By European standards, the left in Ireland has not been successful historically, yet its failure has concealed considerable achievement in the occasional great popular mobilisations of the past two centuries. In the process, virtually every shade of radical thought has found expression in Ireland at some point or other, and the country has produced a diverse and colourful range of social rebels. Studies in Irish radical leadership, an edited collection of nineteen biographies of labour leaders and radical activists, examines a sample of the men and women who made that history of protest. Looking over the shoulders of Connolly and Larkin, it provides fascinating insights into the careers and mentalities of Irish labour's second-string leaders. It ranges from the primitive rebels of the early nineteenth century to the parliamentarians of the late twentieth, and asks what kind of people they were, what motivated them, and what is leadership?
