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4 November 2004 Edition

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Oil and water: Soviet Communism and the Irish Revolution

Book Review

Reds and the Green: Ireland, Russia and the Communist Internationals 1919-1943

By Emmet O'Connor

UCD Press

€28.05/£19.99 (hardback)

Ireland is surely fortunate in having escaped most of the horrors of the 20th Century. Chief of those was Soviet Communism and this book serves as an interesting insight into the links between the Communist International and Ireland through O'Connor's research in the Comintern archives held in Moscow.

Not all escaped the murder machine and O'Connor refers to the experience of Pat Breslin, London-born of Irish parents, who moved to Dublin in 1920 and was sent to the Lenin School in 1929. Breslin remained in Moscow and was purged in the 1930s, disappearing with millions of others into the gulag.

One might also detect a sinister note in JR Campbell's recommendation that any investigation into the leadership of Communist Party of Ireland General Secretary Sean Murray " - should take place in Moscow" (p225). This was in February 1939 at a time when foreign communists living in the Soviet Union were disappearing in their droves.

O'Connor traces the efforts of the Comintern to establish a viable Communist Party in Ireland. All along, this was dogged by sectarianism and the fact that communists rarely attracted popular support. For a time, most of their energies were directed at capitalising on the popularity of Big Jim Larkin but Larkin proved to be a frustrating ally, whose political history was probably best summed up by Charlotte Despard, who in 1925 said: "The great Jim will tolerate nothing of which he is not the boss" (p109).

Special Branch was happy enough to allow Larkin remain as a figurehead. When in 1928 it was suggested that there was enough evidence to prosecute Larkin over the misappropriation of funds, the Gardaí decided that such was Larkin's negative role within the Irish revolutionary movement that it was better to leave matters rest (p134/5).

The most interesting aspect of the book from a republican viewpoint is evidence of the Comintern's relationship with the IRA. The Dáil loaned the Bolsheviks $20,000 in 1919 and attempted to negotiate a Treaty but the Soviets decided that possible trade and recognition from London were more important.

The Comintern did realise that working class and small farmer support for republicanism was the key to any left-wing movement but this was pursued in an inconsistent, not to say cynical, manner by both the Irish communists themselves and by their mentors in the British party, through whom Moscow kept a watching brief.

While some historians regard the IRA's radicalism of the 1920s and '30s as an aberration or else as something introduced into the movement by Marxist 'theoreticians', it is in fact clear that the IRA was reflecting a broader societal radicalisation, whereas the communists were attempting to manipulate that for their own short term and ever changing motives.

Thus, in 1931, communists took part in the founding of Saor Éire but with the avowed objective of undermining it, as it was regarded as a threat to the prospects for a Communist Party. During the Comintern's 'Third Period', when all non-communists, whether of left, right or centre, were regarded as no different from fascists, the Irish party attacked the republican leadership as 'petit-bourgeois' in the hope that left wing Volunteers would desert the IRA.

That was also the motive for the CPI's intervention in the Republican Congress, where they supported the united front motion because they did not want the Congress to be established as a political party that might prove to be a rival. The IRA responded to communist machinations in 1934, when it made membership of the Communist Party incompatible with membership of the Army.

Again, this is sometimes seen as evidence of the IRA shifting to the right, whereas in fact the IRA was at its most left wing between 1933 and 1935, when it was suppressed by the Fianna Fáil Government, which the CP called on people to vote for in the 1937 general election! Having initially opposed the war because of the Stalin-Hitler Pact, by 1941 the CP in the 26 Counties had disbanded and infiltrated Labour in support of a Fianna Fáil-led coalition that would take the southern state into the war on the side of the allies.

O'Connor's book is certainly worth a read, especially given its use of the Moscow archives. It is also salutary for republicans to gain an historical perspective on one of the many Marxist groups that have attempted by stealth to influence republican policy. It also provides a useful primer for what took place within the movement in the 1960s and it would be interesting to discover if there is also documentary evidence of communist strategy from that period in the archives.

BY MATT TREACY


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