Sir,—Further to Conor McCabe’s notes on some of those in the 1901 photograph of members of the Irish Socialist Republican Party (HI 33.5, Sept./Oct. 2025, Letters, p. 11), I would like to draw attention to the three Lyng brothers among the group. Murta and Tom Lyng were office-holders in the ISRP from its foundation, having earlier been active in debating and literary societies, including the Eclectic Club (see HI 31.1, Jan./Feb. 2023, pp 6–7). Murta and John were directly involved in printing the party’s paper, Workers’ Republic, and Murta served for a time as editor.
They and a fourth brother, George, were living in Arklow Street, Stoneybatter, at the time of the 1901 census, when they ‘refused further information’ under religious profession and were recorded as ‘Agnostic’. Murta was an especially close associate of Connolly; on his early death in October 1902 the Workers’ Republic described him as ‘one of the party’s most untiring and unselfish workers, of an ardent and generous temperament, and a lecturer of uncommon ability’.
John (Jack) and Tom Lyng spent periods in New York, where John accommodated Connolly and his family briefly, also working with Connolly to set up the Irish Socialist Federation in the city. Murta Lyng was a local election candidate in Dublin for the ISRP in 1900, and Tom was a candidate for the Socialist Party in 1904 and for the Independent Labour Party of Ireland in 1913.—Yours etc.,
BRIAN TRENCH
Wexford