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O'Casey was passionate about improving the living conditions of Dublin's working class. He joined the Irish Citizen Army (ICA) under the command of James Connolly, a man who shared these socialist views. He also admired Jim Larkin— a fellow campaigner for the rights of the Irish workforce—and in 1911 he joined Larkin's Irish Transport and General Workers Union. Later, he participated in the famous strike and Lock-out of 1913, a protest against the poor treatment of the working class by the State. O'Casey disagreed with the nationalist belief espoused by Padraig Pearse and the Irish Volunteers that the Irish public should sacrifice itself to defend the state from British rule. When the ICA joined with the Volunteers, O'Casey isolated himself from the organization. In 1919 he published The Story of the Irish Citizen Army. In it he wrote that their headquarters were "no longer the Headquarters of the Irish Labour movement, but the centre of Irish national disaffection." According to activist Cathleen O'Neill, O'Casey's personal and political experiences ensured that he knew "first-hand the daily struggles of women in the tenements as they strove to keep their families fed and sheltered, and the misery of men locked out of their jobs for daring to join a trade union and seek better pay. He despaired as the Catholic Church allied itself alongside the bosses and The artist's life is to be where life is, active life, found in neither ivory tower nor concrete shelter; he must be out listening to everything, looking at everything, and thinking it all out afterward. —Sean O'Casey Ria Mooney (Rosie Redmond) with Sean O'Casey during the dress rehearsal of The Plough and the Stars in 1926 at the Abbey Theatre Photo: Courtesy of the Abbey Theatre 20 www.peakperfs.org SEAN O'CASEY and Ireland's Easter Rising S ean O'Casey was born in 1880 into a lower-middle-class Protestant family in Dublin. His father died when he was just six years old, followed by his brother and sister, and in the following years the family suffered much the same poverty as his characters in The Plough and the Stars. " "