Seamus Costello was a Socialist Republican from County Wicklow, Ireland. Born in 1939, he joined the Irish Republican Army as a teenager and fought in the IRA Border Campaign of 1956-1962.
When this campaign failed the IRA turned in a more explicitly socialist direction in large part thanks to Costello, focusing on tenants rights and organising the working class as well as agitating about the occupation of the North of Ireland by British imperialism. To Costello the national liberation struggle and the working class struggle were one and the same.
In the IRA split at the outbreak of tbe "Troubles" in 1969, Costello remained with the Official side of the split. However he grew dissatisfied with the leadership's reformism, and their decision to go on ceasefire, and in 1974 he left to form the Irish Republican Socialist Party and its armed wing the Irish National Liberation Army. Both were dedicated to establishing a 32 County Socialist Republic.
Unfortunately soon a feud broke out when the counter revolutionary Official IRA turned on their former comrades, and this feud ultimately cost Costello his life in 1977 at the hands of an OIRA gunman.
He declared "I owe my allegiance to the working class" as a principle. He was a dedicated follower of the teachings of James Connolly, with Connolly's daughter Nora Connolly saying following Costello's murder that "Of all the politicians and political people with whom I have had conversations, and who called themselves followers of Connolly, he was the only one who truly understood what James Connolly meant when he spoke of his vision of the freedom of the Irish people. In him, I had hoped at last after all these years, a true leader had come, who could and would build an organisation such as James Connolly tried to do".
What exactly is the workflow for prior selection and justification? I understand how to hand-wavingly justify weakly informative priors given physical constraints like air pollution having a particle concentration between a vacuum and water, but how do I do this more rigorously?
