Jim Lane (b. 1938) is an Irish republican and socialist

Socialism

Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...

. He was born on Devonshire Street North in Cork's

Cork (city)

Cork is the second largest city in the Republic of Ireland and the island of Ireland's third most populous city. It is the principal city and administrative centre of County Cork and the largest city in the province of Munster. Cork has a population of 119,418, while the addition of the suburban...

 north inner city. His father Michael, a former quartermaster sergeant in the Free State

Irish Free State

The Irish Free State was the state established as a Dominion on 6 December 1922 under the Anglo-Irish Treaty, signed by the British government and Irish representatives exactly twelve months beforehand...

 army

Irish Army

The Irish Army, officially named simply the Army is the main branch of the Defence Forces of Ireland. Approximately 8,500 men and women serve in the Irish Army, divided into three infantry Brigades...

, worked in Ford's motor plant - the family originated in Conna

Conna

Conna is a village of some 300 inhabitants in East Cork, Province of Munster, Ireland. It is situated on the river Bride, not far from the town of Fermoy. The village contains several pubs, a shop, a post office, a Roman Catholic church and a nearby Church of Ireland chapel...

 in east County Cork

County Cork

County Cork is a county in Ireland. It is located in the South-West Region and is also part of the province of Munster. It is named after the city of Cork . Cork County Council is the local authority for the county...

 where they had a medium-sized farm.

In 1954, Jim Lane joined the Irish Republican Army

Irish Republican Army

The Irish Republican Army was an Irish republican revolutionary military organisation. It was descended from the Irish Volunteers, an organisation established on 25 November 1913 that staged the Easter Rising in April 1916...

 (IRA), Sinn Féin

Sinn Féin

Sinn Féin is a left wing, Irish republican political party in Ireland. The name is Irish for "ourselves" or "we ourselves", although it is frequently mistranslated as "ourselves alone". Originating in the Sinn Féin organisation founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffith, it took its current form in 1970...

 and the Cork Volunteers' Pipe Band. He subsequently actively participated in the IRA's 1956-62 border campaign. He was one of the first group of volunteers sent north for the campaign. However, when the Cork brigade of the IRA disengaged from the armed campaign, he resigned, along with a number of other Cork volunteers, such as his close friends Brendan O'Neill and Charlie Ronayne, and they continued to participate in the border campaign as unaligned volunteers.

He was also involved with the Unemployed Protest Movement in the late 1950s and was instrumental in establishing the Cork Vietnamese Freedom Association in the 1960s. An active trade union

Trade union

A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...

ist, he was a socialist republican from an early stage and was much influenced by Maoism

Maoism

Maoism, also known as the Mao Zedong Thought , is claimed by Maoists as an anti-Revisionist form of Marxist communist theory, derived from the teachings of the Chinese political leader Mao Zedong . Developed during the 1950s and 1960s, it was widely applied as the political and military guiding...

 in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Lane was a leading figure in the republican 'splinter-group', the Irish Revolutionary Forces throughout the 1960s. This Cork-based group, which comprised a large number of left-wing former IRA members, produced an influential newsletter in the early to mid 1960s called An Phoblacht (The Republic). This paper openly criticised the Republican Movement for its lack of action on the north and for reneging on republican principles. There was considerable tension between the IRF and the IRA, which turned into raids and armed counter-raids. In 1963, for example, a group of eight armed IRF members raided the Cork Sinn Féin headquarters and warned the city's IRA leaders at gunpoint because of the IRA's seizure of the group's newsletter from the printer where it was being produced. The group also seized thousands of copies of the United Irishman, the Sinn Féin paper, as it arrived in the local railway station. Relations between the group and the IRA were strained for much of the 1960s with the IRF regularly criticising the politics of the Republican Movement and arguing for a socialist way forward.

The IRF group established Saor Éire in 1968 and produced a paper called People's Voice.
Jim Lane was a leading figure in this group, as was Seán Daly (a former IRA commander) who was later to write books on Irish labour

Labour movement

The term labour movement or labor movement is a broad term for the development of a collective organization of working people, to campaign in their own interest for better treatment from their employers and governments, in particular through the implementation of specific laws governing labour...

 history. Lane and his comrades brought guns and assistance to Derry in 1969 when the Bogside was under siege (see Battle of the Bogside

Battle of the Bogside

The Battle of the Bogside was a very large communal riot that took place during 12–14 August 1969 in Derry, Northern Ireland. The fighting was between residents of the Bogside area and the Royal Ulster Constabulary .The rioting erupted after the RUC attempted to disperse Irish nationalists who...

. Despite his membership of Saor Éire, he was briefly the intelligence officer for Dáithí Ó Conaill

Dáithí Ó Conaill

Dáithí Ó Conaill was an Irish republican, a member of the IRA Army Council, vice-president of Sinn Féin and Republican Sinn Féin. He was also the first chief of staff of the Continuity IRA.-Joins IRA:...

's command area around Derry

County Londonderry

The place name Derry is an anglicisation of the old Irish Daire meaning oak-grove or oak-wood. As with the city, its name is subject to the Derry/Londonderry name dispute, with the form Derry preferred by nationalists and Londonderry preferred by unionists...

/Donegal

County Donegal

County Donegal is a county in Ireland. It is part of the Border Region and is also located in the province of Ulster. It is named after the town of Donegal. Donegal County Council is the local authority for the county...

 at the time of the disturbances.

Saor Éire was essentially a political group, but the name of the organisation was forever connected with militarism following a number of bank raids in the Dublin area in late 1969 by an unconnected republican splinter-group that termed itself the 'Saor Éire Action Group'. Also, the rise of the Provisionals fatally undermined Saor Éire's attempt to build a Marxist socialist-republican alternative to the official Republican Movement. The group disappeared at the beginning of the 1970s.The Cork branch
of Saor Éire joined with the Irish Communist Organisation,and ran a bookshop at 9 St Nicholas Church Lane; a second unconnected Maoist bookshop was also opened in the Shandon Street area but this was closed down following attacks by local people. After the Cork branch objected to the ICO's support for the British Army

British Army

The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...

 in Northern
Ireland and its endorsement of the Two Nations Theory

Two Nations Theory (Ireland)

The Two Nations Theory holds that the Ulster Protestants are a distinct Irish nation.According to S J Connolly's Oxford Companion to Irish History The Two Nations Theory holds that the Ulster Protestants are a distinct Irish nation.According to S J Connolly's Oxford Companion to Irish History The...

 they resigned from the ICO.

Lane subsequently joined with others in forming the Cork Communist Organisation, which
attended the "Comhairle Na Mumhan" conference, aimed at supporting the Éire Nua

Éire Nua

Éire Nua, or "New Ireland", was a political strategy of the Provisional IRA and Sinn Féin during the 1970s and early 1980s. It was particularly associated with the Dublin based leadership group centred around Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and Dáithí Ó Conaill who were the authors of the policy...

plan of Ruairí Ó Brádaigh

Ruairí Ó Brádaigh

Ruairí Ó Brádaigh is an Irish republican. He is a former chief of staff of the Irish Republican Army , former president of Sinn Féin and former president of Republican Sinn Féin.-Early life:...

. The CCO also published a magazine, The Cork Worker, which ran from 1971-73. The CCO later became the Cork Workers' Club. This operated out of the same premises in St Nicholas Church Lane that Saor Éire had used as its headquarters. Over the years, the CWC ran a bookshop selling Marxist and republican literature, and published a series of 'Historical Reprints' of Irish socialist classics by James Connolly

James Connolly

James Connolly was an Irish republican and socialist leader. He was born in the Cowgate area of Edinburgh, Scotland, to Irish immigrant parents and spoke with a Scottish accent throughout his life. He left school for working life at the age of 11, but became one of the leading Marxist theorists of...

, James Larkin

James Larkin

James Larkin was an Irish trade union leader and socialist activist, born to Irish parents in Liverpool, England. He and his family later moved to a small cottage in Burren, southern County Down. Growing up in poverty, he received little formal education and began working in a variety of jobs...

 and Ralph Fox

Ralph Winston Fox

Ralph Winston Fox was a British novelist, biographer , social historian, journalist, translator and politician....

. Lane also edited the book The Burning of Cork City by British Forces,Dec. 1920 in 1978.

Jim Lane was central to the anti-H-Block movement in the Cork region at the end of the 1970s and became the chairperson of the Cork City and County National H-Block Committee, which organised many large demonstrations in support of the H-Block hunger strikers in 1980-1

1981 Irish hunger strike

The 1981 Irish hunger strike was the culmination of a five-year protest during The Troubles by Irish republican prisoners in Northern Ireland. The protest began as the blanket protest in 1976, when the British government withdrew Special Category Status for convicted paramilitary prisoners...

. He also joined the Irish Republican Socialist Party

Irish Republican Socialist Party

The Irish Republican Socialist Party or IRSP is a republican socialist party active in Ireland. It claims the legacy of socialist revolutionary James Connolly, who founded the Irish Socialist Republican Party in 1896 and was executed after the Easter Rising of 1916.- History :The Irish Republican...

 and became its national chairperson in 1983, a position he held for a number of years. He was influential in steering the Irish Republican Socialist Party

Irish Republican Socialist Party

The Irish Republican Socialist Party or IRSP is a republican socialist party active in Ireland. It claims the legacy of socialist revolutionary James Connolly, who founded the Irish Socialist Republican Party in 1896 and was executed after the Easter Rising of 1916.- History :The Irish Republican...

/Irish National Liberation Army

Irish National Liberation Army

The Irish National Liberation Army or INLA is an Irish republican socialist paramilitary group that was formed on 8 December 1974. Its goal is to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and create a socialist united Ireland....

 towards explicitly Marxist politics. He stood unsuccessfully as an IRSP candidate in the 1982 general election, garnering a few hundred votes.

Jim Lane was a central figure in left-wing politics in Cork city during the 1960s to late 1980s and involved in many campaigns. He was also influential in republican circles nationally and a well known advocate of socialist republicanism, albeit of a Marxist-Leninist hue.

Lane was chief shop steward in Cash's of Patrick Street, his place of employment for many years, until he retired in the 1990s. Married with four grown-up children, he currently lives near the Lough in Cork city. One of his sons, Fintan, is a left-wing and anti-war activist, and the author of a number of books on Irish history.

Fintan Lane was one of the Irish activists captured during the Gaza flotilla clash; he was held in the Be’er Sheva detention camp before being deported back to Ireland. In an interview, Jim Lane said he was "proud of his son" for the stance he had taken.