COMMUNIST PARTY OF IRELAND - MARCH 1941
Apr 3rd, 2010 by Conor McCabe
I was given a box of pamphlets, leaflets and periodicals during the week, by a member of the Communist Party of Ireland who’s doing a bit of spring cleaning at home. ‘They’re just in my shed, Conor, so you can have them if you want. I can leave them in the bookshop for you.’
So I called into Connolly Books on East Essex Street on Thursday morning and Eugene was there and had them ready. I had brought two travel bags with me and the collection just about fitted into them.
When I got home and sorted through the bags, I found this leaflet from March 1941, where the Communist Party calls for the defence of the Free State’s neutrality against not only Britain but also against those in the state who benefit from the economic ties with Britain - namely the ‘bankers and the ranchers, represented by the Fine Gael party in the Dáil.’
The Fianna Fáil government is afraid of this powerful faction and will do nothing to curb it. So cowardly and servile is de Valera to this rich, privileged group that instead of rousing the nation to battle against it, the government of de Valera actually entered into an alliance with it. Cosgrave, Dillon and Mulcahy have been called into a defence council together with the “Labour” leaders and the country is being swindled with statements that all parties are now united in a patriotic unity in face of the national danger.
In another section, the party points to the economic power players in Ireland, and the enormous influence they wield regarding government policy.
The Fianna Fáil government is pursuing a policy of keeping out of the war, but it looks to the bankers and ranchers to carry out this policy, and it aims to make the toiling masses in town and country shoulder the burden of these difficult times. It proclaims as its social policy the keeping down of wages, resists all demands for increased pensions and unemployment assistance and refuses to tax the rich. The entire burden is thrown on to the shoulders of the working people in town and country.
Were it not for the reference to the war, that quote could have been written yesterday. Instead of ‘ranchers’ put ’speculators’ and you have an almost perfect match.
Three months later the Germans launched Operation Barbarossa, smashing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and bringing the Communist world directly into the war and on the side of the Allies. This gave the southern Communist movement an awkward choice, as neutrality was accepted by most, while a call to join the Allies would have placed them in league with Dillon and the more extreme elements of Fine Gael.
On 10 July 1941 the party’s national committee met and passed a resolution ‘to suspend independent activity and to apply the forces of the [Dublin] branch to working in the Labour and trade union organisations in order to carry forward the fight against the heavy attacks now being launched against the workers.’ The northern branch of the party re-constituted itself as the Communist Party of Northern Ireland (CPNI) and undertook a policy of active support for the war effort.
This was not without criticism, as communist support included a ban on strike activity. This provided an opportunity for the small number of Trotskyists in Belfast at this time to present an oppositional voice. Certainly by 1944 there’s enough energy around this group for a Trotskyist party to emerge, the Revolutionary Socialist Party. This was a joint north-south venture, and its existence is not entirely down to communist support for the war by any means. However, there is little doubt that it did benefit from the CPNI’s policy, and it is from Belfast rather than Dublin that a lot of its energy was drawn.
But that’s probably for another day.
A pdf of the leaflet is available here. (approx. 4.2MB)
Images are below. Full size approx 2MB each.
CPI March 1941 - side one.
CPI March 1941 - side two.
Fantastic stuff Conor, thanks for sharing.
Just curious, do the CPI have a (visitable) archive hiding anywhere?
The CPI doesn’t have a visitable archive at the moment. However, about half of its archive has been catalogued and boxed, and is due to be deposited with the Gilbert Library on Pearse Street some time soon. With budget cut-backs and all the rest, it’s hard to know when the Gilbert will be in a position to take the archive, but that’s the plan as far as I know.
The John McDonnell deposit in the Irish Labour Museum has a lot of stuff relating to the CPI, including a full run of Irish Socialist (1961-75) as well as pamphlets by Paddy Carmody, who was the editor of Irish Socialist for much of that period.
Paddy Carmody wrote under the pseudonym of A. Raftery. Carmody worked for Dublin Corporation and was once sacked for his political activity. He was reinstated after his union fought the case, but I don’t think he used his real name on any publication after that.
I am the comrade who gave Conor my collection of pamphlets going back forty years. I knew he would make the best use of them.
Other stuff I have put into the CPI to be added to the archive.
For example I have the minutes of the Resease Frank Ryan committee !
Conor is again right that we plan to put them into the most accessable library. Apart from just CPI material we have files of the Left Alternative of the late 70s and the Socialist Forum of the early 80s and left magazines like Gralton, Ripening of Time, etc
If Donal, above, wanted something specific in the meanwhile he could approach Eugene in Connolly Books who might be able to oblige.
Dr. Ann Mathews the historian as the achivist has done a great job.
Cheers Tom, I didn’t want to use your name without your permission. And thanks again for the pamphlets, some great stuff from the broad Irish left among them, all of which I’ll scan over the next few months and get up on the web.
Thanks to Conor McCabe and Tom Rewdmond for keeping such historical (but important) ephemera available.
I acquired a few in my student past, and keep intending to digitize and .pdf them. I got as far as scanning the text of a 1948 pamphlet by the Cumann Cuimhneacháin ‘98 (celebrating the 150th anniversary, and putting a Marxist slant on the Rising). It’s still accessible at http://redfellow.blogspot.com/2008_03_01_archive.html
Look for the posting-date of 5 March 2008.
Not quite the focus you had but … that looks like Gilsans in the some of the headlines. I see from Wikipedia that it was designed in 1926, but for some reason I have always thought of it as a 1960s or 1970s typeface. Bit of a jolt to realise it is older than that.
I spent the last few days in the NAI going through the recently released dept of justice files on communist activity etc. in 1935-8. There is quite a bit of info on the CPI, Republican Congress, Anti Fascist League etc. There are weekly reports of CPI meetings etc in the Dublin Metropolitan Division in these years. There is also a lot of info on Ireland and the Spanish Civil War.
Looking forward to seeing more from the collection you received on this website. Thanks for the work so far!
Mike Callaghan
Sligo
only thing can you keep the file size down? 4mb is a lot for a leaflet.
Thanks Michael, and duly noted. I’ll work on the file size for next time.
“That looks like Gilsans in the some of the headlines.”
Gill Sans was launched at the 1928 Blackpool meeting of the Federation of master Printers and was denounced by one delegate as ‘typographic Bolshevism”. It became one of the most commercially successful typefaces ever designed.
It was designed by Eric Gill and used on the Daily Worker (whose hammer and sickle designed for the Daily Worker masthead is today the emblem of the Communist Party of Britain).
Available by mail order at http://tinyurl.com/d77t6q2