Irish Republican Brotherhood

Secret revolutionary society that grew out of the Fenian movement, in the wake of the failed insurrection of 1867, in an effort to reform its organization and improve its security precautions. Although very successful in the 1870s and 1880s in attracting membership and in encouraging secret agrarian agitation, internal frictions over the question of support for home rule hampered the movement thereafter. By the early 1910s, thanks to increasing frustration with constitutional politicians and the organizational skills of Tom Clarke (1857–1916) and Sean MacDermott the movement had revived and was a considerable force behind both the 1916 Easter Rising and the Anglo-Irish War. Damaged by splits among it leaders over the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the brotherhood was said to have been dissolved in 1924, but rumours that it has survived in the USA, until the time of the Northern Ireland peace process, have persisted.