Michael O'Riordan

Michael O'Riordan (Mícheál Ó Ríordáin; 12 November 1917 – 18 May 2006) was the founder of the Communist Party of Ireland (3rd) and also fought with the Connolly Column in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War.

O'Riordan was born at 37 Pope's Quay, Cork city, on 11 November 1917.

He was the youngest of five children.

His parents came from the West Cork Gaeltacht of Ballingeary-Gougane Barra.

Despite his parents being native speakers of the Irish language, it was not until O'Riordan was interned during the Second World War that he learnt Irish.

As a teenager, he joined the republican youth movement, Fianna Éireann, and then the Irish Republican Army.

Much of the IRA at the time was inclined towards left-wing politics.

A lot of its activity at the time involved street fighting with the quasi-fascist Blueshirt movement, and O'Riordan fought the Blueshirts on the streets of Cork City in 1933–34.

O'Riordan was friends with left-wing inclined republicans such as Peadar O'Donnell and Frank Ryan, and in 1934, he followed them into the Republican Congress – a short-lived socialist republican party.

O'Riordan joined the Communist Party of Ireland in 1935 while still in the IRA and worked on the communist newspaper The Irish Workers' Voice.

In 1937, following the urgings of Peadar O'Donnell, several hundred Irishmen, mostly IRA or ex-IRA men, went to fight for the Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War with the XVth International Brigade.

They were motivated in part by enmity towards the 800 or so Blueshirts, led by Eoin O'Duffy who went to Spain to fight on the "nationalist" side in the Irish Brigade.

O'Riordan accompanied a party led by Frank Ryan.

In the Republic's final offensive of 25 July 1938, O'Riordan carried the flag of Catalonia across the River Ebro.

On 1 August, he was severely injured by shrapnel on the Ebro front.

He was repatriated to Ireland the following month, after the International Brigades were disbanded.

In 1938 O'Riordan was offered an Irish Army Commission by the Irish Free State but chose instead to train IRA units in Cork.

As a result of his IRA activities, during the Second World War, or the Emergency as it was known in neutral Ireland, he was interned in the Curragh internment camp from 1939 until 1943 where he was Officer Commanding of the Cork Hut and partook in Máirtín Ó Cadhain's Gaelic League classes as well as publishing Splannc (Irish for "Spark", named after Lenin's newspaper).

O'Riordan was secretary of the 'Connolly group', composed of leftist internees, after his release from internment O'Riordan terminated his IRA membership.

In 1944 he was founding secretary of the Liam Mellows Branch of the Labour Party.

This branch became infamous for what was regarded during the period as its controversial nature and became an intractable enemy of Branch Chair Timothy Quill.

The branch was initially established by former members of the Curragh Camp's Communist Group, including Bill Nagle and Jim Savage.

During this time, the IT&GWU had disaffiliated from the Labour Party and the National Labour Party was established on the basis that communists had infiltrated the Party.

Quill, who was made branch chair by the Labour Party, allegedly had O’Riordan and his fellow members expelled, with the branch being dissolved.

O’Riordan later accused Quill of anti-Semitism and both Quill and T.J Murphy of “red-baiting”.

In 1945 he was a founding secretary of the Cork Socialist Party, whose other notable members included Derry Kelleher, Kevin Neville and Máire Keohane-Sheehan (Máire Keohane-Sheehan was the sister of O'Riordan's wife Kay Keohane-O'Riordan) Thomas Murray.

O'Riordan subsequently worked as a bus conductor in Cork and was active in the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU).

He stood as a Cork Socialist Party candidate in the 1946 Cork Borough by-election, coming third behind Fianna Fáil's Patrick McGrath and Fine Gael's Michael O'Driscoll with 3,184 votes.

Afterwards, he moved to Dublin where he lived in Victoria St with his wife Kay, continued to work as a bus conductor and remained active in the Irish Transport and General Workers Union.

In 1948, O'Riordan was a founding secretary of the Irish Workers' League and general secretary thereafter, and of its successor organisation the Irish Workers' Party from 1962 to 1970.

He did, however, receive playwright Seán O'Casey's endorsement in 1951.

"O'Casey wrote: 'Mr O'Riordan is his own message. He has nothing to sell but his soul. But he hasn't done that, though he will be told he'll lose it by holding on to it.'"

O'Riordan's participation in the Spanish Civil War was always an important part of his political identity.

In the 1960s, he was a pivotal figure in the Dublin Housing Action Committee which agitated for clearances of Dublin's slums and for the building of social housing.

There, he befriended Fr Austin Flannery, leading the then Finance Minister and future Taoiseach Charles Haughey to dismiss Flannery as "a gullible cleric" while the Minister for Local Government, Kevin Boland, described him as a "so-called cleric" for sharing a platform with O'Riordan.

The Catholic Church stated that anyone who voted for him had committed mortal sin.

O'Riordan met and befriended folk musician Luke Kelly, and the two developed a "personal-political friendship".

Kelly endorsed O'Riordan for election, and held a rally in his name during campaigning in 1965.

In all he ran for election five times, campaigning throughout for the establishment of a socialist republic in Ireland but given Ireland's Catholic conservatism and fear of communism, he did so without success.

In 2001, O'Riordan would claim that any attempt to raise the issue of defence of communist Spain "was shouted down at Labour Party Conferences".