecting the fascist apparatus of the state, Tommy McKearney and Breandán Mac Cionnaith represent two stalwarts of the Irish anti-imperialist struggle. Their lives express the dialectic of national liberation and class struggle: the fight against British imperialism is inseparable from the fight against capitalism and for working-class emancipation.

McKearney, born in 1952 in County Tyrone, joined the republican movement in the 70s and became a senior Tyrone republican. Imprisoned in 1977, he served 16 years and took part in the 1980 hunger strike. In Long Kesh he and comrades deepened their Marxist Leninism, concluding it was the only method to achieve an independent socialist republic. His prison experience confirmed that political status was not an end but a means to revolutionary organisation. Leaving the Provisionals in 1986, he co-founded the League of Communist Republicans. Later he helped found the Irish Republican Writers Group, co-edited Fourthwrite, organised with the Independent Workers Union, and wrote The Provisional IRA: From Insurrection to Parliament, a Marxist critique of republicanism.

Breandán Mac Cionnaith, jailed in the 1980s for involvement in the republican movement, continued this struggle. As spokesman for the Garvaghy Road Residents’ Coalition, he resisted Orange Order supremacy, a struggle against sectarian state power and national oppression. Elected to Craigavon Council in 1997, he faced death threats. In 2007 he left Sinn Féin over acceptance of the PSNI and British state, joining Éirígí, becoming General Secretary in 2009. Éirígí’s formation marked a rejection of the Good Friday Agreement’s institutionalisation of sectarian and capitalist power.

Together they embody revolutionary socialist republicanism: rejecting reformism, imperialist compromise, and capitalist rule. Their anti-imperialism is not narrow nationalism but part of the international struggle against monopoly capital and colonial domination. Their commitment to an independent socialist republic, built by the organised working class, shows the enduring relevance of Marxist-Leninist theory to the Irish revolution.