Irish Progressive League

IRISH PROGRESSIVE LEAGUE. A small, New York-based organization, the Irish Progressive League (IPL; 1917–1920) was notable for bringing left-wing perspectives into the larger Irish American movement for Irish independence, a movement that was generally indifferent to class inequality and opposed to socialism. In the wake of America’s entry into World War I and the federal government’s efforts to silence Irish American nationalists, the IPL emerged as one of the few organizations willing to continue open agitation in favor of an Irish republic. But unlike many Irish American nationalists of this era, IPL activists believed that the fight for Irish independence needed to be linked to sweeping domestic social reform, peace, and the overthrow of colonialism in general.

The IPL, which boasted a core membership of about 150 people at its peak, endorsed Socialist Morris Hillquit in his antiwar campaign for mayor of New York in fall 1917, and over the next three years attracted support from a variety of socialists, suffragists, left-wing progressives, and radical labor activists. These included Hillquit; Socialist and pacifist Norman Thomas; suffragist and labor activist Leonora O’Reilly; Nora Connolly, daughter of the Irish socialist martyr James Connolly; and James Maurer, the Socialist and antiwar leader of the Pennsylvania State Federation of Labor. These individuals viewed support for the Irish Republic as part of a wider struggle for peace, social reform, and workers’ betterment.

IPL activists adopted a broadly anti-imperialist stance on the Irish question. Their cause, they believed, was thoroughly intertwined with those of Indian and Egyptian nationalists in particular, and a number of them were also members of the Friends of Freedom for India and the League of Oppressed Peoples. Some IPL leaders also advocated support for Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association, while others linked their cause with that of the Bolshevik revolution and called for U.S. recognition of the new Soviet government in Russia.

The IPL was also distinctive as the first Irish American nationalist organization to be led mainly by women. Key figures included Dr. Gertrude Kelly, an Irish-born antiwar activist and feminist with political roots in the Henry George single tax movement; the Irish republican and feminist Hanna Sheehy Skeffington; and Helen Merriam Golden, soon to emerge as a leader of the American Women Pickets in the pro-Irish republic New York dock strike in 1920. In November 1920, the IPL folded itself into the larger American Association for the Recognition of the Irish Republic.

Brundage, David Thomas. Irish Nationalists in America: The Politics of Exile, 1798-1998. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Carroll, Francis M. American Opinion and the Irish Question, 1910–1923: A Study in Opinion and Policy. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979.

Nelson, Bruce. Irish Nationalists and the Making of the Irish Race. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012.