Politically the ISRP was before its time, putting the call for an independent "Republic" at the centre of its propaganda before Sinn Féin or others had done so.
A public meeting held by the party is described in Irish socialist playwright Sean O'Casey's autobiography Drums under the Window.
[7] Connolly, who was the full-time paid organiser for the party, subsequently left Ireland for the United States in 1903 following internal conflict; in fact it seems to have been a combination of the petty infighting and his own poverty that caused Connolly to abandon Ireland (he returned in 1910).
Connolly had clashed with the party's other leading light, E. W. Stewart, over trade union and electoral strategy.
A small number of members around Stewart established an anti-Connolly micro organisation called the Irish Socialist Labour Party.