File 39 - Communism in Ireland / Bound Document Volume

A bound volume titled ‘Communism in Ireland / Vol. 2 / private papers’. The volume contains numerous newspaper clippings and printed ephemera compiled by Fr. Senan Moynihan OFM Cap. relating to the activities of various socialist and communist groups in Ireland. The volume contains much material relating to the Irish Workers’ League which was founded in 1948. The League was a re-establishment of the southern part of the Communist Party of Ireland. In 1970 the League merged with the Communist Party of Northern Ireland to reunite the party across the island. The file also includes correspondence, notes and lists generated by Fr. Senan on various prominent Irish communists. Many of the clippings in the volume are ‘red scare’ type articles taken from Irish newspapers including the ‘Irish Independent’, the ‘Irish Press’, and the weekly Catholic title ‘The Standard’.

The volume includes much material on the political career of Michael O’Riordan (1917-2006), the prominent Irish communist who fought with the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. O’Riordan emerged as a central figure in the leftist republican movement in Ireland in the second half of the twentieth century. He was the founding secretary of the Irish Workers’ League, and general secretary thereafter of its successor grouping, the Irish Workers’ Party, from 1962 to 1970. He later served as general secretary of the reconstituted thirty-two county Communist Party of Ireland from 1970 to 1983 and acted as party chairman until 1997. The volume is a ‘Richview Account Series Book’ printed by Browne & Nolan in Dublin.