Jack White

During the next few years White travelled to Bohemia (then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire), lived in a Tolstoyan commune in England and then travelled and worked in Canada.<br /><br /> Arriving back in Ireland, he found Sir Edward Carson's campaign against Home Rule was beginning. This was the time when the Ulster Volunteers were created to threaten war against the British government if Ireland were granted any measure of self-rule.<br /><br /> Jack organised one of the first Protestant pro-Home Rule meetings, in Ballymoney, to rally Protestant opinion against the Unionist Party and against what he described as its "bigotry and stagnation", that associated Ulster Protestants with conservatism. Another speaker at that meeting, coming from a similar social background, was Sir Roger Casement.<br /><br /> As a result of the Ballymoney meeting White was invited to Dublin. Here he met James Connolly and was converted to socialism. Very impressed by the great struggle to win trade union recognition and resist the attacks of William Martin Murphy and his confederates, he offered his services to the ITGWU at Liberty Hall. He spoke on union platforms with people such as Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, Bill Haywood of the Industrial Workers of the World, and Connolly. Read Less

For his attempts, he was given three months imprisonment. Transferred from Swansea to Pentonville the day before Roger Casement’s death, White was within earshot of the next morning’s hanging.<br /><br /> When he returned during the Irish War of Independence he was left in the political wilderness. He moved towards the newly founded Communist Party of Ireland, however he had his doubts about them and never joined. He returned to England and became involved with Sylvia Pankhurst's anti-parliamentary communist group, the Workers Socialist Federation.<br /><br /> In 1934 a special convention was held in Athlone, attended by 200 former Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteers and a number of prominent socialists, communists and trade unionists. It resolved that a Republican Congress be formed. This was a movement, based on workers and small farmers, that was well to the left of the IRA. White joined immediately and organised a Dublin branch composed solely of ex-British servicemen. Read Less