The Irish Citizen Army was a small army of 300 trained ITGWU labor union volunteers that existed from 1913 to 1947. The army was founded by Irish socialist activists James Connolly and James Larkin, among others, and its goal was to protect workers' protests from police. In 1916, it took part in the failed Easter Rising, and many of its members joined the Irish Republican Army during the Irish War of Independence. The ICA would exist as a symbolic organization until Larkin's funeral of 1947, the last event that they appeared at.