Sen Murray, the Irish Republican Left

and International Communism, 1916-1962

Sen Byers B.A., M.A.

Faculty of Social Sciences,

School of Criminology, Politics and Social Policy, University of Ulster
Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
October 2012

Contents
Declaration

Acknowledgements

ii

Abstract

iv

Abbreviations and Acronyms

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Marxists on Ireland and National Independence

25

Chapter 2 James Connolly and the Tenets of Connollyism

61

Chapter 3 The Making of an Irish Republican Bolshevik

87

Chapter 4 Reviving the United Front

111

Chapter 5 Anti-Fascism and Anti-Imperialism: Dialectic

or Contradiction?

144

Chapter 6 Pushed Upstairs

191

Chapter 7 Irish Communism in Flux

229

Conclusions

277

Bibliography

294

Declaration
I hereby declare that for two years following the date on which the thesis is
deposited in the Research Office of the University of Ulster, the thesis shall
remain confidential with access or copying prohibited. Following expiry of this
period I permit
1. the Librarian of the University to allow the thesis to be copied in whole
or in part without reference to me on the understanding that such
authority applies to the provision of single copies made for such study
purposes or for inclusion within the stock of another library.

2. the thesis is to be made available through the Ulster Institutional

Repository and/or EThOS under the terms of the Ulster eTheses Deposit
Agreement which I have signed.
IT IS A CONDITION OF USE OF THIS THESIS THAT ANYONE WHO
CONSULTS IT MUST RECOGNISE THAT THE COPYRIGHT RESTS WITH
THE UNIVERSITY AND THEN SUBSEQUENTLY THE AUTHOR ON THE
EXPIRY OF THIS PERIOD AND THAT NO QUOTATION FROM THE THESIS
AND NO INFORMATION DERIVED FROM IT MAY BE PUBLISHED
UNLESS THE SOURCE IS PROPERLY ACKNOWLEDGED.

Acknowledgements
Though sustained by activists, independent researchers and academic
adherents, the study of Irish labour history endures difficult conditions and
faces an uncertain future in third level education. For this reason, I count
myself fortunate to have received a Department of Education and Learning
(DEL) Research Scholarship and additional financial support from the Political
Studies Association of Ireland (PSAI), which rendered it possible to complete the
thesis. Nor would it have been possible without the assistance of staff at various
libraries and archives: the University of Ulster at Jordanstown; Queens
University Belfast; University College Dublin; the Linen Hall Library, Belfast;
the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI), the Marx Memorial
Library, London; the National Library of Ireland; the Gilbert Library, Dublin;
and the National Archives of Ireland. In demanding circumstances, these
institutions continue to provide vital services to academics, students and the
wider public.
The University of Ulster deserves praise for its positive and collaborative
working environment. Staff associated with the Institute for Research in Social
Sciences (IRiSS), Research Graduate School and Research Office have been
constant in their availability, providing unending support and inspiration.
Similarly, I am obliged to colleagues and friends in 2D02 for fostering a truly
collegiate atmosphere in which knowledge and experiences are shared openly.
I am grateful to those who agreed to give interviews and share their
recollections and perspectives on the subjects under discussion Professor
Anthony Coughlan, Wilson John Haire, Dr Roy Johnston, Sen Morrissey, Eoin
Murch, Bill Somerset, Edwina Stewart and the late Jimmy Stewart. I am
also indebted to various individuals for their kind advice and valuable
assistance: Dr David Convery, Erik Cownie, Pat Devine Jnr, Professor Richard
English, Dr Adrian Grant, David Granville, Chris Hazzard MLA, Chris
Loughlin, Rayner Lysaght, Dr Conor McCabe, Stephen McCloskey, Fionntn
McElheran, Dr Cillian McGrattan, Jim Monaghan, Michael Quinn and
Professor Stephen White. Special thanks go to Dr Mire Braniff for her help
with the initial proposal, comments on draft chapters, and for her insights and
encouragement throughout the writing process.
ii

I would also like to thank my examiners, Professor David Howell and Dr Emmet
OConnor, for taking the time to read the thesis and conduct my viva
examination. I am grateful for their thoughtful, detailed and constructive
comments, which will help to shape and guide the direction of my post-PhD
work.
The greatest debt of gratitude, however, goes to my supervisor, Professor Henry
Patterson, for his patience, critical insights, acerbic wit, and for nurturing my
interest in various aspects of socialist history and politics. I hope that I can in
turn pass on his advice, expertise and research values.
I am ever grateful to my friends and family, not least for keeping my feet firmly
on the ground. Thanks to my parents, Brendan and Teresa, for their humour,
enduring support and unquestioning faith in my ability to bring this project to
fruition. This thesis is as much their achievement as mine. Finally, it remains to
thank Li Mo (

) for tolerating my conspicuous absence and indulging my

interests and quirks.

iii

Abstract
This thesis focuses on Irish communism and the republican left, using Sen
Murrays political career as a nexus between Ireland and the international
context. Using newly released and previously under-utilised archival material,
the thesis concentrates on two main issues. Firstly, it addresses Murrays
relationship with the international communist movement, challenging and
adding nuances to extant research on Irish Stalinism. Murray had a firm grasp
of Marxist-Leninist theory, tactics and methods of organisation. Yet he endured
a complex and difficult relationship with the international communist hierarchy
and with the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in particular. Murray
developed independent, nationally specific policies and tactics for the
Communist Party of Ireland (CPI), often arguing for a liberal interpretation of
Comintern policy. In fact, on a number of occasions, he anticipated shifts in
Comintern thinking. Secondly, the thesis examines socialist republicanism
between 1916 and 1962 from Murrays perspective. It argues that a proclivity to
pursue communist-republican alliances brought out in Murray both the crudest
and most advanced forms of socialist republican thinking. Unique in his era,
Murray combined aspects of Marxism-Leninism with fundamentally Connollyist
analyses of Irish conditions and demonstrated an understanding of imperialism
on two levels. He failed to develop a communist-republican synthesis. However,
in the final analysis, he articulated an inclusive, left social democratic vision of
republicanism which drew upon diverse sources of inspiration.

iv

Abbreviations and Acronyms

ACA
AEU
AOH
APL
ATGWU
CIU
CLP
Comintern
CPGB
CPI
CPNI
CPSU
CPUSA
CYMS
DUA
DUTC
ECCI
EEC
ETU
ICA
ICF
ICTU
IDA
ILDL
ILP
ITUCLP
INUM
IPP
IRA
IrLP
IRB
ISRP
ITGWU
ITUC
IWA
IWFC
IWL
IWW
KPD
LAI
NATO
NIC
NILP

Army Comrades Association

Amalgamated Engineering Union
Ancient Order of Hibernians
Anti-Partition League
Amalgamated Transport and General Workers Union
Congress of Irish Unions
Commonwealth Labour Party
Communist International
Communist Party of Great Britain
Communist Party of Ireland
Communist Party (Northern Ireland)
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Communist Party of the United States of America
Catholic Young Mens Society
Dublin Unemployed Association
Dublin United Tramways Company
Executive Committee of the Communist International
European Economic Community
Electrical Trades Union
Irish Citizen Army
Irish Christian Front
Irish Congress of Trade Unions
Industrial Development Authority
Irish Labour Defence League
Independent Labour Party
Irish Trade Union Congress and Labour Party
Irish National Unemployed Movement
Irish Parliamentary Party
Irish Republican Army
Irish Labour Party (North)
Irish Republican Brotherhood
Irish Socialist Republican Party
Irish Transport and General Workers Union
Irish Trade Union Congress
International Workingmens Association
Irish Working Farmers Committee
Irish Worker League/Irish Workers League
Industrial Workers of the World
Communist Party of Germany
League Against Imperialism
North Atlantic Treaty Alliance
Northern Ireland Committee of the ITUC
Northern Ireland Labour Party
v

NISP
NUR
NUDAW
PCF
POUM
PUO
ROP
RSDLP
RSFSR
RUC
RWG
RWP
SDF
SPD
SLP
SPI
SYL
UPL
UULA
UVF
VKP/b
WPI
WUI
YWL

Northern Ireland Socialist Party

National Union of Railwaymen
National Union of Distributive and Allied Workers
French Communist Party
Workers Party of Marxist Unification
Provisional United Trade Union Organisation
Russian Oil Products
Russian Social Democratic Labour Party
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
Royal Ulster Constabulary
Revolutionary Workers Groups
Revolutionary Workers Party
Social Democratic Federation
Social Democratic Party of Germany
Socialist Labour Party
Socialist Party of Ireland
Socialist Youth League
Ulster Protestant League
Ulster Unionist Labour Association
Ulster Volunteer Force
All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik)
Workers Party of Ireland
Workers Union of Ireland
Young Workers League

vi

Introduction
Sen Murray spent ten years directing the communist movement from Dublin
and a further two decades working with the Communist Party (Northern
Ireland) in Belfast. That he features as a centrepiece in the three general
histories of Irish communism and prominently in accounts of inter-war socialist
republicanism is a testament to his thirty years service to these movements.
Murrays political career intersected with epochal events in Irish labour,
republican and international socialist history, and he made a significant imprint
on the various struggles with which he was involved. In terms of theory and
ideology, Murrays story is one of competition and interaction between MarxismLeninism and Connollyist socialist republicanism. These he attempted to weave
together in a communist-republican synthesis. Hence Murrays public life offers
an original perspective on the Irish and international left in the 1916-1962
period.
Records of Murrays political activities are dispersed across the growing
corpus of texts in the field of Irish labour history. Yet he has received scant
attention in his own right. Aptly, perhaps, Murrays death in 1961 coincided
with the publication of Desmond Greaves informative biography of James
Connolly.1 This preceded meticulous studies of Liam Mellows and Sen
OCasey,2 as Greaves intended on framing a history of the Irish working class
around the lives of notable labour activists. A biography of Murray was to be the
fifth in the series, punctuated by a book on the life of Frank Ryan. Greaves
papers reveal that he had commenced preliminary research on Ryan but took
the project no further. He amassed considerably more material on Murrays
political endeavours. However, after consulting with Murrays wife Margaret,
former comrades such as Michael McInerney and Peadar ODonnell, and
archivists in Belfast and Dublin, he decided that a monograph would leave too
many questions unanswered.
Fortunately there are now available a wide range of original sources which,
utilised in conjunction with material in the possession of Greaves literary
executor, Anthony Coughlan, shed great light on Murrays political career.

C. Desmond Greaves, The Life and Times of James Connolly (London, 1961)
C. Desmond Greaves, Liam Mellows and the Irish Revolution (London, 1971); Sen OCasey: Politics
and Art (London, 1971)
2

Emmet OConnor has granted access to the some four thousand documents
retrieved from the Communist International (Comintern) archives in Moscow
that relate to Ireland and Irish communist groups between 1919 and 1943. It is
the most extensive resource of its kind; highly illuminating with regard to
relations between Ireland and Moscow and details of internal Irish communist
deliberations.3 Sen Murrays private papers, held at the Public Record Office of
Northern Ireland (PRONI), are another rich source of information. Though
decimated by years of wear and tear, or possibly by a process of weeding, they
contain important details on party policy and Murrays private thoughts in the
form of party circulars, manuscripts, surviving letters and notebooks. The
Communist Party of Ireland (CPI) Sen Nolan/Geoffrey Palmer Collection,
deposited recently at the Gilbert Library in Dublin, adds great depth to the
available contemporary sources on the Irish communist movement. This
collection includes draft policy documents, records of leadership meetings and
Dublin party branch minute books, all of which help to plug gaps in the
literature and clarify issues of academic dispute.
Other relevant primary sources include under-researched and previously
inaccessible

newspapers,

official

government

reports

and

departmental

correspondence. This study employs the use of a number of obscure and shortlived radical newspapers, which are of particular importance due to Murrays
prolific career as a propagandist. Murrays articles help to reveal his ideological
inclinations at various stages of his development and the editorial lines pursued
by CPI organs are a rough indicator of his influence on the movement. The Irish
Times online archive is a highly accessible resource, while the Irish conservative
press had much to say about communism over the course of Murrays life. As
regards official sources, a detailed British intelligence file on Murray sits in the
British National Archives in London. Records of the departments of Justice,
Taoiseach and External Affairs in the National Archives of Ireland are a mine of
information, as are Northern Ireland Ministry of Home Affairs files. For most of
the period in question, the authorities paid close attention to the activities of the
labour and republican movements. RUC and Garda detectives were in regular
attendance at meetings held by communists and allied groups, and the evidence
suggests that the police had a few well-placed informants within the CPI.
3

Barry McLoughlin and Emmet OConnor, Sources on Ireland and the Communist International,
1920-1943, Saothar, 21 (1995), pp. 101-107

This thesis places an emphasis on original documentary sources evidence

contemporary with the event or thought to which it refers because they allow
historians to be as nearly as possible observers of the events in question and
are written with no thought for posterity. Memoirs and autobiographies
written close in time and place to the event fall broadly into this category. They
are prone to bias and distortion but valuable nonetheless for their subjective
insight and strong sense of atmosphere.4 This study employs a range of
secondary sources, general histories in particular, for the purposes of crossreferencing, achieving factual accuracy and gaining analytical insight. More
cautiously, the author draws upon biographical narratives for historical context,
interesting footnotes and an impressionistic understanding of the subject.
It was important from the outset to include those with whom Murray shared
political experiences, for they offer a polemical bias that is historically
significant and original. Therefore, supplementing the extensive archival and
desk research are interviews with a small number of Murrays contemporaries.
These interviews are non-representative, qualitative and treat the interviewees
dually as experts and research subjects. Semi-structured interviews allow a
degree of planning to occur without interrupting the flow of the interview. This
approach also demonstrates to the interviewee that the researcher is prepared
and competent,5 which is of utmost importance when dealing with experienced
and knowledgeable political activists. Interviews conducted long after the event
come with problems such as selective memory, misremembering, inconsistencies
and apocryphal additions to recollections. Despite this, they often produce more
extensive and balanced reflections on subjects that were either too sensitive or
seemingly trivial at the time.6 Above all, this interaction with Murrays
generation injects energy into the narrative and adds a richness to discussions
of pertinent subjects.
In one respect, this thesis is a history from above, an approach that is
occasionally frowned upon by Marxist scholars. Two erudite surveyors of Irish
labour historiography have complained that political biographies in their field
have hitherto proved insufficiently critical:
4

John Tosh, The Pursuit of History (Fifth Edition) (Harlow, 2010), p. 93

H. Russell Bernard, Research Methods in Anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches
(London, 1994), pp. 209-210
6
Donald A. Ritchie, Doing Oral History: A Practical Guide (Oxford, 2003), p. 39
5

Few studies connect their subject adequately to his or her context and
interrogate their record in the light of the forces at their disposal or the
options that were open to them. In consequence, such work has little to
say on the concept of leadership or about power relations within the
Labour movement, and contributes little to the wider debate on the
trajectory of Labour. An upbeat approach, identifying with and
presenting the subject in the best way possible, seems de rigueur.7
However, it is possible to approach Murrays thoughts, writings and activities
with imaginative understanding while retaining a critical distance from them.8
Furthermore, although the thesis is inherently biographical, it offers more by
virtue of the underlying social, economic and political questions that it
addresses. A political biography of Murray serves as a nexus between Ireland
and events of international importance, particularly during the Comintern
period. It is also a prism for examining the relationship between left republicans
and the labour movement, and similarly inter-labour relations, at the level of
political and industrial activity.
In order to ensure that the thesis succeeds in connecting the duality of
structure and agency and exploring the micro-impact of macro-level social
processes,9 it is instructive to first look at the dynamics underpinning labour
and republican politics as understood through the existing literature. What
follows is a structured and rigorous literature review, which focuses on three
main areas. Firstly, it delves into auto/biographical accounts of the Irish
(republican) left, drawing from them methodological guidance and explaining
the relative importance of each individual in the context of Murrays political
career. Secondly, it addresses the body of literature that deals specifically with
socialist republicanism. Finally, it turns to the few, interpretatively diverse
histories of communist movements in Ireland and the disjointed representation
of Sen Murrays politics. It identifies particular subject areas that merit
further investigation and issues that lack clarification, culminating in a broad
set of research questions that this quasi-biographical study addresses.

Emmet OConnor and Conor McCabe, Ireland in Joan Allen, Alan Campbell and John McIlroy
(eds.), Histories of Labour: National and International Perspectives (Pontypool, 2010), p. 150
8
E.H. Carr, What is History? (Second Edition, with new introduction by Richard J. Evans)
(Basingstoke, 2001), p. 18
9
Alan Campbell and John McIlroy, Britain: The Twentieth Century in Allen et al. (eds.), Histories of
Labour, p. 123

Auto/biographies of the Irish (Republican) Left

Irish historiography has produced a vast number of auto/biographical accounts
that examine the lives of labourists,10 communists11 and socialist republicans.12
Added to these are essential testimonies of veteran International Brigaders,13
the most notable of which is Michael ORiordans Connolly Column.14 The
recording of oral histories memories of generations of political activists is
another ever-important method of enquiry. Specifically, the oral history projects
undertaken by Uinseann MacEoin and Ronnie Munck and Bill Rolston add to
the understanding of republican and labour thinking during the period in
focus.15 Notwithstanding these valuable collections, the auto/biographies of four
important figures on the Irish (republican) left stand out as the most relevant
texts in connection with Murrays political career.
Liam Mellows is best known for his Notes from Mountjoy, written as a
contribution towards ending the Civil War impasse and designed to influence
the direction of republicanism in its aftermath. One author plays down Mellows
social radicalism and anti-imperialism as a convenient excuse for hostility to
10

Anthony J. Gaughan, Thomas Johnson, 1872-1963: First Leader of the Labour Party in Dil ireann
(Mount Merrion, Dublin, 1980); Graham Walker, The Politics of Frustration: Harry Midgley and the
Failure of Labour in Northern Ireland (Manchester, 1985); Paddy Devlin, Straight Left: An
Autobiography (Belfast, 1993); Manus ORiordan, James Larkin Junior And The Forging Of A Thinking
Intelligent Movement, Saothar, 19 (1994), pp. 53-68; Thomas Morrissey, William OBrien, 18811968: Socialist, Republican, Dal Deputy, Editor, and Trade Union Leader (Dublin, 2007)
11
Hazel Morrissey, Betty Sinclair: A Womans Fight for Socialism (Belfast, 1983); Evanne Kilmurray,
Joe Deasy: The Evolution of an Irish Marxist, 1941-1950, Saothar, 13 (1988), pp. 112-119; Anthony
Coughlan, C. Desmond Greaves, 1913-1988: An Obituary Essay (Dublin, 1990); Andy Barr, An
Undiminished Dream: Andy Barr, Communist Trade Unionist, Saothar, 16 (1991), pp. 95-111; Sen
Redmond, Desmond Greaves and the Origins of the Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland
(London, 2000)
12
Jack White, Misfit: A Revolutionary Life (London, 1930); Andrew Linklater, An Unhusbanded Life.
Charlotte Despard: Suffragette, Socialist and Sinn Finer (London, 1979); Nora Connolly OBrien, We
Shall Rise Again (London, 1981); Margaret Mulvihill, Charlotte Despard: A Biography (London, 1989);
Margaret Ward, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington: A Life (Cork, 1997); Charlie McGuire, Sen McLoughlin:
Irelands Forgotten Revolutionary (Pontypool, 2011)
13
Joe Monks, With the Reds in Andalusia (London, 1985); Joseph OConnor, Even the Olives are
Bleeding: The Life and Times of Charlie Donnelly (Dublin, 1992); Peter OConnor, A Soldier of Liberty:
Recollections of a Socialist and Anti-Fascist Fighter (Dublin, 1996); Bob Doyle (with Harry Owens),
Brigadista: An Irishmans Fight Against Fascism (Dublin, 2006)
14
Michael ORiordan, Connolly Column: The Story of the Irishmen who fought in the ranks of the
International Brigades in the National-Revolutionary War of the Spanish People, 1936-39 (Dublin,
1979). An updated edition with new material is also available (Torfaen, Wales, 2005)
15
Uinseann MacEoin (ed.), Survivors: The story of Ireland's struggle as told through some of her
outstanding living people recalling events from the days of Davitt, through James Connolly, Brugha,
Collins, Liam Mellows, and Rory O'Connor, to the present time (Dublin, 1980); Uinseann MacEoin
(ed.), The IRA in the Twilight Years, 1923-1948 (Dublin, 1997); Ronnie Munck and Bill Rolston (with
Gerry Moore), Belfast in the Thirties: An Oral History (Belfast, 1987)

the Treaty.16 Another views it an expression of his preference for a tactical

alliance between the republicans and the working class.17 Desmond Greaves,
who introduced Mellows to Irish historiography in characteristic detail, accepts
the above charges to an extent. He refrains from presupposing an equivalence
between Connolly and Mellows, arguing instead that the latter did not reach the
stage of advocating a leading role for the working class in the national
revolution. This is an important point, which leads the author to designate the
book as a study of nationalism rather than socialism.
Greaves proceeds in lamenting the absence of organised labour from Irish
politics in the immediate post-1916 period and is critical of Sinn Fin
conservatism. He sees these two factors as pivotal in ushering in an era of neocolonialism, with its assault on working-class standards and stultification of the
national economy.18 Authors are fundamentally correct to criticise Mellows for
exhibiting some of the flawed thinking that later characterised certain strands
of socialist republicanism. For instance, he made little effort to study the
development of Ulster Unionism,19 and he was guilty of an uncritical adoption
of Wolfe Tones men of no property slogan.20 However, it is worth noting that
Mellows social radicalism, influenced by communist ideas, was genuine.21
Moreover, as with Connolly, his republicanism was a constituent part of his
internationalism. He spoke favourably of Bolshevism and associated Irish anticolonialism with its Indian variant.22 It may be an exaggeration to argue, as
Greaves does, that Mellows made a clear distinction between the British
working class and imperialists.23 But his proposals did extend beyond the
narrow conception of Irish independence as an ultimate objective in itself.
Mellows was a great loss to republican politics, particularly to the brand of
republicanism that a politically minded cadre of the anti-Treaty faction
attempted to cultivate in the aftermath of the Civil War. Peadar ODonnell was
the quintessential journeyman of the republican and communist movements,

16

Henry Patterson, The Politics of Illusion: A Political History of the IRA (London, 1997), p. 27
Eoin Broin, Sinn Fin and the Politics of Left Republicanism (London, 2009), pp. 123-124
18
Greaves, Liam Mellows, p. 392
19
Patterson, The Politics of Illusion, p. 26
20
Broin, Sinn Fin, p. 126
21
Patterson, The Politics of Illusion, p. 25-26
22
Greaves, Liam Mellows, pp. 205, 278, 368-369
23
Ibid., p. 393
17

and a central figure in early attempts to politicise the IRA. As prolific a writer
as he was a relentless agitator, he left behind detailed memoirs of his
experiences.24 Furthermore, the sheer volume of writings devoted to ODonnells
life and political activities, including four full-length biographies, serve as a
gauge of his influence in inter-war Ireland and beyond.
Grattan Freyer set the precedent in terms of scholarly interest in ODonnell.
Yet this study, by Freyers own admission, falls short of the full story of
ODonnells endeavours.25 More detailed and interesting is Michael McInerneys
Peadar ODonnell: Irish Social Rebel, which is based primarily on a series of
lengthy interviews with ODonnell for the Irish Times and supplemented with
additional perspectives from prominent socialist/communist and republican
activists. Contributors include Moss Twomey, George Gilmore, Betty Sinclair
and the late Sen Murray, a personal friend of my own for many years and
probably Peadars closest friend.26 McInerney had unrivalled access to Murray
and ODonnell. For this reason, his book is an indispensible source of
information on the internal machinations of the CPI and the Murray/ODonnell
relationship that developed around it. McInerneys work is particularly strong
in documenting ODonnells participation in, and analysis of, key events in
Ireland between 1918 and 1935. It examines in detail the Civil War period,
ODonnells years as editor of An Phoblacht and leading proponent of the land
annuities campaign, and the Republican Congress enterprise. For a critical
analysis of ODonnells politics, though, we ought to look elsewhere. McInerneys
treatment of his subject is openly polemical from the outset27 and continues to
border on hagiography throughout.
One reviewer rightly praises Peter Hegarty as being the first to offer us a
biography [of ODonnell] worthy of the name.28 His traditional chronological
account makes its way diligently through ODonnells life. Its most impressive
24

The Gates Flew Open (London, 1932) is a record of his time in prison during the Irish Civil War;
Salud! An Irishman in Spain (London, 1937) deals with the Spanish Civil War period; There Will Be
Another Day (Dublin, 1963) is a recollection of the land annuities campaign; Monkeys in the
Superstructure: Reminiscences of Peadar ODonnell (Galway, 1986) is arguably the last instalment of
autobiographies, published shortly after his death at the behest of The Committee of Concerned
University Staff
25
Grattan Freyer, Peadar ODonnell (Lewisberg, 1973), p. 18
26
Michael McInerney, Peadar ODonnell: Irish Social Rebel (Dublin, 1974), Acknowledgements
27
Ibid., p. 9
28
Donal Drisceoil, A Very Irish Revolutionary, Saothar, 25 (2000), p. 79

attribute is the work put into navigating ODonnells background, childhood and
political apprenticeship.29 This book is certainly the most comprehensive
historical record of the subject, but does not add anything significant to our
understanding of ODonnell and Murrays relationship. Donal Drisceoils
concise political biography is more focused in terms of critical analysis, covering
communist and socialist republican connections in the context of major
historical events.30 His methodological approach and end-product are more
relevant, given that Peadar ODonnell was the individual around whom shifts in
socialist republican thinking often revolved.
Another important individual of the same generation is Frank Ryan, whose
tragically short political career overlapped those of Murray and ODonnell. He
too fought in the Irish Civil War, became involved in the efforts to politicise the
IRA in the 1930s and was perhaps the most prominent Irish supporter of the
pro-Republican Spanish Civil War effort. It is therefore with justification that
Ryan has received almost as much attention as ODonnell. The late Sen
Cronin, an IRA veteran and (sometime credited) originator of the Border
Campaign idea, delivered the first noteworthy biography of Ryan in 1980,
published by Sinn Fin: the Workers Party.31 This book deserves praise for the
discovery and use of previously unpublished sources, including correspondence
between Ryan and Leopold H. Kerney, the Irish Minister for Spain. These
letters help to clarify the conditions surrounding Ryans escape from Burgos
prison and provide an insight into the circumstances of his contact with German
intelligence. Cronins work represents a vitally important breakthrough in
research on the republican left. It also includes several important sections
detailing Ryans friendship with Murray and the extent of cross-pollination of
political ideas between the two.
Judicious historians such as Fearghal McGarry and Adrian Hoar have
produced accounts of Ryans life that are more academic in presentation than
Cronins effort.32 McGarry is one of the leading historians of early modern Irish
republicanism and his biography of Ryan is a welcome extension of his
29

Peter Hegarty, Peadar ODonnell (Cork, 1999); Anton McCabe, The Stormy Petrel Of The
Transport Workers: Peadar ODonnell, Trade Unionist, 1917-20, Saothar, 19 (1994), pp. 41-50
30
Donal Drisceoil, Peadar ODonnell (Cork, 2001)
31
Sen Cronin, Frank Ryan: The Search for the Republic (Dublin, 1980)
32
Fearghal McGarry, Frank Ryan (Dundalk, 2002); Adrian Hoar, In Green and Red: The Lives of Frank
Ryan (Dingle, 2004)

authoritative history of Irish involvement in the Spanish Civil War.33 Naturally,

the strongest sections of the biography address Ryans transformation from
Irish Civil War internee, to Social Republican and subsequently Anti-Fascist.
McGarry acknowledges that Ryan was influenced by Mitchel, Lalor and
Connolly, but sees this as typical of the broader Irish radical tradition of which
militarism was an effective tool. Attributed to ODonnell is a tendency to borrow
from Ryans militarism to apply a green gloss to his red politics. The latters
record of military involvement is considered a more significant than his political
outlook in determining his role in the republican movement.34 McGarry applies
the same logic to explain Ryans participation in Spain, which for him leads
inexorably to the conclusion that his subjects demise in Germany amounted,
unwittingly or otherwise, to that of a Collaborator.35 The title of this final
chapter is unfortunate, too suggestive, and indicates that the author developed
the narrative with a predetermined conclusion in mind.
Hoar broadly shares McGarrys view, demonstrating with limited success
that Frank Ryan was an idealist, guilty of ethically dubious opportunism in
Germany.36 We welcome the fact that both authors highlight the immense
pressures on Ryan at the time and put forward their conclusions only
tentatively. McGarry presents the idea that the status of Northern Ireland was
up for grabs as a partial explanation for his alleged cooperation with the
Germans.37 He also argues that while Ryans presence in Germany was deeply
compromising...there is no convincing evidence that he was a Nazi
sympathiser.38 In concluding, he asserts that his subject failed to sustain a
coherent political analysis oscillating between an unsophisticated Fenianism
and international socialism throughout his life.39 Alas, the damage McGarry
does to Ryans reputation precludes any positive impression that this balanced
conclusion may have otherwise made. In short, the neatly packaged
Collaborator chapter dominates the narrative at the expense of Ryans socialist
republicanism.

33

Fearghal McGarry, Irish Politics and the Spanish Civil War (Cork, 1999)
McGarry, Frank Ryan, pp. 12-14
35
Ibid., Chapter 4
36
Hoar, In Green and Red, Prologue
37
McGarry, Frank Ryan, pp. 78-79
38
Ibid., p. 92
39
Ibid., p. 94
34

Yet McGarrys work does manage to bring to the surface one of the more
uncomfortable realities of Irish republicanism: the tension between antiimperialism, official Irish neutrality and anti-fascism during the Second World
War. Ryans colourful life is an instructive case study that emphasises the
importance of reconciling Murrays international and domestic politics. Peadar
ODonnell inadvertently makes this point in his epitaph for Ryan: To see his
role in Spain without reference to his part in the anti-imperialist rallies in
Ireland is to miss completely Ryans message to the youth of today and
tomorrow.40 The section of this thesis dealing with the same period will ask
difficult questions of Murrays internationalism, while incorporating a broad
reading of the campaigns against fascism, oppression and social inequality in
which he participated.
Any review of Murrays political generation would be incomplete without a
discussion of Roddy Connolly, one of his oldest comrades and likewise a
secondary figure of Irish republicanism. Connolly is deserving of a biography, if
only because he enjoyed a substantially longer political career than his father.
Charlie McGuire has taken up this task and demonstrated in the process that
historical research and thematic analyses are not mutually exclusive. McGuire
provides an insight into Murray and Connollys mutable friendship from around
1928 onwards, which is interesting from a comparative perspective. Although he
joined the Labour Party that year with the intention of drawing its members to
the left, Connolly shifted hastily to the right as his years advanced and found
contentment as a mainstream Labour politician. In addition, McGuires book
offers a methodological template for this thesis. It asks and attempts to answer,
with mixed success, a number of pertinent questions: What brought him into the
communist movement? What was his contribution to Irish Marxism? How did he
put across his ideas and look to organise the movements with which he was
involved? To what extent did he adopt and uphold the ideas of James
Connolly?41 It is relevant and instructive to ask similar questions of Sen
Murrays politics and compare his and Connollys respective trajectories.

40
41

Cronin, Frank Ryan, Preface

Charlie McGuire, Roddy Connolly and the Struggle for Socialism in Ireland (Cork, 2008), p. 2

10

The Irish Republican Left: Socialism and Republicanism in Ireland

Up until the 1970s, a small number of Marxist texts occupied prominent
positions in the body of literature on Irish labour and nationalism. This included
those associated with the Connolly school of thought: a fraternity that adopt as
its premise the indissolubility of the social and national struggles. A number of
writers from Connollys generation, such as W.P. Ryan and especially T.A.
Jackson, have sought to protect his legacy and vindicate his writings.42 Indeed,
Jackson states clearly in his history of Irish underdevelopment under British
rule that I write frankly as a partisan.43 Peter Berresford Ellis goes as far as to
adopt the methodology employed by Connolly in Labour in Irish History (1910)
and The Re-Conquest of Ireland (1915), and sets forth a distinctly antiimperialist interpretation.44 Eric Strauss is another author faithful to Connollys
position on the national question, even if his analysis is more ingrained in
theoretical Marxism.45 Desmond Greaves, leading member of the Connolly
Association and long-time editor of the Irish Democrat, was until his death the
preeminent representative of one interpretation of Connollyism and is renowned
for his active support for Irish independence.
Quite

innovatively,

W.K.

Anderson

deals

with

Connollys

politics

thematically, which allows him to make a more structured assessment of

Connollys apparent legatees in the years separating 1916 and 1940.46 Anderson
identifies seven themes the womens movement; religion; syndicalism;
socialism and nationalism; the revolutionary party; political violence and
insurrection; and revolution to put in mind the extent of Connollys impact.
For him, the story is one of failure, but not that of Connolly. He believes that
Connollys actions between 1913 and 1916 put the labour movement or at
least its most militant sections into a position at the vanguard of the national
struggle.47 He claims that this momentum receded as trade union and Labour
Party leaders fell in behind the national struggle rather than contesting social
and political battles on their own terms. Connollys straightforward and

42

W.P. Ryan, The Irish Labour Movement from the Twenties to Our Own Day (Dublin, 1918); T.A.
Jackson, Ireland Her Own: An Outline History of the Irish Struggle (London, 1947)
43
Ibid., Foreword
44
Peter Berresford Ellis, A History of the Irish Working Class (London, 1972)
45
Eric Strauss, Irish Nationalism and British Democracy (New York, 1951)
46
W.K. Anderson, James Connolly and the Irish Left (Dublin, 1994)
47
Ibid., p. 149

11

unequivocal legacy set the scene for the full participation of organised labour
during and beyond the Irish revolutionary period.48 By 1940, however,
Connollys radicalism had long been lost to them.49
Andersons thesis contains several points of veracity. Yet a number of
historians have recognised the importance of moving towards a more inclusive
history of the Irish working class and beyond the conception of Connolly as the
focal point of twentieth century revolutionary activity. These historians have
succeeded in documenting the unparalleled levels of industrial militancy and
political consciousness between 1913 and 1923.50 There exist interpretative
differences regarding the failings of organised labour and socialist republicans,
but these authors generally converge on the idea that a number of factors not
limited to the British military presence stymied the social and national
revolution. Continuing in a similar vein, John Regan has produced the most
detailed account of Treaty politics to date. His central thesis is that not only was
the revolution subverted during the War of Independence, but that Cumann na
nGaedheal and to a lesser extent Fianna Fil implemented a counterrevolution in the South between 1921 and 1936. His work tells us much about
social conservatism in Ireland and the self-serving actions of bourgeois
nationalism in the years subsequent to partition. It is a thorough examination of
Anglo-Irish relations and in many ways a study of power relations and class
politics during a particularly important phase of Murrays career.51
The political expressions of socialist republicanism over the course of Sen
Murrays life have been subject to a number of in-depth critiques.52 Henry
Patterson and Richard English have produced the two most detailed academic
works on Connollyism in the post-Connolly era. Patterson researched The
48

Ibid., p. 150
Ibid., p. 157
50
D.R. OConnor Lysaght, The Republic of Ireland: An Hypothesis in Eight Chapters and Two
Intermissions (Cork, 1970), Chapter 3; David Fitzpatrick, Strikes in Ireland, 1914-21, Saothar, 6
(1980), pp. 26-39; D.R. OConnor Lysaght, The Story of the Limerick Soviet (Limerick, 1981); C.
Desmond Greaves, The Irish Transport and General Workers Union: The Formative Years, 1909-1923
(Dublin, 1982); Emmet OConnor, Syndicalism in Ireland, 1917-1923 (Cork, 1988); Liam Cahill,
Forgotten Revolution, The Limerick Soviet, 1919: A Threat to British Power in Ireland (Dublin, 1990);
David Fitzpatrick (ed.), Revolution? Ireland, 1917-1923 (Dublin, 1990); Conor Kostick, Revolution in
Ireland: Popular Militancy, 1917-1923 (Cork, 2009)
51
John M. Regan, The Irish Counter-Revolution, 1921-1936: Treatyite Politics and Settlement in
Independent Ireland (Dublin, 1999)
52
Pat Walsh, Irish Republicanism and Socialism: The Politics of the Republican Movement, 1905 to
1994 (Belfast, 1994)
49

12

Politics of Illusion whilst closely involved with the Workers Party, though he
does not present a facsimile of the party line.53 His was one of the first works to
have examined what he terms social republicanism since 1922 and remains one
of the most sophisticated treatments of the subject. Richard Englishs book
targets socialist republicanism during the inter-war period and focuses the
spotlight on Peadar ODonnell in a story of ideological zeal.54 Both studies are
for the most part limited to the IRA left and share the idea that socialist
republicanism during the period represented a continuation of Connollys
elusive re-conquest of Ireland.
Whereas English chooses to view republicanism as an unchanging tradition,
Patterson aims to examine its different manifestations in their specific socioeconomic and political contexts.55 His study is not of one ideology as such,
though he does broadly agree with English that successive socialist republican
enterprises have replicated Connollys failures. The main limitation of
Pattersons study lies in his explicit focus on the IRA and social republicanism
as a response to successive military defeats, which does not allow for a broader
exploration of republican interaction with the labour movement. Englishs study
leads to the bold claim that the shortcomings of socialist republicanism lie not
only with Connolly but with Marx and Engels also.56 English bases this on a
limited reading of Marxism, a de-contextualisation of Connollys politics and a
narrow conception of republicanism. He overstates Connollys European
Marxism and juxtaposes it with Pearses spiritual nationalism,57 which ignores
the question of tactics and somewhat undermines his assumption that
successive republicans have advocated a crude theory of economically
determined nationalist momentum.58 A later attempt to demonstrate that
successive socialist republicans have merely tried to weld Marxian ideology
onto Irish nationalism is more coherent and consistent in analysis, but fails to
go much further beyond Connolly as representative of Marxist opinion on

53

The Politics of Illusion: A Political History of the IRA is an updated edition of The Politics of Illusion:
Republicanism and Socialism in Modern Ireland (London, 1989)
54
Richard English, Radicals and the Republic: Socialist Republicanism in the Irish Free State, 19251937 (Oxford, 1994)
55
Patterson, The Politics of Illusion, p. 9
56
English, Radicals and the Republic, p. 22
57
Ibid., pp. 13-18
58
Ibid., p. 276

13

Ireland.59 Patterson is less inclined to throw around contested labels and

language in the same fashion, for the simple reason that his reading of various
Marxists on Ireland is more extensive and well established.60
We find another key difference between Patterson and English in their
analyses of Fianna Fils emergence as a political force in the late 1920s and
early 1930s. English is almost universally critical of socialist republicanism,
describing its proponents as smug on more than one occasion. By contrast, he
approves of Fianna Fils apparently organic electoral success as that of
mainstream

constitutional

nationalism.

Patterson

is

less

reluctant

to

acknowledge the positive influence of socialist republicans in specific instances.

Citing the land annuities campaign as one example, he argues that socialist
republicanisms relative achievements correspond to Peadar ODonnells
political career: he was to have more success in pushing Fianna Fil in a
radical, autarkic nationalist direction than in transforming the IRA.61 Patterson
sees the collapse of Saor ire and the Republican Congress as emblematic of
socialist republicans ideological and strategic weaknesses, whereas English
emphasises
conservative

the

inherent

constitutional

differences
nationalism

between

Fianna

and

ODonnells

Fils

socially

full-throated,

uncompromising socialist republicanism.62 English also rejects Pattersons

allusion to Fianna Fils use of tailored left-leaning policies to target the
working class.63 Subsequent research demonstrates that it is difficult to explain
the partys capacity for winning substantial working-class support the lefts
constituency without clear reference to its economic programme.64 This
appears to sit more easily with Pattersons thesis.
Where Patterson and English almost converge is in their criticisms of
physical-force republicanism: those who made a principle out of the tactical
armed struggle. What separates them is Englishs somewhat disingenuous
59

Richard English, Reflections on Republican Socialism in Ireland: Marxian Roots and Irish Historical
Dynamics, History of Political Thought, Vol. 17, No. 4 (1996), pp. 555-571
60
Paul Bew, Peter Gibbon and Henry Patterson, The State in Northern Ireland: Political Forces and
Social Classes, 1921-1972 (Manchester, 1979), Chapter 1; Henry Patterson, Neo-nationalism and
Class, Social History, 13: 3 (October 1988), pp. 343-349
61
Patterson, The Politics of Illusion, p. 50
62
English, Radicals and the Republic, pp. 93-94
63
Ibid., pp. 194-195, 227
64
Richard Dunphy, The Making of Fianna Fil Power in Ireland, 1923-1948 (Oxford, 1995); Kieran
Allen, Fianna Fil and Irish Labour: 1926 to the Present (London, 1997)

14

attempt to connect the solipsistic Sen Russell and disastrous bombing

campaign

in

England

with

contemporaneous

socialist

republicans.65

Nonetheless, both deal critically with the failure of republicans to understand

the northern Protestant working class and the autonomous reality of Ulster
Unionism. Both authors demonstrate, Patterson over a longer period, that
neither Protestants nor most southern Catholics could bring themselves to
support republican militarism in the aftermath of the Civil War. The IRAs
Dublin leadership came to this conclusion, albeit belatedly, expressing nagging
doubts and suspicions about the efficacy of the armed struggle in the 1940s and
insisting on the avoidance of sectarian confrontation as a pre-requisite of the
Border Campaign.66
Critiques of Patterson and Englishs theses vary in content and tact.67 The
most welcome and measured critical engagement comes from the talented Sinn
Fin policy adviser Eoin Broin, whose work is a rejoinder to the critics of
tactical violence, a defence of what he prefers to call left republicanism and a
testament to the salient points of Connollyism. He views Connolly and Mellows
as figureheads of a broad Fenian tradition, and identifies Fianna Fil leftist
populism and Sen MacBrides Clann na Poblachta as variants of the same
ideological thread. Broin includes admirable, thinly veiled criticisms of his
own partys approach to leftist politics,68 and concurs with Patterson on a
number of issues. He comes as close to the definition of a revisionist republican
that one could find emerging from the Provisional movement. One weakness is
that his narrative portrays the IRA as the sole, unrivalled originators of
endeavours such as Saor ire and Republican Congress. He gives Sen Murray
and the CPI only partial credit for their participation in the latter.69 There is a
distinct element of wishful thinking throughout the book as Broin glosses over
the influence of the Irish and international labour movements, and the
65

English, Radicals and the Republic, pp. 257-267

Patterson, The Politics of Illusion, pp. 92-93
67
For direct criticisms of Pattersons arguments, and those of his scholarly collaborators, see: Ronnie
Munck, Ireland: Nation, State, and Class Struggle (Boulder, 1985); Sam Porter and Denis OHearn,
New Left Podsnappery: The British Left and Ireland, New Left Review, I/212 (July-August 1995), pp.
131-147; Anthony Coughlan, Irelands Marxist Historians in Ciaran Brady (ed.), Interpreting Irish
History: The Debate on Historical Revisionism (Dublin, 2006); Robert Perry, Revisionist Marxist
Theory in Ireland, Critique: The Journal of Socialist Theory, 36: 1 (April 2008), pp. 121-139. Brian
Hanley, The IRA, 1926-1936 (Dublin, 2002), places scrutiny on some of Englishs assessments
68
Broin, Sinn Fin, pp. 112, 297
69
Ibid., pp. 136-139
66

15

theoretical currents of Marxism, on the political ideas and actions of successive

socialist republicans. Suspicions are that these realities do not fit in with his
personal crusade to transform Sinn Fin into the leading social-democratic
party on the island of Ireland. His contribution is worthwhile and to be
welcomed. However, in his quest to reconcile Fenianism with the historical
record, Broin tends to drift towards obscurantism.
The most recent treatment of inter-war socialist republicanism comes in the
shape of a PhD thesis by Adrian Grant, which effectively takes as its structure a
2005 article by Emmet OConnor.70 These authors forward the argument that
the socialist republicanism that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s had its roots in
the modern Irish Labour movement. More specifically, the formation of the
Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU) in 1909 marked the
decolonisation of Irish labour and the real beginning of socialist republicanism
as a mass movement.71 Grants first objective is to broaden the definition of
socialist republicanism and counteract some of the pessimism surrounding the
labour movement in the 1920s and early 1930s. He also sets out to demonstrate
that socialist republicanism only had a limited impact because of strategic and
organisational setbacks rather than ideological incoherence. These goals define
his thesis as a comprehensive critique of Richard Englishs aforementioned book
and a more recent essay by Fearghal McGarry.72 Grants elucidation of labournationalism and the extent of communist influence on loose socialist
republicanism

in

the

immediate

post-Treaty

period

is

an

important

breakthrough in labour historiography,73 upon which this thesis aims to build.

Grant argues that the momentum for a successful socialist republican alliance
was lost by the time Murray enters the frame. The early stages of this thesis
attempt to qualify Grants contention, ensuring that the broader institutional
narrative does not consume Murrays contribution over a longer period.
A final body of literature deserves attention, as it provides some continuity
in connecting 1930s and 1960s socialist republicanism. It is highly regrettable
70

Emmet OConnor, The Age of the Red Republic: The Irish Left and Nationalism, 1909-36, Saothar,
30 (2005), pp. 73-82; Adrian Grant, Irish Socialist Republicanism, 1909-36 (Doctoral Thesis,
University of Ulster, 2010)
71
Ibid., p. 5
72
Fearghal McGarry, Radical Politics in Interwar Ireland, 1923-39 in Fintan Lane and Donal
Drisceoil (eds.), Politics and the Irish Working Class, 1830-1945 (Basingstoke, 2005)
73
Grant, Irish Socialist Republicanism, p. 171

16

that veterans of the Official republican movement have been reluctant to

publish their memoirs, which at the same time makes their contributions all the
more valuable. Derry Kelleher, a one-time Curragh internee and comrade of
Michael ORiordan in the short-lived Cork Socialist Party, acknowledges
Desmond Greaves, Mick Kelly and George Gilmore as his mentors and as true
republicans. His collage of Irish republicanism is critical of political actors on
both sides of the border, particularly those of the physical force tradition and far
left (read Peoples Democracy post-1970), as is his philosophical autobiography.
Both works are exceptional in their detail and do not allow the reader to escape
with a complacent view of republicanism.74 A more important figure is the
indefatigable Roy Johnston, very much active in present day Connolly
Association

circles.

Johnstons

groundbreaking

autobiographical

and

biographical study adopts a more chronological and methodical approach, and

his recollections are important for two reasons.75 Firstly, he shared experiences
with the Irish communist movement from the late 1940s onwards. Secondly, he
was a key figure in the Cathal Goulding-led process of politicisation that
occurred in the aftermath of the Border Campaign. His early political activities
provide another link between communism and left republicanism during the
period in question.
Johnston features prominently in Hanley and Millars The Lost Revolution,
an impeccable account of the Official republican movement which includes a
very useful synopsis of developments in Ireland in the lead up to the Border
Campaign.76 Sen Swans well-researched, academic profile of Official
republicanism begins with the Border Campaign, but is just as effective in
delivering an assessment of the various internal and external influences on the
IRA in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He makes only a passing reference to
Murray a former IRA member through whom republicans believed they could
bring about a reorientation in communist thinking. Swans focus is on Connolly
Association graduates and the Wolfe Tone Society as the primary agents of

74

Derry Kelleher, Irish Republicanism: The Authentic Perspective; Through Truth to Enlightened
Action, Peace and Irish Unity (Greystones, Wicklow, 2001); Buried Alive in Ireland: A Story of a
Twentieth Century Inquisition (Greystones, Wicklow, 2001)
75
Roy Johnston, Century of Endeavour: A Biographical and Autobiographical View of the Twentieth
Century in Ireland (Dublin, 2006)
76
Brian Hanley and Scott Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers
Party (Dublin, 2009), Chapter 1

17

change.77 Simon Princes book on the civil rights movement provides insights
into the same period.78 His monograph is most useful for its serious treatment of
the Connolly Association and the Wolfe Tone Society. These two groups helped
to couple the republican politicisation process with the development of a civil
rights strategy, paving the way for a more gradual reformist solution to the
Northern Ireland problem.
For its original contribution to the historiography of the origins of the civil
rights movement and the 1970 republican split, Sinn Fin researcher Matt
Treacys new book on the IRA is deserving of a mention.79 Although he may not
add much by way of interpretative understanding of the 1956-1971 period,
Treacy uses substantial archival and interview material to flesh out the
tensions within republicanism in the 1960s and the events that led to the
formation of the Provisional IRA. He is refreshingly honest in his remark that
the communist and republican movements represented almost no one
throughout the period in question.80 He also attempts to account for the
influence of British and Irish communists on republican deliberations in the late
1950s and 1960s. There are a number of problems with this aspect of Treacys
work, namely that it is poorly referenced and gives excessive credence to the
recollections of traditionalist republicans. It must also be noted that his
conception of communism is highly simplistic. He uses the Communists and
the

Marxists

interchangeably,

characterising

such

individuals

and

organisations as a relatively homogenous group with Moscow as its master, and

bandies around terms such as classical Marxist fashion without sufficient
clarification.81 It is also perplexing that Murray does not feature once, given his
position as the preeminent Irish communist and proximity to several key
individuals. The section dealing with Irish communist and Connolly Association
debates on partition is a welcome addition to the literature.82 Furthermore, in
fairness to Treacy, he did not have full access to the CPI Nolan/Palmer
Collection. On balance, however, his book reveals that much work remains to be
77

Sen Swan, Official Irish Republicanism from Ceasefire to Ceasefire (Doctoral Thesis, University of
Ulster, 2006); Official Irish Republicanism, 1962 to 1972 (UK, 2007), pp. 87-111
78
Simon Prince, Northern Irelands 68: Civil Rights, Global Revolt and the Origins of The Troubles
(Dublin, 2007), especially Chapter 3
79
Matt Treacy, The IRA, 1956-69: Rethinking the Republic (Manchester, 2011)
80
Ibid., p. 126
81
Ibid., p. 90
82
Ibid., pp. 76-78

18

done to put the 1956-1962 activities of Murray, the CPNI and Irish Workers
League (IWL) into perspective.

Sen Murray and Irish Communism

Studies of communism in Ireland are quite rare, though they have been growing
steadily in number. In the mid-1970s the CPI published its Outline History,
edited by Sen Nolan, a veteran of the communist movement in Ireland,
featuring contributions from Tom Redmond, Tommy Watters, George Jeffares,
Michael ORiordan, Joe Deasy, Sam Nolan and Jimmy Stewart.83 It amounts to
a sketchy celebration of key events in the partys history and a tribute to former
leading members now deceased. Unsurprisingly, and with some justification, the
picture this history paints is one of glorious struggles in the face of repression.
However, it glosses over the contradictory and divisive World War Two period
and evidences a further anachronism with its anti-partitionist tone, which
reflects the CPIs position at the time of publication rather than a constant
position from the 1920s onwards. An additional, virtually unknown history of
the party surfaced around one year later and is antithetical to the official CPI
narrative. From what is regarded as a Trotskyist perspective, D.R. OConnor
Lysaght provides a historical analysis of Irish Stalinism. Although Lysaghts
account is typically jaundiced, it is a useful counterbalance to the official
history. It is an undervalued source of information, given the amount of primary
(mainly newspaper) research involved, and contains several telling criticisms of
the CPI.84 Meanwhile, Ciaran Crossey and Jim Monaghan, two activists of the
same persuasion, have produced an article that documents the activities of Irish
Trotskyist groupings in the 1930s and 1940s.85
Another who cannot claim academic innocence is Mike Milotte, who, in his
general history of Irish communism, sets out to rescue from an undeserved
obscurity some redoubtable working-class activists and their frequently heroic
struggles.86 In this respect, he fulfils his objective, accounting for several left-

83

Sen Nolan (ed.), Communist Party of Ireland: An Outline History (Dublin, 1975)
D.R. OConnor Lysaght, The Communist Party of Ireland: A Critical History (1976),
http://www.workersrepublic.org/Pages/Ireland/Communism/cpihistory1.html (Accessed on 10
February 2010)
85
Ciaran Crossey and James Monaghan, The Origins of Trotskyism in Ireland, Revolutionary History,
6: 2/3 (Summer 1996), pp. 4-48
86
Mike Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland: The Pursuit of the Workers Republic Since 1916
(Dublin, 1984), p. 8
84

19

wing political activists who may not have otherwise gained much credence. It is
in attempting to develop a systematic analysis of Irish communism that he falls
short.87 Milotte proceeds from a narrow preconception of Stalinism and argues
from the outset that the failure of the communist movement to make more
inroads in Ireland was down to its entanglement with Stalinist Russia and its
constant need to reflect the foreign policy requirements of the Soviet state.88
From various CPI documents and a substantial number of interviews, Milotte
suggests that the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) enjoyed a
patriarchal role in relation to the Irish party. From this, however, he crudely
attributes the twists and turns of Irish communism to the policy shifts of the
Comintern and, through that conduit, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
(CPSU). Isaac Deutscher has argued correctly that anybody who would try to
comprehend the history of any communist party merely in the context of its own
environment would fail.89 Moreover, with the archives of the Comintern closed
at the time of writing, Milotte could have known very little about the inner
workings of that body, apart from what he was able to gather from secondary
sources. But to assume that the worlds communist parties were only able to
develop a more autonomous politics in the wake of Stalins death is at best an
oversimplification.90 This approach does little to take into consideration national
specificities, internal deliberations, the degree of latitude afforded by Comintern
functionaries, or decisions taken in spite of Comintern directives.
Milottes analysis is a casualty of his own political circumstances. He is
excessively negative about Stalinism because he subscribes to an oppositional
view of the world. He singles out Trotskyist activists for praise and exaggerates
their impact on the local political landscape.91 He also holds that Trotskyists
adopted the correct interpretation of the Irish national question and argues that
CPI overtures to the labour and republican movements lead inevitably to an
abandonment of the class struggle. This sloganising regrettably dominates the
text at the expense of a concrete analysis of changing social, political, and
economic conditions in Ireland and the possibilities that these conditions
afforded. Nevertheless, Milottes political sympathies do not detract from what
87

Ibid., p. 4
Ibid., pp. 7-8
89
Quoted in Swan, Official Irish Republicanism, p. 87
90
Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, p. 224
91
Ibid., pp. 188, 213-215
88

20

is a pioneering work and an indispensible record of communist activities over a

period of more than sixty years.
Stephen Bowlers aptly-named essay, Sen Murray, 1898-1961, And the
Pursuit of Stalinism in One Country, is no more sympathetic to the Comintern,
though slightly less scornful of the efforts of particular individuals, Murray
included.92 Bowler notes that CPI leaders such as Murray occasionally adapted
to the particular pressures of the Irish context and were neither pawns of
Moscow, nor slaves to the rhythm of Irish nationalism.93 Yet the focus on
Murrays communist apprenticeship, at the expense of his early republican
activities, almost wholly informs Bowlers narrative. Consequently, he concludes
that it was Murrays
misfortune to find himself at the Lenin School in Moscow during the
period when Stalin was consolidating his grip. It would have been
unthinkable for Murray to have emerged from his training with any
serious doubts about the merits of defending socialism in one country.94
Bowler describes Murray as a Stalinist representative in Ireland, under whose
leadership it was the task of the Irish Communists to cohere such aspirations,
in accord with many others who also went to make up the Comintern.95 He
comes close to making an important distinction between Stalin and the CPSU
on the one hand and the Comintern on the other, without actually doing so.
Ultimately, his judgement is that compliance with instructions laid out by a
hierarchy in Moscow lead to successive CPI failures. Although less polemical,
his conclusions barely differ from those delivered by Milotte.
Bowlers article prompted the late Joe Deasy to contest the use of the term
Stalinism, which he correctly argued to be a modern invention and often
intentionally disparaging.96 Building on work by Kevin McDermott and Jeremy
Agnew,97 Emmet OConnor has since made a clear distinction between
Bolshevism and Stalinism. He argues straightforwardly that Bolshevisation

92

Stephen Bowler, Sen Murray, 1898-1961, And the Pursuit of Stalinism in One Country, Saothar,
18 (1993), pp. 41-53
93
Ibid., p. 44
94
Ibid., p. 50
95
Ibid., p. 51
96
Joe Deasy, Sen Murray: Republican and Marxist (correspondence), Saothar, 19 (1994), p. 13
97
Kevin McDermott and Jeremy Agnew, The Comintern: A History of International Communism from
Lenin to Stalin (Basingstoke, 1996)

21

encompassed an early period of centralisation and training by the Comintern,

while Stalinisation entailed CPI deference to Soviet foreign policy post-1935,
when international developments began to overwhelm the stagnant Irish
party.98 Though not altogether beyond reproach, these authors endow a more
appropriate framework for analysing the Irish communist movement in
Murrays era. This is evident in OConnors Reds and the Green, which uses the
Comintern archives to rectify the deficiencies of previous analyses of Irish
communism.99 OConnor demonstrates that cooperation with the communist
internationals extended to the IRA and the broader republican movement
including de Valera throughout the 1920s and into the early 1930s.100 With
the momentum of the Bolshevik Revolution and resources of international
communism behind them, Irish socialists and left republicans had a real
opportunity to build a substantial revolutionary movement. OConnor argues
that The impact of the Comintern on Irish communist organisation and policy
was fundamental, and largely positive.101 However, he qualifies this with
several instances of bitter dispute between the Irish comrades, between the CPI
and CPGB, and between the CPI and Comintern. OConnors work is important
for the challenge that it presents to proponents of a grand narrative approach
to the history of Irish communism.
Murray was at the reins of the nascent second CPI in 1932, the high tide of
communism in Ireland.102 Yet, in OConnors estimation, the favourable
conditions for rebuilding the party deteriorated quickly thereafter. The
Cominterns class against class position in the late 1920s and early 1930s
discourage[d] the strengthening of links with republicans when the IRA was
most susceptible to communism.103 Moreover, the heavy influence of the
Catholic Church on southern politics and actions of the reactionary Unionist
state in the North put serious dents in any hopes for recapturing the impetus of

98

Emmet OConnor, Bolshevising Irish Communism, 1927-31, Irish Historical Studies, 33: 132
(2003), pp. 452-469; From Bolshevism to Stalinism: Communism and the Comintern in Ireland in
Norman LaPorte, Kevin Morgan and Matthew Worley (eds.), Bolshevism, Stalinism and the
Comintern: Perspectives on Stalinization, 1917-1953 (Basingstoke, 2008)
99
Emmet OConnor, Reds and the Green: Ireland, Russia and the Communist Internationals, 1919-43
(Dublin, 2004)
100
Ibid., pp. 112-113, 128-131, 134-136
101
Ibid., p. 236
102
Ibid., p. 179
103
Ibid., p. 239

22

the 1920s.104 These points are compelling. It is useful nonetheless to acquire a

sense of perspective which, in dealing primarily with institutional relationships,
OConnors work does not allow for (nor is it his aim to do so). This thesis
attempts to elicit an explanation of how and why Murray continued to persevere
in the face of these obstacles, amongst others. It delves into the available
sources relating to Murray in more detail, producing a focused study that
documents his individual response to events of international and domestic
significance. A central aim of the thesis is to drill down further, draw out
Murrays views of Comintern strategy and determine the extent to which his
political thought was reflected in CPI policy and tactics. Furthermore, because it
extended beyond the dissolution of the Comintern, it is important to examine
Murrays career more holistically as an important subject within its
historiographic niche.
Another intriguing feature of Reds and the Green is its examination of the
role played by British (mainly Scottish) communists in the embryonic stages of
the first two CPIs. OConnor confirms Milottes suspicions that Moscow
instructed CPGB members such as Bob Stewart and Tom Bell to oversee
preparations for the second Irish communist party.105 London often acted as a
conduit for correspondence between Dublin and Moscow, and the Comintern
made decisions on Ireland normally on the advice of the Anglo-American
secretariat or a commission. OConnor views this as typical of Third Period
communism. Here, the Comintern offered precise instructions on slogans,
programmes, tactics, timing, and tone of statements through its British
intermediaries and made little allowance for the difficulties besetting its Irish
section.106 OConnor argues convincingly that the British party invariably
regarded Irish communists as subordinate to its own interests in Britain, or its
agenda on Ireland.107 Specifically, he singles out Harry Pollitt as the individual
who tried to jettison Irish communist efforts on more than one occasion. The
evidence OConnor presents in support of his claims is substantial, though he
may have benefited from the use of CPGB archives, catalogued by Kevin
Morgan in 1993/1994 and made readily available online in digital format. The

104

Ibid., pp. 166-188

Ibid., pp. 144-166
106
Ibid., p. 147
107
Ibid., p. 237
105

23

subject of CPI-CPGB relations awaits a definitive study. In this regard, the

thesis aims to build on Milotte and OConnors work. In particular, it traces the
development of Murrays association with the British communists and
documents his personal relationships with individuals such as Pollitt and
William Gallacher in the context of inter-party affairs.
Aside from Bowlers overview and a short biographical essay by OConnor in
the Dictionary of Labour Biography,108 the closest we have come to a full-length
study of Murrays public life is a relatively unknown piece by Belfast-based
historian Denis Smyth. Smyths work is more a romantic tribute to Murrays
politics than a critical examination of them, though he acknowledges the
shortcomings of his piece. Appositely, he notes that there is still an enormous
degree of research material, documentation and sources still to be tapped in
relation to Murray and the communist movement.109 This thesis utilises these
hitherto untapped or underutilised sources to examine in detail Murrays
writings and activities, producing an added perspective on the 1916-1962 period
in Irish politics and marking the first major step towards a comprehensive
political biography. It addresses the lacunae in existing literature and makes an
original contribution to the history of Irish socialist republicanism and
communism in an international context. More ambitiously, it engages with
theory and ideology, making the unique connection between Marxism-Leninism
and socialist republicanism, opening up the field of Irish labour history and
establishing the basis for future comparative studies.

108

Emmet OConnor, John (Sen) Murray in Keith Gildart, David Howell and Neville Kirk (eds.),
Dictionary of Labour Biography, Vol. XI (London, 2003)
109
Denis Smyth, Sean Murray, A Pilgrim of Hope: The Life and Times of an Irish Communist, 18981961 (Belfast, 1998), pp. 2-3

24

Chapter 1 - The Marxists on Ireland and National

Independence
The phenomenon of nationalism has been the subject of in-depth studies by a
number of Marxist scholars and scholars of Marxism.1 The volume of work on
the subject underscores its durability as a social and political force and unit of
analysis. One author notes that attempts by proponents of the left to develop a
cogent theory of nationalism have been thwarted by its chameleon qualities,
plus the fact that it is supported by many different social groups and has very
different political effects.2 Another famously observed that it is difficult to
eradicate such trends even in favourable circumstances and, ultimately, The
theory of nationalism represents Marxisms great failure.3 On one side of the
debate are a range of voices advocating a focus on material conditions and the
base as the determinant of all other relations, leading to the argument that
nationalism is an irrational, flawed and often reactionary ideology with which
Marxism has no cause to ally. Others advance a more holistic approach that
goes beyond economic reductionism and attaches greater weight to aspects of
the superstructure. Commentators describe these frameworks, in their most
acute versions, as economism and politicism respectively. The histories of
colonial countries in many ways represent the tension between the two schools
of thought. Their experiences introduce exceptions to the rule and ideological
currents that sit in binary opposition to the orthodox Marxist view of
modernisation and progress. Postcolonial theorists have attempted to transcend
this apparent dichotomy, but with limited success.
The celebrated founding fathers of Marxism, Marx and Engels, dealt with
colonial countries in their specific circumstances and in doing so bequeathed
valuable lessons to their successors. One sympathetic commentator has
suggested more generally that by 1917 Marxists had cumulatively arrived at
1

Horace B. Davis, Nationalism & Socialism: Marxist and Labor Theories of Nationalism to 1917, (New
York, 1967); Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford, 1983); Walker Connor, The National
Question in Marxist-Leninist Theory and Strategy (Princeton, 1984); Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and
Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge, 1990); Ephraim Nimni, Marxism and
Nationalism: Theoretical Origins of a Political Crisis (London, 1991); Berch Berberoglu (ed.), The
th
National Question: Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict and Self-Determination in the 20 Century
(Philadelphia, 1995); Michael Lwy, Fatherland or Mother Earth? Essays on the National Question
(London, 1998)
2
Ronaldo Munck, The Difficult Dialogue: Marxism and Nationalism (London, 1986), p. 1
3
Tom Nairn, The Break-Up of Britain: Crisis and Neo-Nationalism (London, 1977), pp. 220, 320

25

the essential elements of a sound theory of nation and nationality problems.4

This is a bold claim, certainly when viewed in the Irish context, but contains
some veracity nonetheless. It is possible within the maze of texts on the subject
to discern an evolution of ideas, from Marx and Engels, to the Second
International, Lenin and the Bolsheviks, and to Connolly. To position the works
of these authors in their specific historical contexts is to provide a point of
reference for assessing the contributions of Connolly and successive Irish
socialists. It is also important to sketch out Stalins contribution to theory and
assess the Cominterns capacity for spreading communism to countries outside
the CPSUs sphere of influence. Murrays political career is thus set against this
backdrop of contemporary international communism and placed within the
temporally longer current of Marxist thought on nationalism, colonialism and
imperialism in its different guises.
It is important to acknowledge at the outset the difficult task of connecting
doctrine, as discussed in this chapter and the next, with Murrays interpretation
of doctrine, as articulated in his political beliefs and activities. It is not always
apparent which texts or aspects of theory informed Murrays ideological outlook,
choices and actions. This is methodologically challenging, and leads to the thesis
adopting a number of assumptions about Murrays familiarity with the broad
theoretical principles outlined in these chapters, particularly with regard to the
central tenets of Marxism-Leninism, Stalinism and Connollyism. Throughout
the thesis, these themes vie for position and occasionally complement each other
in Murrays writings and activities, though one recognises that it is difficult to
make an explicit connection between classical theoretical texts and Murrays
political ideas in every instance.

Marx and Engels on Ireland

In his extensive survey of the literature on Ireland and Empire, Stephen Howe
readily dismisses the relevance of the 500-page collection of Marx and Engels
writings on the subject while at the same time quoting a young Engels to infer
upon him a low opinion of the Irish. There is something amiss with this
approach, particularly as it is not Howes aim to deal with Marx and Engels in

Davis, Nationalism & Socialism, Foreword

26

any detail.5 However, Howe inadvertently raises an important point: that Marx
and Engels initial focus was on Germany, France and England, the industrial
nucleus of Europe, and involved no particular affinity with Ireland. As the most
developed country in the world, England sat at the centre of Marxs early
writings. Indeed, he suggested that fate of the global working class depended on
a class-conscious English proletariat:
Of all countries, England is the one where the contradiction between the
proletariat and the bourgeoisie is most highly developed. The victory of
the English proletariats over the English bourgeoisie is, therefore,
decisive for the victory of all the oppressed over their oppressors. Hence
Poland must be liberated not in Poland but in England. So you Chartists
must not simply express pious wishes for the liberation of nations.
Defeat your own internal enemies and you will then be able to pride
yourselves on having defeated the entire old society.6
Marx anticipated that the Chartists, under the direction Feargus OConnor, an
Irishman, would lead the fight against the English capitalist class. Hence, he
argued that it was in the Irish workers interests to put their faith in this
movement. In January 1848, Engels lent his support to OConnor and explained
to the Irish that Daniel OConnell, that political juggler, led them by the nose
and deceived them for thirteen years by means of the word Repeal. Engels
favoured abandoning the Repeal Movement and creating an Irish Chartist
branch, through which the victory of the English democrats, and hence the
liberation of Ireland, will be hastened by many years.7 For him, as for Marx,
successful working-class agitation in England was a pre-requisite of Irish
independence. Yet, as Newsinger demonstrates, he was not opposed to Irish
nationalism in the early stages of his career.8 Rather, he reserved his strongest
criticisms for OConnells type of nationalism, which Jackson describes as an
early experiment in collaboration between a British government and the
Catholic elite.9

Stephen Howe, Ireland and Empire: Colonial Legacies in Irish History and Culture (Oxford, 2000), p.
73
6
Quoted in David Reed, Ireland: The Key to the British Revolution (London, 1984), pp. 4-5
7
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question (Moscow, 1971), pp. 59-60
8
John Newsinger, A great blow must be struck in Ireland: Karl Marx and the Fenians, Race &
Class, 24: 2 (1982), pp. 152-153
9
Alvin Jackson, Ireland, the Union, and the British Empire: 1800-1960 in Kevin Kenny (ed.), Ireland
and the British Empire (Oxford, 2004), p. 131

27

Engels experience of Manchesters factories and slums noticeably coloured

his early understanding of Irish conditions and view of the Irish as a subject
class. In The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, he described
the most deprived areas of London, where the Irish lived alongside the poorest
of the poor, the worst paid workers...with thieves and the victims of
prostitution. However, this paled in comparison to an area in Manchester
known as Little Ireland...the most horrible spot:
The cottages are old, dirty, and of the smallest sort, the streets uneven,
fallen into ruts and in part without drains or pavement; masses of refuse,
offal and sickening filth lie among standing pools in all directions; the
atmosphere is poisoned by the effluvia from these, and laden and
darkened by the smoke of a dozen tall factory chimneys. A horde of
ragged women and children swarm about here, as filthy as the swine
that thrive upon the garbage heaps and in the puddles. In short, the
whole rookery furnishes such a hateful and repulsive spectacle as can
hardly be equalled in the worst court in the Irk. The race that lives in
these ruinous cottages behind broken windows, mended with oilskin,
sprung doors, and rotten door-posts, or in dark, wet cellars, in
measureless filth and stench, in this atmosphere penned in as if with a
purpose, this race must really have reached the lowest stage of
humanity.10
Engels combined inferences of racial inferiority with genuine human sympathy
for Irish immigrants and an understanding of their origins. A reading of The
Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 finds that while he
attributed aspects of Irish underdevelopment to an inherent primitiveness, he
also drew attention to the destructive role of the English landlord and
middleman classes. Tellingly, he ascribed the agricultural proletariat label to
the Irish peasantry, a luxury he did not afford its Russian equivalent. He based
the notion that the uneducated Irish must see in the English their worst
enemies; and their first hope of improvement in the conquest of national
independence11 on a misreading of Irish working-class immigrant attitudes
towards their English counterparts. Nonetheless, aspects of Engels early work
indicated that he was open to Irish exceptionalism from his and Marxs analyses
of Europe.

10
11

Marx and Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question, p. 48

Ibid., pp. 52-53

28

John Rodden points to a number of critical errors that pervaded Marx and
Engels early writings on Ireland. These he lists as: the assumption that the
industrial and agricultural proletariats had identical attitudes and hopes; an
underestimation of tensions between labourers and tenant farmers; an
exaggeration of the level of hostility towards Anglo-Irish Protestant landlords;
and assigning religion a secondary role to economics.12 As evidenced by authors
such as Paul Bew, there was most definitely antagonism between the
agricultural labourers and tenant farmers.13 In spite of this, Marx and Engels
neglect of the issue was not necessarily to the detriment of their work on
landlordism, which justifiably formed a large component of their prose on
Ireland. As for the bulk of Roddens assessment, there is no doubt that their
initial focus on economics caused them to ignore religion and other aspects of
the superstructure. In Walker Connors words, Marx and Engels early writings
slight the importance of psychological, cultural and historical elements,
andunderestimate the magnetic pull exerted by the ethnic group.14
In 1848, the year of The Communist Manifestos publication, revolutions
spread across the continent. Conflagrations in Vienna, Berlin, Prague and
numerous other European cities followed a February uprising in Paris.
However, as Marx later remarked, these events concluded with fire-balls,
massacres on a grand scale and deportations.15 Most judicious historians
recognise the limitations of these revolutions and accept that a number of
reversals took place over the subsequent decade. England failed to live up to
Marx and Engels expectations, with the Chartists political strength and
workers militancy proving as ephemeral as capitalist structures were resilient.
Meanwhile, the Young Irelanders were coming to terms with their failed
uprising. John Mitchel surmised that no rebellion could succeed in Ireland while
England was at peace.16 Events confounded the prediction of mass Irish support
for the Chartists; and despite its radical agrarian composition, the Irish
Confederation could not prevent Irish labourists and nationalists from parting

12

John Rodden, The lever must be applied in Ireland: Marx, Engels, and the Irish Question, The
Review of Politics, 70: 4 (2008), pp. 616-619
13
Paul Bew, Land and the National Question in Ireland (Dublin, 1979)
14
Connor, The National Question in Marxist-Leninist Theory and Strategy, p. 8
15
Quoted in Sen Cronin, Marx and the Irish Question (Dublin, 1977), p. 17
16
Ibid., p. 18

29

ways in 1849/50.17 This period marked the emergence of new nationalisms

across Europe and represented an epiphany of sorts for Marx and Engels. It
prompted Marx to write a series of articles on the role of the state, collated and
published as The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, which established
him as a social and political historian. Avineri goes as far as to describe Marxs
analyses of nationalism in terms of distinct pre-1848 pre-modern and post-1848
bourgeois paradigms. Though probably too simplistic, this alludes to an
important shift in emphasis.18 Marx and Engels added to and combined with the
materialist view of history expounded in The German Ideology and the
Manifesto an analysis of the myriad factors that shaped ever-changing
nationalist beliefs.
Marx and Engels writings in the 1840s were appreciative of the
modernising effect of colonialism on underdeveloped countries such as Ireland
and India. By extension, they gave credence to the self-justifying civilising
missions undertaken by the largest European empires in the non-European
world. The gravity of their Eurocentrism and belief in the existence of an
Asiatic mode of production are subject to debate. One influential economist
identifies these tendencies in later works such as Capital, arguing in the Indian
context that they do not contradict any of Marx and Engels overarching
analyses of British capitalism.19 A key point upon which many authors agree is
that despite their developmental differences, Ireland and India shared a
connection by virtue of the British economy, through which the two countries
were

integrated

into

an

interdependent

world.

Ian

Cummins

argues

compellingly that Marx and Engels interest in India and Ireland prompted a
reconsideration of colonialism as a progressive enterprise.20 Coupled with this
was the awakening of nationalisms in the non-European world. The Taiping
Rebellion in China (1850-1864) and uprising against the East Indian Company
in 1857 feature heavily in Marxs writings and point to a reappraisal of
colonialism and anti-colonialism in the 1850s.

17

Emmet OConnor, A Labour History of Ireland, 1824-2000 (Dublin, 2011), pp. 27-30
Shlomo Avineri, Marxism and Nationalism, Journal of Contemporary History, 26: 3/4 (1991), p.
639
19
Anthony Brewer, Marxist Theories of Imperialism: A Critical Survey (London, 1980), pp. 39-59
20
Ian Cummins, Marx, Engels and National Movements (London, 1980), pp. 55-77
18

30

In the case of Ireland, Marxs change in attitude was less equivocal. In June
1853, writing from London, he related that the debilitating effects of British rule
outweighed its progressive features: England has subverted the conditions of
Irish society. At first it confiscated the land, then it suppressed the industry by
Parliamentary enactments, and lastly, it broke the active energy by armed
force.21 On his first visit to Ireland in 1856, Engels found Marxs analysis to be
accurate:
The country was completely ruined by the English wars of conquest from
1100 to 1850 (for in reality both the wars and the state of siege lasted as
long as that). It has been established as a fact that most of the ruins
were produced by destruction during the wars. The people itself has got
its peculiar character from this, and for all their national Irish
fanaticism the fellows feel that they are no longer at home in their own
country. Ireland for the Saxon! That is now being realised.22
Engels referred to Ireland as Englands first colony and observed that the socalled liberty of English citizens is based on the oppression of the colonies.23 He
began to question the wisdom of his earlier contention that the Irish revolution
depended on the English working class. Furthermore, he now saw the English
proletariat displaying all the characteristics of a bourgeois proletariat under
the corruptible influence of colonialism. For a nation which exploits the whole
world, Engels wrote, this seemed to a certain extent justifiable. Yet it served to
weaken the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and
cause a split in the proletariat along national lines, between the English
working class and Irish migrant workers in particular.24
According to his biographer, Tristram Hunt, the two decades that Engels
spent with the Burns sisters contributed to the shift away from the crass, racial
caricature of the Irish that pervaded The Condition of the Working Class in
England. His attraction to Lizzy Burns stemmed partly from her genuine Irish
revolutionary blood and passionate feelings for her class. Most importantly, he
visited Ireland on two more occasions and filled fifteen notebooks on the
countrys economics, culture, geography, politics and laws with the aim of

21

Marx and Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question, p. 71

Ibid., p. 84
23
Ibid., p. 83
24
Quoted in Jie-Hyun Lim, Marxs Theory of Imperialism and the Irish National Question, Science &
Society, Vol. 56., No. 2 (Summer 1992), p. 167
22

31

producing a general history. An emotional subtext also crept into Marxs work
on Ireland, strengthened by his daughters interest in the country and their
close attachment to auntie Lizzy.25 However, these details do not devalue the
structural concepts that the two thinkers employed with relative consistency.
Nor should it obscure their interest in Ireland in the international context, with
the conservative Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires in a state of gradual
decay and British capitalist colonialism emerging as a subject that demanded
their attention.
For Marx and Engels, the history of Poland illustrated the tension between
the liberalism and constitutionalism of the French Revolution on the one hand,
and the reactionary disposition of conservative Europe, as represented by
Russian Tsarism, on the other. This historical antagonism amounted to the
ratio, as it were, between progression and retrogression.26 Thus while Britain
embraced specific elements of the French Revolution, it also continued to
display retrogressive characteristics. Marx often pointed to the similarities in
English and Russian methods of national oppression and even characterised the
reaction to the 1848 revolutions as Europes relapse into its old double slavery,
the Anglo-Russian slavery.27 The parallels between Ireland and Poland are
scattered across Marx and Engels writings and the literature dealing with
Marxist interpretations of nationalism. But most interesting are the passages
alluding to the growing interdependence between the two nations and
attributing to them a progressive role in the grand schema. For example, at an
1848 commemoration of the Cracow Revolution, Marx said:
The Cracow revolution has given a glorious example to the whole of
Europe, by identifying the national cause with the democratic cause and
the emancipation of the oppressed class. It sees the confirmation of
these principles in Ireland, where the narrowly nationalist party has
gone to its grave with OConnell, and where the new national party is
above all reforming and democratic.28
It is important to note this early distinction between nationalisms, which
demonstrates that Engels was not alone in delivering a dim assessment of
25

Tristram Hunt, The Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels (London,
2009), p. 230-232
26
Solomon F. Bloom, The World of Nations: A Study in the National Implications in the Work of Karl
Marx (New York, 1941), pp. 44-45
27
Quoted in Cummins, Marx, Engels and National Movements, p. 105
28
Marx and Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question, p. 61

32

OConnells Repeal Association. However, it was not until The Age of Capital29
began in earnest that Marx and Engels elevated progressive national
movements as part of a broadly anti-colonial outlook.
Sen Swan argues that it was significant for Engels to have excluded
Ireland from his strongly Hegelian definition of non-historic nations, offering as
a possible explanation the revolutionary European content of the 1848 Young
Ireland rebellion.30 Nimnis thorough discussion of the subject concludes that
although they may not have stated so explicitly, Marx and Engels regarded
Ireland and Poland as historical nations and potential agents of historical
transformation. He attributes equal levels of guilt to Marx and Engels for using
racially

derogatory

language

towards

non-European

nationalisms

and

counteracts the suggestion by some authors that we ought to ignore such

statements. Less convincing is Nimnis attempt to brush aside criticisms of the
essentialist notions that led Engels to reject the Southern Slavs quest for
national independence, give preferable treatment to the larger territorial units
and seemingly justify colonial oppression in cases where the smaller nation did
not fit in with his rather instrumental assessments in the context of the socialist
project. Nimni underestimates the cultural and ethnic character of nationalisms
in

underdeveloped

countries

and

drifts

towards

the

same

economic

reductionism. In spite of this weakness, Nimnis is a sophisticated evaluation of

the Irish and Polish nations from a Marxist perspective. He alludes to Marx
and

Engels

piecemeal

formulation of

the

principle of

national

self-

determination whilst giving systematic and theoretical expression to Marx and

Engels writings on Ireland.31 Crucially, he notes that even when one employs
the most rigorous economic criteria, one can discern a level of consistency and
objectivity in their approach:
The emergence of every national stateis indissolubly linked with the
universalisation of the capitalist mode of production and the hegemony of
the bourgeoisie. The viability or otherwise of every national state is
tested against this fundamental theoretical assumption.32

29

E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 1848-1875 (New York, 1975)

Sen Swan, Official Irish Republicanism, 1962 to 1972 (UK, 2007), pp. 43-47
31
Nimni, Marxism and Nationalism, pp. 33-39
32
Ibid., p. 34
30

33

Marx and Engels, then, came round to the idea that national independence
could bring about the transition from semi-feudalism to functioning bourgeois
capitalist democracy in Ireland and Poland. This opened the door for explicit
support for Irish anti-colonial agitation, particularly if it helped to inspire
similar movements elsewhere and release the metropolitan working class for
participation in social struggles.
As the 1850s progressed, Marx turned his attention to Irish agricultural
development.33 A lull in political violence and the patently destructive
consequences of the Famine played a part in bringing land to the forefront of his
mind. In anticipation of the chapter devoted to Ireland in Capital, Marx noted
that as the Irish Brigade enjoyed the political and financial privileges bestowed
upon them by Westminster, they let pass the radical transformation of Irish
society through policies devised in London. In the course of this revolution,
Marx observed in March 1855, the Irish agricultural system is being replaced by
the English system, the system of small tenures by big tenures, and the modern
capitalist is taking the place of the old landowner.34 The Encumbered Estates
Act (1849) was central to this process. It compelled the sale of uneconomic land
by mainly absentee landlords, recruited a new reviled landowning class from
native and nativised middlemen, and gave the issue of tenant rights added
political importance. In 1858 Marx alluded to the intersection of agrarian
radicalism, internal class dynamics and Irelands economic relationship with
England:
The landlords of Ireland are confederated for a fiendish war of
extermination against the cotiers; or, as they call it, they combine for the
economical experiment of clearing the land of useless mouths. The small
native tenants are to be disposed of with no more ado than vermin is by
the housemaid. The despairing wretches, on their part, attempt a feeble
resistance by the formation of secret societies, scattered over the land,
and powerless for effecting anything beyond demonstrations of individual
vengeance.35

33

Linda Moore, The National Question in Ireland: A Morphology of Marxist Interpretations

(Doctoral thesis, University of Ulster, 1991), p. 95
34
Marx and Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question, p. 86
35
Quoted in Peter Berresford Ellis, A History of the Irish Working Class (Second Edition) (London,
1985), p. 125

34

More explicitly, Engels lamented the destruction of the predominantly, almost

exclusively, Celtic character of the population through emigration,36 and
famously wrote that Every time Ireland was about to develop industrially, she
was crushed and reconverted into a purely agricultural land.37 However, both
authors failed to make the obvious connection with the burgeoning political
activities of the Fenian movement, which Marx mistakenly referred to as a
mere invention of Orangeism.38 As far as he and Engels were concerned, the
prospects for radical political progress were bleak.
There are grounds for arguing, as Ronaldo Munck does, that 1867 marked
an Irish turn in Marx and Engels correspondence and writings.39 Yet it is more
accurate to look upon aspects of the first volume of Capital, for example, as an
elaboration of Marxs earlier observations on Irish social, economic and political
conditions. Continuing in a similar vein to the late 1850s, he described the
deterioration of the Irish peasantry under English rule and rejected the
Malthusian view of the Famine:
Here, then, under our own eyes and on a large scale, a process is
revealed, than which nothing more excellent could be wished for by
orthodox economy for the support of its dogma: that misery springs from
absolute surplus-population, and that equilibrium is re-established by
depopulation. The Irish famine of 1846 killed more than 1,000,000
people, but it killed poor devils only. To the wealth of the country it did
not the slightest damage.40
A revealing letter to August Vogt in 1870 developed this point further:
[The English bourgeoisie] has in the first place a common interest with
the English aristocracy in turning Ireland into a mere pasture land
which provides the English market with meat and wool at the cheapest
possible prices. It is equally interested in reducing, by eviction and
forcible emigration, the Irish population to such a small number that
English capital (capital invested in land leased for farming) can function
there with security. It has the same interest in clearing the estates of

36

Marx and Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question, p. 94

Ibid., p. 132
38
Ibid., p. 100
39
Ronaldo Munck, Marxism and nationalism in the era of globalization, Capital & Class, 34 (1)
(February 2010), p. 46
40
Marx and Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question, pp. 116-117
37

35

Ireland as it had in clearing the agricultural districts of England and

Scotland.41
It is an exaggeration to suggest that Marx developed his theory of imperialism
in relation to Ireland,42 principally because he published no such theory, but
also because India presented a more appropriate case study. Bew et al. make
the incisive point that Marx and Engels conception of imperialism amounted to
a deliberately ambiguous critique of British foreign policy, markedly different
from the theories developed by latter-day Marxists.43 By definition, however, the
phenomenon that Marx deals with here, and in chapter 25 of Capital, is a
variant of imperialism in the early capitalist epoch.44 In Marx and Engels
estimation, the Irish economy was reorganised according to the needs of English
capitalism. Irish agriculture provided cheap raw materials, while depopulation
and emigration cleared the land for the enterprises of the English elite and
created a reserve army of labour for the English industrial economy. In modern
economic parlance, these arguments represent the articulation of a dependency
theory exposition of the relationship between England and Ireland.45
In a November 1867 letter to Engels, Marx revealed his confidence in
Ireland as an agent of change: Previously I thought Irelands separation from
England impossible. Now I think it inevitable, although after separation there
may come federation.46 Following this, he convinced the International
Workingmens Association (IWA) general council to call for the English
authorities to spare the lives of three Fenian prisoners in Manchester. In spite
of this intervention, the executions of William Allen, Michael Larkin and
Michael OBrien, who had killed a prison guard in the course of an attempted
rescue operation, proceeded as planned. Hunt again emphasises an emotional
attachment to Irish nationalism, noting that the Marx and Engels households
received the deaths with a period of mourning.47 There is little doubt that the
41

Ibid., p. 293
Anthony Coughlan, Irelands Marxist Historians in Ciaran Brady (ed.), Interpreting Irish History:
The Debates on Historical Revisionism (Dublin, 1994), pp. 291-292
43
Paul Bew, Peter Gibbon and Henry Patterson, The State in Northern Ireland, 1921-1972: Political
Forces and Social Classes (Manchester, 1979), p. 21
44
For some of the important distinctions involved in the use of colonialism and imperialism in
Marxs era, see: Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism (Second Edition) (Oxford, 2005), pp. 8-12
45
Ronaldo Munck, The Irish Economy: Results and Prospects (London, 1993); Denis OHearn, The
Atlantic Economy: Britain, the US and Ireland (Manchester, 2001)
46
Marx and Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question, p. 153
47
Hunt, The Frock-Coated Communist, p. 235
42

36

Fenian rebellion had a profound impact on them. However, it is impossible to

understand their sympathy for Irish nationalism in isolation from their
commentary on the countrys socio-economic conditions in 1867 and throughout
the First International period.
Treating land as the the exclusive form of the social question and a matter
of existence for the majority of Irish people, Marx now argued that agrarian
unrest was inseparable from the national question.48 Marx and Engels were
drawn to Fenianism in particular because the movement had its roots in the
dispossessed, not in the clergy, aristocracy or the political class the upper
rungs of Irish society.49 Marx recommended greater levels of class struggling
activity, but conceded the possibility of independence preceding a social
revolution. His prescription for Ireland was:
1. Self-government and independence from England.
2. An agrarian revolution. With the best intentions in the world the
English cannot accomplish this for them, but they can give them the
legal means for accomplishing it themselves.
3. Protective tariffs against England.50
Whereas he previously believed that the fate of the Irish revolution lay in the
English working class assuming power, Marx now argued the opposite:
The English working class will never accomplish anything before it has
got rid of Ireland. The lever must be applied in Ireland. That is why the
Irish question is so important for the social movement in general.51
Marx followed this with a reference to Ireland as the British Empires
weakest point.52 Rodden argues succinctly that they arrived at the notion that
the industrial and agricultural proletariats of England and Ireland shared the
English capitalist class as their main enemy.53 Yet there remained the task of
reconciling support for national liberation with their prediction of an impending
international socialist upheaval. To resolve this apparent contradiction,
48

Marx and Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question, p. 293

Kevin B. Anderson, Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies
(Chicago, 2010), pp. 130-131
50
Marx and Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question, p. 158 (emphasis in original)
51
Quoted in Anderson, Marx at the Margins, p. 144
52
Marx and Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question, p. 404
53
Rodden, The lever must be applied in Ireland, pp. 629-630
49

37

Berberoglu distinguishes between oppressor and oppressed nations in class

terms.

He

contends

that

anti-colonial

struggles

are

an

international

manifestation of the exploitative relations between two contending classes

within a national territory.54 Jie-Hyun Lim presents the dilemma more
dialectically, reaching a similar conclusion. His assessment is that Marx and
Engels conceded the principle of national self-determination in a rudimentary
way and only barely saw the intrinsic value of Irish independence.55 Certainly,
there is nothing in Marx or Engels writings that lends unconditional support to
all Irish nationalist formations.
Marx and Engels support for Fenianism was not without reservation. They
described a 1867 bomb at Clerkenwell prison in London as a stupid act carried
out by asses and expressed in strong terms the opinion that the English
proletariat could not be expected to allow themselves and their countrymen to
be attacked for the Irish cause.56 In spite of this, they maintained that Ireland
satisfied certain revolutionary conditions upon which support for Fenianism
depended.

Addressing

the

IWA

general

council

in

his

confidential

communication of 1870, Marx argued that Ireland was the best place to weaken
the bulwark of landlordism and European capitalism and stir the English
working class into action, for the latter lacked the spirit of generalisation and
revolutionary fervour.57 Meanwhile, he informed August Vogt of his belief that it
was the duty of the First International to mobilise support for Ireland and
the special task of the Central Council in London to awaken a
consciousness in the English workers that for them the national
emancipation of Ireland is no question of abstract justice or
humanitarian sentiment, but the first condition of their own social
emancipation.58

54

Munck, Marxism and nationalism in the era of globalization, p. 46; Berch Berberoglu,
Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict and Class Struggle: A Critical Analysis of Mainstream and Marxist
Theories of National and National Movements, Critical Sociology, Vol. 26, No. 3 (2000), p. 221
55
Lim, Marxs Theory of Imperialism and the Irish National Question, p. 170
56
Marx and Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question, p. 159
57
Ibid., p. 253
58
Ibid., p. 294

38

Ultimately, in lieu of an immediate social revolution, the minimum objective

was to transform the present forced union (i.e. the enslavement of Ireland) into
equal and free confederation if possible, into complete separation if need be.59
The apparent failure of the 1867 rebellion did little initially to quell Marxs
enthusiasm for Irish independence. He wrote frequently on the subject into the
mid-1870s and his close friend Fred, daughters Laura and Jenny, and the IWA
general council all provided channels through which he asserted sympathy for
the Irish cause.60 In July 1871, Marx proposed the Fenian journalist J.P.
McDonnell as secretary of the First International, which quickly established
branches in the big cities of Ireland.61 Engels was likewise upbeat regarding the
prospect of a successful upheaval in Ireland. He too persevered with the
supposition that an Irish independence movement containing a strong radical
agrarian presence could ignite a revolution in England. It is evident that in
November 1872, after witnessing in London a mass demonstration of the Irish
members of the International, demanding an amnesty for Fenian prisoners, he
felt the tide had begun to turn. English and Irish elements of the working class,
whose enmity towards each other was so much in the interests of the
government and wealthy classes, are now offering one another the hand of
friendship, Engels remarked with optimism.62 Yet by 1874 the Fenian
movement existed in a fragmented state only. Its leading figures were in prison,
en route to Van Diemens Land, or had emigrated elsewhere. Violent
insurrection held no prospect of success. The collapse of the Paris Commune and
dissolution of the First International compounded this disappointing turn of
events and precipitated a demotion of the Irish question in Marx and Engels
later works. Engels failed to complete his history of Ireland, and research on
the second and third instalments of Capital consumed the last decade of Marxs
life, along with his debate with Lasalle and the German Social Democratic Party
(SPD).63

59

Ibid., p. 255
By this point Jenny had begun to contribute articles on the Fenian prisoners and the landlord
system in Ireland: Ibid., pp. 496-522
61
OConnor, A Labour History of Ireland, p. 46
62
Marx and Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question, pp. 424-425
63
Critique of the Gotha Programme in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 24:
1874-83 (London, 1989), pp. 75-99
60

39

Marx died in 1883, three years before Gladstone brought the first Home
Rule Bill before the House of Commons. However, his last thoughts on Ireland,
disclosed in an 1881 letter to his daughter Jenny, show that he appreciated the
growing appeal of Home Rule and a general desire for land reform:
The real intricacies of the Irish land problem which indeed are not
especially Irish are so great that the only true way to solve it would be
to give the Irish Home Rule and thus force them to solve it themselves.
But John Bull is too stupid to understand this.64
Similarly, Engels became convinced that the emergence of the compact national
Home Rulers, supported by widespread land agitation, had thrown the English
political system into confusion, which augured well for the establishment of a
form of Irish independence.65 He poured cold water on the efficacy of renewed
Fenian violence and unwittingly forecast events that would accompany the
Easter Rising some thirty years later:
Though he grows noticeably weaker on the outskirts of the Empire,
[England] can still easily suppress any Irish rebellion so close to
home.Without war or the threat of war from without, an Irish rebellion
has not the slightest chance.66
But while the methods for gaining independence were not beyond reproach, they
did not affect the final analysis. Hence Engels approximated his and Marxs
view of Ireland in an 1882 letter to Kautsky: I hold the view that two nations in
Europe have not only the right but even the duty to be nationalistic before they
become

internationalistic:

the

Irish

and

the

Poles.

They

are

most

internationalistic when they are nationalistic.67

John Newsinger underlines two main limitations pertaining to Marx and
Engels treatment of the Irish question. The first is that they exaggerated the
impact that the defeat of landlordism in Ireland would have on the English
bourgeoisie. This is true to an extent, though the statements above suggest that
the founding fathers gradually came to an understanding of the transformative
effect that the Land Acts would have in Ireland without necessarily exciting
class relations in England. Newsingers second point Marx and Engels

64

Marx and Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question, p. 448

Ibid., p. 428
66
Ibid., pp. 453-454
67
Ibid., pp. 449-450
65

40

underestimated the reformist and nationalist character of the English working

class is of greater critical value. This argument holds that Irish immigration
and colonialism are not sufficient explanations for the lack of revolutionary
activity in England. Instead, one should account for the development of the
English working class throughout the first half of the nineteenth century.68
Marx and Engels accurately presented anti-colonialism as a means of
destabilising the British Empire and English capitalism. What they failed to do,
however, was to make the connection between this and the class-consciousness
of the English proletariat. A third criticism, not addressed by Newsinger, is that
Marx and Engels failed to deal with Irish urban workers in any detail. Marx is
less culpable here because he died before the industrial working class gained
significance outside Belfast. But while Engels took the time to propose an
alliance of the industrial proletariat and small peasants in France and
Germany, he made no corresponding recommendation in the Irish context.69 It is
befitting that Irish agriculture occupied a prominent position in both authors
writings in the 1860s and 1870s. This notwithstanding, Engels should have
discerned the development of class contradictions in Belfast and Dublin as the
century entered its final quarter.
It can be said with some confidence that Marx and Engels paid inadequate
attention to superstructural dimensions of Irish society, such as religion.
Excepting Engels description of Ireland as the sacra insula, whose aspirations
must on no account be mixed up with the profane class struggles of the rest of
the sinful world,70 neither he nor Marx comprehended the full extent of
religious conviction and animosity. Marx wrote that Once the Irish church is
dead, the Protestant Irish tenants in the province of Ulster will unite with the
Catholic tenants in the three other provinces of Ireland and join with their
movement.71 This was a fundamental error of judgement and it exhibits a lack
of clarity on religion and the place of Ulster Protestants in his vision of an
independent Ireland.

68

Newsinger, A great blow must be struck in Ireland, p. 165

The Peasant Question in France and Germany [1894/1895] in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels,
Collected Works, Vol. 27: 1890-95 (London, 1990), pp. 481-502
70
Quoted in Rodden, The lever must be applied in Ireland, p. 632
71
Quoted in Cummins, Marx, Engels and National Movements, p. 116
69

41

Bew et al. afford Marx the excuse that he died before Protestant opposition
to any form of united Ireland had become completely clear.72 As Anthony
Coughlan notes, this is rather a moot point as for thirty years Unionist
opposition was to separation of Ireland from England and not to unity.73 Bew
presents a more cogent explanation of the rise of Ulster Unionism in a later
work:
The development under OConnell of a form of Catholic nationalism
which disregarded the concerns of Protestant liberals; the dramatic
industrialisation of Belfast, locked into a Belfast-Glasgow-Liverpool
triangle of economic interconnectedness which contrasted with the
relative weakening of economic links with the rest of the country; and
last but not least, the willingness of the British state until, at least, the
1880s to regard the Protestants as a potential garrison against Catholic
revolt: more positively, the removal of the various grievances affecting
Dissenting congregations throughout the nineteenth century further
integrated Ulster within the rest of the United Kingdom.74
From their research, Marx and Engels ought to have detected signs of this
highly significant rupture from the dominant strain of public opinion across the
island. Most astonishing is that they both seemed oblivious to the uneven
development of capitalism in Ireland, the expansion of Belfast as an industrial
city, and the political implications of these changes. Consequently, their work on
Ireland raised a number of problems, the predominantly Protestant industrial
north-east being an especially difficult one for future generations of Irish
socialists and republicans to solve. Despite these shortcomings, their interest in
Ireland allowed them to formulate what Lim calls the multilinear conception of
historical development in colonial countries and contribute to a theory of
imperialism.75

Lenin and the Bolsheviks

According to Sanjay Seth, who has written extensively on the subject, Lenin was
the theorist to do most to bring about the colonial and semi-colonial countries
within the theoretical and political ambit of Marxism.76 Lenins stake in

72

Bew et al., The State in Northern Ireland, p. 2

Coughlan, Irelands Marxist Historians, p. 304
74
Paul Bew, Ireland: The Politics of Enmity, 1798-2006 (Oxford, 2007), p. 369
75
Lim, Marxs Theory of Imperialism and the Irish National Question, p. 177
76
Sanjay Seth, Lenins Reformulation of Marxism: The Colonial Question as a National Question,
History of Political Thought, 13: 1 (1992), p. 111
73

42

understanding nationalism was twofold. Firstly, the limited 1905 Revolution,

which signalled the inevitable collapse of Tsarism, prompted Lenin to consider
the possible implications of the small Russian nationalities staking their claim
for independence. Secondly, the anti-colonial struggles emerging in Asia and the
rest of the non-European world had a significant bearing on his formulations on
imperialism. Hence, in 1913 he wrote: Hundreds of millions of the downtrodden
and benighted have awakened from mediaeval stagnation to a new life and are
rising to fight for elementary human rights and democracy.77 For Ireland, which
in Lloyds words is geographically of Western Europe though marginal to it and
historically

of

the

decolonising

world,78

these

developments

were

of

fundamental practical and theoretical significance.

The issue of national self-determination was on the agenda as early as 1896,
at a London congress of the Second International. The occasion produced the
following resolution:
The Congress proclaims the full right to self-determination of all nations;
and it expresses sympathy to the workers of all countries at present
suffering beneath the yoke of military, national or any other kind of
absolutism; the Congress calls on the workers of these countries to join
the ranks of the conscious workers of the whole world, in order to
struggle beside them to defeat international capitalism and attain the
goals of international social-democracy.79
Here we can identify the dialectical notion of self-determination that Lim
advances in connection with Marx and Engels writings. The resolution
contained two distinct, yet interrelated propositions that led to national
liberation and proletarian internationalism. It is the earliest indication that
Lenins natural inclination was to see national movements as tactically
important. Marx and Engels foregoing analyses almost wholly informed this
stance. It was also, at least in part, an impetuous reaction to the ushering in of
the imperialist era. Lenins theories of self-determination and imperialism were
some years in the making.

77

V.I. Lenin, National Liberation Movement in the East (Moscow, 1976), p. 80

David Lloyd, Anomalous States: Irish Writing and the Post-Colonial Movement (Dublin, 1993), pp.
2-3
79
Quoted in Moore, The National Question in Ireland, pp. 49-50
78

43

Lenins survey of Russian society, The Development of Capitalism in Russia

(1899), established him as a Marxist economic historian and theorist. In this
text, he described a decaying semi-feudalism and identified the various
capitalist characteristics that the predominantly agrarian Russian economy had
assumed. Most notably, he built on Engels tentative description of an
agricultural proletariat to give emphasis to class antagonisms between a
nascent rural labouring class and the landowning bourgeoisie. However, as he
subsequently elaborated in Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic
Revolution, Russia continued to suffer from the insufficient development of
capitalism.80 Keeping within the parameters of historical materialism, Lenin
insisted that The transformation of the economic and political system in Russia
along bourgeois-democratic lines is inevitable and inescapable.81 This
bourgeois-democratic epoch, he anticipated, would lay the capitalist foundations
that were so important in growing the numbers and developing the
revolutionary character of the working class. He reserved a leading role for the
peasantry and industrial workers in the struggle for democracy in order to
maximise favourable conditions for the ensuing socialist revolution, while
remaining unequivocal about the necessity of the democratic revolution in the
immediate term. The peasantry in particular had an important role to fulfil in
the elimination of Russias feudal remnants because it constituted the majority
of the population and because Tsarism drew its strength from the countryside.
Lenin repeated these arguments at regular intervals and with methodological
purpose, dismissing what he described as Narodnik and anarchist gibberish on
the possibility of bypassing of the capitalist stage of history.82 Aptly named, Two
Tactics also introduced to the gamut of Marxist philosophy a then unrivalled
level of pragmatism and tactical awareness. Lenin did not quite present a two
stages or stageist theory of revolution at this juncture. He was most concerned
with the uneven development of national economies in the context of the global
transition to The Age of Empire,83 and, in fact, he had reservations about the
capacity of the Russian bourgeoisie to complete the bourgeois revolution, which
chimed with sections of Trotskys 1905 and Results and Prospects.

80

V.I. Lenin, Selected Works: A One-Volume Selection of Lenins Most Essential Writings (London,
1969), p. 76
81
Ibid., p. 81
82
Ibid., p. 76
83
E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire: 1875-1914 (New York, 1987)

44

In 1913, Lenin commissioned an exploration of nationalism and existing

studies of the subject. He purposely chose a young Joseph Stalin, of Georgian
heritage, to conduct the research and produce a hypothesis upon which the
Second International could build. Stalins Marxism and the National Question is
one of a series of his articles published in the early twentieth century and
deserves serious treatment as a Marxist exposition of nationalism. In this essay,
he laid out the criteria that for him distinguished nation from non-nation: A
nation is a historically evolved, stable community of language, territory,
economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a community of culture.
Stalin agreed that like any other historical phenomenon a nation would be
subject to the law of change. In theory, however, it was sufficient for a single
one of these characteristics to be absent and the nation ceases to be a nation.84
As a case in point, Stalin denied the Jewish claims to nationhood, arguing that
they only had common religion as a point of reference. He did not regard this
connection as more powerful than the living social, economic and cultural
environment that surrounded them.85
There is no evidence that Lenin publicly endorsed Stalins objective
definition of nation. The fact that Lenin never explicitly produced his own
definition makes it difficult to make a suitable comparison. However, in light of
a recent and informed analysis of Stalins career, one can accept the proposition
that Lenin concurred with the application of this criteria, if not the result. For
example, Lenin was just as eager to deny the legitimacy of the Bunds claims to
nationality.86 It is also widely claimed that Lenin was a ghostwriter for Marxism
and the National Question. There is little evidence to suggest that this was the
case, though he did contribute to drafts of the publication and tacitly agreed
with Stalin on the fundamental solution.87 Their interpretative differences only
became apparent as Lenin entered the final years of his life. Meanwhile, the
onset of the imperialist war stopped the Second International and the socialist
parties of Europe in their tracks. In Germany, where the SPD was

84

Joseph Stalin, Marxism and the National and Colonial Question: A Collection of Articles and
Speeches (London, 1936), p. 8
85
Ibid., p. 10
86
Robert Service, Stalin: A Biography (Basingstoke, 2004), pp. 100-101
87
Ibid., p. 96

45

unquestionably the best organised socialist party in Europe,88 the decision by

party members to vote for the war credits created a domino effect across Europe.
This crisis in working-class politics prompted Lenin to place the threat of
imperialism at the centre of his theses on self-determination and the role of
nations in the international revolution.
In The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination
(1916), Lenin made clear that the principles of socialism upheld the right of
nations to break free from their colonial oppressors:
Victorious socialism must necessarily establish a full democracy and,
consequently, not only introduce full equality of nations but also realise
the right of the oppressed nations to self-determination, i.e., the right to
free political separation.89
Lenin began to challenge the orthodox Marxist view espoused by Kautsky and
his supporters, which viewed colonialism as progressive insofar as it implanted
capitalism.90 Concentrating on the imperialist epoch and on Kautsky, he
rejected annexation and any defence of the war on the reactionary principle of
faith and fatherland, which he believed led to an avoidance of the very
question of the frontiers of a state forcefully retaining under-privileged nations
within its bounds, etc.91 Earlier, in 1914, he commented that One cannot be
national in an imperialist war otherwise than by being a socialist politician i.e.
by recognising the right of oppressed nations to liberation, to secession from the
Great Powers that oppress them.92 Ultimately, it was not enough for the
working class to sever ties with its national bourgeoisie. From the socialists of
imperialist nations, the situation demanded active support for national selfdetermination and opposition to war. This, he argued, would remove mistrust
among the proletarians of the oppressor and oppressed nations, [which] makes
for a united international struggle for the socialist revolution.93

88

Donald Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism: The West European Left in the Twentieth
Century (London, 1996), p. 11
89
Lenin, Selected Works, p. 157
90
See Jules Townshend, The Politics of Marxism: The Critical Debates (London, 1996), Chapter 7, for
the Lenin-Kautsky debate in more detail
91
Lenin, Selected Works, p. 164
92
Quoted in Munck, The Difficult Dialogue, p. 37
93
The Question of Peace (1915), quoted in Seth, Lenins Reformulation of Marxism, p. 118

46

In his seminal Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), Lenin

deemed the contradictions of capitalism to have reached a zenith. From out of
the most advanced nations, Lenin wrote, capital has outgrown the bounds of
national states, has replaced competition by monopoly and has created all the
objectives for the achievement of socialism.94 This effected fundamental changes
in the nature of colonialism:
The transition from a colonial policy which has extended without
hindrance to territories unseized by any capitalist power, to a colonial
policy of monopolist possession of the territory of the world, which has
been completely divided up.95
For Lenin, the alliance between the Great Powers had arisen, not out of any
particular malice, but because the degree of concentration which has been
reached forces them to adopt this method in order to obtain profits. Driven by
this desire for profits, the initial economic cooperation had developed into a
political relationship, through which the imperialist countries meted out the
territorial division of the world.96 He again rebuked Kautskys arguments,
maintaining that they were merely an apology for imperialism, an attempt to
paint it in bright colours, because they ignore the principal feature of the latest
stage of capitalism: monopolies.97 The truth of it, Lenin wrote, was that
imperialism gave rise to political disunity and extreme disparity.98 At its
worst, it set the seal of parasitism on the whole country that lives by exploiting
the labour of several overseas countries and colonies.99 Finally, Lenin rejected
Kautskys claim that ultra-imperialism a single world trust of capitalist
interests would help to end imperialist wars:
Peaceful alliances prepare the ground for wars, and in their turn grow
out of wars; the one conditions the other, producing alternating forms of
peaceful and non-peaceful struggle on one and the same basis of
imperialist connections and relations within world economics and world
politics....Whatever the political system the result of these tendencies is
reaction and an extreme intensification of antagonisms in this field.
Particularly intensified become the yoke of national oppression and the
94

Quoted in Philip McMichael, The Relations Between Class and National Struggle: Lenins
Contribution, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 7: 2 (1977), p. 206
95
Lenin, Selected Works, pp. 232-233
96
Ibid., pp. 222-223
97
Ibid., p. 229
98
Ibid., p. 238
99
Ibid., p. 239

47

striving for annexations, i.e. the violation of national independence (for

annexation is nothing but the violation of the right of nations to selfdetermination).100
Bew et al. make the telling point that Lenins theory of imperialism only
had a bearing on Irish developments insofar as it explained European (including
British) colonial expansionism in the specific historical context of monopoly
capital, whereas successive Irish Marxists have been inclined to view British
imperialism as the product of undifferentiated colonialist policies.101 Lenins
theory was of little contemporary relevance because Irish socialists of the time,
such as Connolly, did not have access to English translations of the Bolshevik
leaders writings. Furthermore, the leading historians of post-1916 socialism
and republicanism have found an understanding of Leninism wanting on the
part of their subjects. In general, the Irish left during Murrays era failed to go
beyond a disproportionate focus on the nationalistic, directly colonial form of
imperialism that featured prominently in J.A. Hobsons pioneering work on the
subject. This is, of course, one important facet of British imperialism. An
important objective of this study is to assess Murrays understanding of Lenins
more comprehensive theory and to ascertain whether he found Leninist
constructs applicable in the Irish context.

Revolutionary Nationalism, Democracy and Tactical Alliances

It is important to view Lenins work on imperialism alongside his main writings
on the national question in the colonies and within the Russian state and in
the context of his gradual reassessment of the prospects and methods for
achieving a socialist revolution. Linda Moore documents the ambiguity with
which Lenin produced a timeline for the transition from semi-feudalism to
socialism, though she concedes that ultimately Lenin believed in the necessity
of a bourgeois revolution preceding any socialist revolution.102 The February
Revolution brought about the collapse of Tsarism and initiated substantial
democratic reforms. Reflecting on these events, and those of 1905, Lenin wrote
in his April Theses that:
The specific feature of the present situation in Russia is that the country
is passing from the first stage of revolution which, owing to the
100

Ibid., pp. 256-257

Bew et al., The State in Northern Ireland, pp. 19-25
102
Moore, The National Question in Ireland, p. 42
101

48

insufficient class-consciousness and organisation of the proletariat,

placed power in the hands of the bourgeoisie to its second stage, which
must place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest
sections of the peasants.103
The Bolshevik Revolution appeared to vindicate Lenins re-evaluation of
Russian society as sufficiently bourgeois and democratic for a social upheaval to
occur. Later developments were to prove that his belief in the necessity of the
capitalist stage in Russia had not diminished. However, in 1905 and February
1917, the working class and peasantry had contributed to the establishment of
the fullest form of democracy possible in a modernising yet highly conservative
state.
Prior to the end of the First World War, national democracy was at the
centre of the programme Lenin believed the Bolsheviks should follow. He
declared that we must support every revolt against our chief enemy, the
bourgeoisie of the big states, provided it is not the revolt of a reactionary
class.104 Thus it was possible for national movements to assume the
characteristics of class struggle in the international arena. The most vociferous
criticism of this position came from the left, and from Rosa Luxemburg in
particular. Like Lenin, Luxemburg was part of the anti-war faction of the
socialist camp and a founding member of the Spartacist League.105 In opposition
to the war credits, she found common cause with Lenin. However, she delivered
a contrasting interpretation of the role of nationalist movements. Luxemburg
emphasised unity of the international proletariat. She argued that workingclass alliances with even the most radical nationalist elements would inevitably
lead to the proletariat becoming an appendage of the bourgeoisie of its
respective nation. This, Luxemburg maintained, would make enemies of the
working class of different national units and undermine the transition to
socialism. The following quote encapsulates her view of the national question:
In a society based on classes, a nation as a uniform social and political
whole simply does not exist. Instead, there exist within each nation
classes with antagonistic interests and rights. There is literally no social
arena, from the strongest material relationship to the most subtle moral
103

Quoted in David Lane, Leninism: A Sociological Interpretation (Cambridge, 1981), p. 42

Quoted in Moore, The National Question in Ireland, p. 52
105
Sassoon notes that the war divided the socialists into, roughly speaking, three camps: One
Hundred Years of Socialism, p. 31
104

49

one, in which the possessing classes and the self-conscious proletariat

could take one and the same position as one undifferentiated national
whole.106
We find Lenins counter-argument in his tract on national self-determination.
Here, he insisted that national liberation movements would not act contrary to
the interests of the working class: In the question of the self-determination of
nations, as in every other question, we are interested first and foremost, in the
self-determination of the proletariat within a given nation.107 Adding to this, he
assured his leftist critics that active and united opposition to the war could
build up the momentum for mass action and for revolutionary attacks on the
bourgeoisie.108
Luxemburgs suspicion of nationalist tendencies within socialism stemmed
largely, if not entirely from her experience of developments in Poland. She
criticised the Polish Socialist Party for apparently seeking sanctions for earlier
nationalist slogans in Marxs obsolete views on Poland and hoped that the
method and underlying principles of the Marxist doctrine would prevail.109 For
Luxemburg, it was unreasonable to assume that what was true for Marx and
Engels in 1848 had remained constant. Nationalism was now the preserve of
backward forces such as the petty bourgeoisie and intellectuals. Meanwhile,
Russian Tsarism had emerged and capitalism was slowly taking root. The task
of the Russian and Polish working class was therefore to promote cooperation
within an intact Russian state.110 Under these conditions, the untarnished class
movement of the proletariat would make the greatest contribution to national
patriotism in the best and truest sense of the word.111 Lenin simply felt that
Luxemburgs personal bias against minority nationalism in her homeland
allowed her to become carried away with an issue of secondary importance. He
advised that she concentrate her gaze on the formidable nationalism of the
Great Russians, which contributed to the imperialist impulses of the state
under Tsarism.112 He also suggested that Marx and Engels anti-colonialism
106

Quoted in Nimni, Marxism and Nationalism p. 55

Quoted in McMichael, The Relations Between Class and National Struggle, p. 203
108
Lenin, Selected Works, p. 159
109
Horace B. Davis (ed.), The National Question: Selected Writings by Rosa Luxemburg (New York,
1976), p. 77
110
Ibid., p. 136
111
Ibid., p. 97
112
Quoted in Munck, The Difficult Dialogue, p. 71
107

50

continued to be relevant: The policy of Marx and Engels on the Irish question
serves as a splendid example of the attitude the proletariat of the oppressing
nations should adopt towards national movements, an example of immense
practical importance.113
It is a common misconception that Luxemburg was universally antinationalist. To the contrary, she often referred to the admirable characteristics
of nationalism was only opposed to self-determination as a right.114 Using the
example of Ukrainian nationalism after the October Revolution, she questioned
the Bolshevik leaderships ability to safeguard the gains of 1917 under
nationalist pressures:
By their hollow nationalistic phraseology concerning the right of selfdetermination to the point of separation, [the Bolsheviks] have
accomplished quite the contrary and supplied the bourgeoisie in all
border areas with the finest, the most desirable pretext, the very banner
of counterrevolutionary efforts.115
Yet this leads to the main weakness in Luxemburgs position. Although she was
sensitive to the many social and economic changes that had occurred since Marx
and Engels time, Luxemburg failed to acknowledge the importance of
nationalism as a political force across Europe, in the early capitalist era and in
the imperialist context in which she was active. She persevered with the
contradictory economic reductionist thesis that allowed class politics to evolve
and

transform,

whilst

denying

nationalism

the

same

luxury.

Lenin

characterised this as imperialist economism.116

To left of Rosa Luxemburg were individuals such as Karl Radek, who was
an unflinching internationalist, leader of German communism and a central
figure in the Comintern during Lenins time. He criticised nationalist liberation
movements and the Easter Rising in particular. Whereas Trotsky exaggerated
its revolutionary character the link between labour and nationalism during
Easter Week117 Radek famously dismissed the Rising as a putsch the English
government could easily manage:

113

D.R. OConnor Lysaght (ed.), The Communists and the Irish Revolution (Dublin, 1993), p. 37
Ibid., pp. 55-57
115
Mary-Alice Waters (ed.), Rosa Luxemburg Speaks (New York, 1970), p. 382
116
V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 23 (Moscow, 1964), pp. 28-76
117
OConnor Lysaght (ed.), The Communists and the Irish Revolution, pp. 59-60
114

51

The extinction of the Irish fire is part of the so-called national question.
The national movement is only a real force when it is backed by strong
class-interests. The Irish peasantry abandoned the banner of the fight for
independence, when its economic interests were no longer in conflict with
the English government. It contented itself with the fight for selfgovernment. Tragically enough, the Sinn Finers being petty bourgeois
didnt understand that but lulled themselves to sleep with nationalistic
dreams. In conformity with the normal bestial character of such rulers,
the English bourgeoisie will punish them for this error with the gallows.
They die as victims of the imperialist world war and thus the proletariat
though negative, often hostile to their ideals also wrote their part in
the big book of guilt of those who unleashed it.118
Lenin was evidently outraged that associates such as Radek viewed the Easter
Rising as a putsch, and referred to anyone using the term as either a hardened
reactionary, or a doctrinaire hopelessly incapable of picturing a social revolution
as a living thing. For Lenin, history had shown that whoever expects a pure
revolution will never live to see it. Weighing up the concrete possibilities in his
own country, Lenin placed emphasis on the achievements of the bourgeoisdemocratic revolution of 1905. Admittedly, it consisted of a series of battles
fought by all the discontented classes, groups and elements of the population.
Yet objectively, the mass movement was shattering tsarism and paving the way
for democracy; for that reason the class-conscious workers led it.119
Like Marx and Engels before him, Lenin clearly believed in the merits of a
progressive nationalist movement that would diminish the strength of one or
more of the worlds major powers. He supported the principles of the Easter
Rising, but questioned whether the conditions were ripe for revolution:
The misfortune of the Irish is that they rose prematurely, when the
European revolt of the proletariat had not yet matured...only in
premature, partial, scattered and therefore unsuccessful revolutionary
movements do the masses gain experience, acquire knowledge, gather
strength, get to know their real leaders, the socialist proletarians, and in
this way prepare for a general onslaught, in the same way as separate
strikes, demonstrations, local and national outbreaks in the army,
outbursts among the peasantry, etc., prepared the way for the general
onslaught of 1905.120

118

Ibid., p. 57
Ibid., pp. 62-63
120
Ibid., pp. 64-65
119

52

Lenin did not fully understand the complexities of the Irish question and seldom
took the time to write about Ireland in detail. After all, he declared that the
1913 Lockout in Dublin marked the destruction of the last remnants of the
influence of the nationalist Irish bourgeoisie over the proletariat in Ireland.121
He greeted 1916 so uncritically because he now conceived of revolutionary
nationalist movements as constituents of a broader anti-imperialist front. In
Left-Wing Communism An Infantile Disorder, Lenin dealt with his leftist
detractors in ruthless fashion. He defended tactical alliances and, using Ireland
as an illustrative example, stressed the importance of judging the struggle in
each country by its concrete features.122 In terms of what followed the Irish
revolutionary period Lenin was fundamentally correct on the question of
tactics and that the Rising was premature.
In sharp contrast to Luxemburg and Radeks internationalism was the
Austro-Marxist group, led by Otto Bauer and Karl Renner, which called
attention to the notion of national-cultural autonomy. Bauer and Renner
emerged from the orthodox Marxist school of Kautsky yet subsequently
deviated considerably from that viewpoint. Nimni describes in detail the
significant differences between Renner and Bauer, with the former focusing on
the rights of national communities within multinational states and the latter
seeking to develop a theoretical conceptualisation of nationalism.123 In spite of
these differences, they combined effectively to produce complementary
recommendations. In 1918, Renner outlined the Austro-Marxist position:
Social democracy proceeds not from the existing states but from live
nations. It neither denies nor ignores the existence of the nation but on
the contrary, it accepts it as the carrier of the new order.... Social
democracy considers the nation both indestructible and undeserving of
destruction. Far from being unnational or anti-national, it places
nations at the foundation of its world structure.124
Bauer and Renner believed that nations would thrive in their model of socialism
as independent units, rather than dissolving into the international order that
Marx had predicted: Integration of the whole people in their national cultural

121

Ibid., p. 23
Lenin, Selected Works, pp. 170-190
123
Nimni, Marxism and Nationalism, p. 129
124
Quoted in Connor, The National Question in Marxist-Leninist Theory and Strategy, p. 28
122

53

community, full achievement of self-determination of nations, growing spiritual

(geistig) differentiation of nations this is the meaning of socialism.125
In the build-up to the 1889 congress of what became the Austrian SocialDemocratic Party, Bauer and Renner advocated building the party on extraterritorial autonomy for all nations within the empire. National groups would
assume responsibility for policy on matters such as culture and education, thus
relieving national tensions and preserving the state. They were convinced that
this arrangement would allow the class struggle to proceed without
interruption. However, the resolution adopted by this congress took on a
federalist shape, with the boundaries reflecting as closely as possible the
territories of the various nationalities:
1. Austria should be transformed into a democratic federation of
nationalities (Nationalittenbundestaat).
2. The historic Crownlands shall be replaced by nationality delimited,
self-governing areas in each of which legislation and administration
should be entrusted to national chambers elected on the basis of
universal suffrage.
3. All self-governing regions of one and the same nation shall jointly
form a single national union which shall manage the national affairs
on the basis of complete autonomy.
4. The right of minorities should be protected by a special law.
5. We do not recognise any national privilege and therefore we reject
the demand for an official language. Parliament will decide as to
whether and in what degree a common language is necessary.126
Although curtailed somewhat by the Brunn congress, Bauer and Renners
ideas had practical implications for the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party
(RSDLP). Of course, the 1896 congress of the Second International pre-empted
Bauer and Renner by toying with the principle of self-determination. This
principle was the basis upon which the RSDLP rejected the Jewish Bunds
claims to cultural autonomy in 1903. However, Lenin believed at the same time
that the Austro-Marxists were setting a dangerous precedent:

125
126

Quoted in Nimni, Marxism and Nationalism, p. 143

Quoted in Ibid., p. 128

54

Cultural-national autonomy implies precisely the most refined and,

therefore, the most harmful nationalism, it implies the corruption of the
workers by means of the slogan of national culture.... In short, this
programme undoubtedly contradicts the internationalism of the
proletariat and is in accordance only with the ideals of the nationalist
petty bourgeoisie.127
Stalins definition of nation made the denial of the Bunds claims absolute. The
Russian Jews failed to satisfy the criteria of common territory and language,
and thus did not constitute a nation. With that, the issue of the Bund was laid
to rest, though Stalin would later find the small Russian nationalities a great
source of controversy as he sought to protect the superiority of the Russian state
whilst also affording the minorities a degree of autonomy.
One commentator suggests that Lenins policy of self-determination and
implicit support for Stalins definition served the purpose of corralling the
malcontents of Russian Tsarism.128 Another author highlights the certain
ambiguity in a policy that rejects nationalism as an authentic value, but can
support national movements.129 Nimni laments the regrettable irony that
Lenin and Stalin, through their criticism of Bauer, detached themselves from
the only analysis of nationalism that would have provided insights into culture
and ethnicity.130 On colonial countries such as Ireland and India, there were
differences between Lenin and Stalin. Specifically, these countries did not meet
Stalins definition of nation. For him, the Irish struggle for independence was
an anomaly in the European context, much the same as the Russian minority
nationalisms.131 But ultimately, the Marxist-Leninist position on nationalism
prevailed in the short-to-medium term. Though heavily Eurocentric, and
predisposed towards the proletariat of industrial nations as the main threat to
capitalism, Lenins report to the second congress of the Communist
International reiterated the importance of revolutionary nationalist movements
in the underdeveloped world:
we Communists should, and will, support bourgeois liberation
movements in the colonial countries only when these movements are
127

Quoted in Munck, The Difficult Dialogue, p. 41

Branko Lazitch and Milorad Drachkovitch, Lenin and the Comintern, Vol. 1 (Stanford, 1972), p. 365
129
Peter Zwick, National Communism (Michigan, 1983), p. 41
130
Nimni, Marxism and Nationalism, pp. 94-95
131
J.M. Blaut, The National Question: Decolonizing the Theory of Nationalism (London, 1987),
Chapter 5
128

55

really revolutionary, when the representatives of these movements do

not hinder us in training and organising the peasants and the broad
masses of the exploited in a revolutionary spirit.132
Incorporating aspects of the alternative theses presented by M.N. Roy, the preeminent Indian communist and Marxist theorist,133 Lenins Theses on the
National and Colonial Question informed the Cominterns approach towards
colonial and semi-colonial countries for much of the 1920s. Incidentally, the
second congress also marked the beginning of communist policy on Ireland.134

A Note on Stalinism and the Comintern

A word must be said on Stalinist ideology as distinct from the countless
misdemeanours accumulated during Stalins reign and another on the
Comintern as a tool for strengthening the capacity of communist and workers
parties for spreading socialism. Stalins prominent role in the Russian Civil War
(1917-1919) and Polish-Soviet War (1919-1921) raised his profile immeasurably.
Despite a number of flagrant errors, he soon accumulated a remarkable amount
of bureaucratic power in his own hands.135 Shortly after becoming Commissar
for Nationalities Affairs, Stalin found himself on Lenins trusted Politburo,
along with Trotsky. Once placed in a position of real power, Stalin sought to
stamp his authority on Soviet policy and on the subject of nationalism. He
identified two main dangers to the hegemony of the Russian Soviet Federative
Socialist Republic (RSFSR), which he described as creeping deviations from
Marxist principles. The first was Russian great-power chauvinism: an
endeavour to ignore national differences of language, culture and mode of life in
Stalins words.136 The other was the deviation towards local nationalism, which
consisted of the attempt to hush up class differences within ones own nation.
He acknowledged that the emergence of the second type of nationalism was a
consequence of attempts to resist the first, though it is clear that he deemed
minority nationalism a more immediate threat. For Stalin, the non-Russian
minorities were prone to stimulating bourgeois nationalism, tainting the

132

V.I. Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. 5 (London, 1944), pp. 240-241

V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31 (Moscow, 1966), p. 244
134
Emmet OConnor, Reds and the Green: Ireland, Russia and the Communist Internationals, 1919-43
(Dublin, 2004), pp. 41-50
135
Alan Wood, Stalin and Stalinism (Second Edition) (London, 2005), p. 24
136
Stalin, Marxism and the National and Colonial Question, p. 256
133

56

respective

communist

parties,

and

playing

into

the

hands

of

the

interventionists.137
Despite lacking the explicit endorsement of his political mentor,138 Stalin
emerged from the thirteenth CPSU conference in December 1923 with genuine
leadership credentials. In 1924, the doctrine of Socialism in One Country
surfaced, revealing great disappointment with the failure of the revolution to
spread in a westward direction. This did not elide the Leninist principle that
lent support to struggles for the emancipation of the oppressed peoples from the
yoke of imperialism.139 But Stalin argued from the experience of 1917 and
subsequent developments that the initial achievement of socialism within the
nation-state was not wholly dependent on a simultaneous revolution of the
international working class:
We mean the possibility of solving the contradictions between the
proletariat and the peasantry with the aid of the internal forces of our
country, the possibility of the proletariat assuming power and using that
power to build a complete socialist society in our country, with the
sympathy and the support of the proletariat of other countries, but
without the preliminary victory of the proletariat revolution in other
countries.140
McLellan argues that Stalin was hard pressed in plausibly attributing his own
innovations to Lenin.141 It is true that Stalin disregarded statements from
Lenin that indicated support for the theory of a global and permanent
revolution so eloquently advanced by Trotsky. For example, in his 1923 essay
On Cooperation, Lenin argued that The complete victory of the socialist
revolution in one country is inconceivable and demands the most active
cooperation of at least several advanced countries.142 However, a more in-depth
reading of key debates concerning Socialism in One Country favours the
argument that Lenin came to embrace the notion of a form of socialism in a
backward country, in lieu of simultaneous upheavals in the industrial world.
Erik van Rees detailed reassessment leads to the conclusion that great lines of
Marxist-Leninist continuity are to be found in the Stalinist doctrine that greatly
137

Ibid., p. 263
Service, Stalin, p, 199
139
Stalin, Marxism and the National and Colonial Question, p. 197
140
Ibid., p. 94fn
141
David McLellan, Marxism After Marx (Third Edition) (Basingstoke, 1998), p. 134
142
V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33 (London, 1960), p. 468
138

57

influenced the policies of communist parties in underdeveloped countries.143

Whether the same parties would accept the Cominterns prescriptions for
building socialism in their country was a different question.
Traditional accounts of the Comintern place Stalin and the CPSU above the
remaining affiliated parties as the main sources of ideological and tactical
inspiration. For example, Borkenau asserts that
The Comintern had been the primary expression of Russian
revolutionism.... It was unthinkable that the Comintern could have an
ideology divergent from that imposed by the infallible leader of Russia.
Here foreign policy did not even take place of honour. The Comintern
from beginning to end remained a church where unity of the credo was
the paramount consideration.144
Similarly, Duncan Hallas has written that it was one thing to go to school
under the Russians but quite another to come to rely on the teachers to resolve
the complex problems facing the German, Polish, British, United States or
whatever parties. According to Hallas, the real failure of the Comintern lay in
the pupils excessive dependence on the teacher.145 The release of the
Comintern archives in the 1990s produced, and continues to produce, studies
that challenge the grand narrative approach to the history of international
communism. The most important of these, written by Kevin McDermott and
Jeremy Agnew, accepts the above charges in part while drawing attention to the
relative autonomy enjoyed by communist and workers parties on the question of
tactics. These authors also make the important distinction between an early
phase of Bolshevisation and a later period of Stalinisation.146 Debates between
the contrasting schools of thought on the Comintern and Stalinism are most
pronounced in the case of the British party.147 Emmet OConnor has quite

143

Erik Van Ree, Socialism in One Country: A Reassessment, Studies in East European Thought, 50: 2
(1998), pp. 77-117
144
Franz Borkenau, World Communism: A History of the Communist International (Michigan, 1962),
p. 394
145
Duncan Hallas, The Comintern (London, 1985), pp. 70-71
146
Kevin McDermott and Jeremy Agnew, The Comintern: A History of International Communism from
Lenin to Stalin (Basingstoke, 1996)
147
Matthew Worley, The Communist International, The Communist Party of Great Britain, and the
Third Period, 1928-1932, European History Quarterly, 30: 2 (2000), pp. 185-208; John McIlroy and
Alan Campbell, A Peripheral Vision: Communist Historiography in Britain, American Communist
History, 4: 2 (2005), pp. 125-157; John Newsinger, Recent Controversies in the History of British
Communism (Review Article), Journal of Contemporary History, 41: 3 (2006), pp. 557-572; Kevin

58

recently entered the fray with his work on Irish communism, which, though
dealing with the Irish movement in its specific context, clearly owes a great deal
to the analytical framework developed by McDermott and Agnew.148
Conclusion
The claim that theoretic preconceptions, rather than actual observations,
determined the character of Marxist interpretations of the Irish question is only
partly true in the case of its founding intellectuals.149 Marx and Engels interest
in nationalism ebbed and flowed, which reflects the rapidly changing
environment in which they were active. Their work on Ireland is a useful
example of how experience can inform theory and enlighten theoreticians as to
how their hypotheses can be tested and reapplied. Marx and Engels never
developed a classical text on nationalism for their successors to inherit. Nor did
they put their writings on Ireland into systematic form. This task has fallen to
present-day scholars. However, they did lay the foundations upon which
competent Second and Third International theoreticians were to build.
Englands domination of Ireland and India prompted Marx and Engels to
elevate colonial interactions to a new level of importance. This led to the
conception of imperialism at a basic level, anticipating aspects of Hobsons
theory. In addition, they touched upon the issue of self-determination and
expressed an almost universally positive view of Irish national independence
whilst retaining a degree of methodological consistency.
Lenin developed the principle of national self-determination with a degree of
clarity that has since gone unmatched. This conveyed support for national
struggles against colonialism in order to weaken the empires and bring about a
revolutionary situation in oppressor and oppressed countries. Although he wrote
very little in the subject of Ireland, Lenins work on national self-determination
and imperialism essentially defined the Irish struggle as an anti-imperialist one
in the historical context. Successive Irish socialists have failed to evince a full
understanding of Lenins conception of imperialism. However, support for
Connollyism does not necessarily preclude an appreciation of Leninist economic
Morgan, The Trouble with Revisionism: or Communist History with the History Left in, Labour/Le
Travail, 63 (Spring 2009), pp. 131-155
148
Emmet OConnor, Reds and the Green; From Bolshevism to Stalinism: Communism and the
Comintern in Ireland in Norman LaPorte, Kevin Morgan and Matthew Worley (eds.), Bolshevism,
Stalinism and the Comintern: Perspectives on Stalinization, 1917-1953 (Basingstoke, 2008)
149
Nicholas Mansergh, The Irish Question 1880-1921 (Third Edition) (London, 1975), p. 127

59

historiography and theory. An original contribution to the literature would

identify a rare understanding of Lenins writings on Sen Murrays part. It is
one necessary pre-condition of reaching a communist-republican synthesis.
Colonialism as a function of imperialism did not feature in Stalins analysis.
Ireland was a major blind spot in his writings, to the extent that he devoted less
attention to the Irish national question than Lenin and failed to even implicitly
acknowledge Marx and Engels contribution. Stalins era is therefore important
to a study of Sen Murrays politics in two main ways. Firstly, the debates
surrounding the doctrine of Socialism in One Country, well rehearsed by
activists and interested observers of Irish socialism and the republican left,
relate directly to the type of socialism that Murray envisaged taking shape in
Ireland. Secondly, since Murrays political career overlapped the periods of
Bolshevisation and Stalinisation, it is possible to add nuances to the existing
historiography by accounting for his dealings with the Comintern and the Soviet
Union in detail. This is important from the perspective of determining the
extent to which diktats from Moscow informed Murrays contribution to the
Irish

communist

movement

on

matters

of

policy

and

tactics.

60

Chapter 2 James Connolly and the Tenets of Connollyism

After sketching out the Marxist ideological, tactical and organisational
influences pertaining to Sen Murrays political career, we now turn our
attention to the main Irish intellectual source of inspiration. Of course, the
various incarnations of socialist republicanism in Murrays era did not begin
and end with Connolly. The ideas forwarded by Tone, Lalor, Mitchell, Davis,
Parnell and Mellows are recurrent in Murrays writings and therefore of
considerable importance. Furthermore, as one author has eloquently argued, the
formation of the ITGWU represented the first significant organised expression
of socialist republicanism in the early twentieth century. Subsequent to the
Anglo-Irish Treaty, the Comintern helped to provoke and facilitate republican
shifts by labourists and leftward shifts by a socially and politically astute group
of republicans.1 However, it would be to obscure the facts to ignore the influence
of Connollys involvement in 1916 on those anti-Treaty republicans with
socialist inclinations. Connolly is a reference point through whom it is possible
to trace a lineage of pre-1916 and post-1916 radical republicanism. More
fundamentally, Connollys theoretical contribution patently underpinned
socialist republican thinking and provided a source of vindication for its
advocates during Murrays era. Although this is only one facet of Murrays
development, it is a highly important one and deserves special attention.
Studies of Connolly continue to multiply and his legacy remains fiercely
contested by individuals and organisations across the political spectrum.2 He
left much in writing for the benefit of posterity and, arguably due to the
circumstances of his death, these have been pored over by academics, journalists
and activists. Connolly enthusiasts have too often been guilty of uniting the
diverse and, at times, contradictory elements of his politics into an idealisation
that is set against the shortcomings of his successors.3 In such instances, we
discover nothing about Connollys failings and his legatees are deprived of
certain crucial lessons. Conversely, a number of judicious scholars have dealt
critically with Connollys ideas in their historical context. These studies are
1

Emmet OConnor, The Age of the Red Republic: The Irish Left and Nationalism, 1909-36, Saothar,
30 (2005), pp. 73-82
2
Catherine Morris, A Contested Life: James Connolly in the Twenty-first Century, Interventions, 10:
1 (2008), pp. 102-115
3
Helga Woggon, Interpreting James Connolly, 1923-39 in Fintan Lane and Donal Drisceoil (eds.),
Politics and the Irish Working Class, 1830-1945 (Basingstoke, 2005), p. 174

61

valuable, yet their focus on the negative aspects of Connollys legacy can serve to
obscure his positive contributions in a number of areas. The concern of this
chapter is to address the key theoretical debates relating to Connolly; discern
whether it is possible to view his activities and writings in differential terms
i.e. operating on two distinct yet interdependent levels;4 and tease out the
central tenets of Connollyism, positive and otherwise.

Early Socialism and Republicanism

Upon his arrival in Ireland, Connolly brought a radicalism with which the small
local socialist groups were unfamiliar. According to Thomas Lyng, a member of
the Dublin Socialist Society, Connolly confronted the leaders of the Society,
pulverised them in debate, preached socialism unblushingly to them, shattered
their little organisation, and from the fragments he founded a small Irish
Socialist Republican Party.5 Although the ISRPs programme did not match
that of Lenins draft for the RSDLP in economic detail or political tact, it was as
advanced as the manifesto of the most radical party in Britain, the Social
Democratic Federation (SDF). Its demands included: nationalisation of the
railways and canals; abolition of private banks; the establishment of a fortyeight hour week and a minimum wage; free education to third level; and
universal suffrage which reflected Connollys input less than it did broader
European and British social democratic trends. In fact, as Howell has noted, the
only substantial difference between the SDF and ISRP programmes was the
addition of a commitment to an Irish socialist republic.6 Specifically, this
objective favoured the establishment of an Irish Socialist Republic based upon
the public ownership by the Irish people of the land and instruments of
production, distribution and exchange.7 As one of his ardent supporters freely
admits, Connolly had merely bolted a radical Fenian-inspired republicanism
onto an already existing formula developed to suit a different political and
economic context.8

David Lloyd, After History: Historicism and Irish Postcolonial Studies in Clare Carroll and Patricia
King, Ireland and Postcolonial Theory (eds.) (Cork, 2003), pp. 47-48
5
Quoted in Fintan Lane, The Origins of Modern Irish Socialism, 1881-1896 (Cork, 1997), p. 215
6
David Howell, A Lost Left: Three Studies in Socialism and Nationalism (Manchester, 1986), p. 29
7
Quoted in Peter Berresford Ellis, A History of the Irish Working Class (Second Edition) (London,
1985), p. 174
8
Eoin Broin, Sinn Fin and the Politics of Left Republicanism (London, 2009), p. 100

62

In his provocative biography of Connolly, Austen Morgan devotes

considerable space to the Marxist influences on his subjects earliest
formulations, whilst doubting every instance of proclivity toward republicanism
prior to 1914.9 Although there is a need for greater understanding of Connollys
political adolescence, Morgans effort is incessantly revisionist. Connollys
cooperation with republicans such as Maud Gonne in the latter part of the
nineteenth century may not point to anything other than a functional
relationship between the two.10 However, there are several early examples of
Connolly referring positively to a specific type of republicanism. For
demonstration purposes, two examples will suffice. Firstly, in a quite famous
article published in Shan Van Vocht in 1897, he spoke implicitly of link between
republicanism

and

socialism

and

the

inadequacy

of

limited

political

independence:
If you remove the English Army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over
Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist
Republic your efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you. She
would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through
her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist
institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of
our mothers and the blood of our martyrs.11
More explicitly, in 1899, Connolly pointed to the national and social aspects of
freedom:
The national ideal can never be realised until Ireland stands before the
world as a nation free and independent. It is social and economic
because no matter what the form of government may be, as long as one
class owns as private property the land and instruments of labour from
which mankind derive their substance, that class will always have it in
their power to plunder and enslave the remainder of their fellow
creatures.12
Hence, the traditional republican demand for separation was, from the outset,
an essential part of Connollys conception of socialism. This was because he held
the British capitalist system and the Irish bourgeoisie equally responsible for
the exploitation of the Irish working class.
9

Austen Morgan, James Connolly: A Political Biography (Manchester, 1988), pp. 12-49
Margaret Ward, Maud Gonne: Irelands Joan of Arc (London, 1990), pp. 45-58
11
Shan Van Vocht, January 1897
12
Quoted in Charlie McGuire, Irish Marxism and the Development of the Theory of NeoColonialism, ire-Ireland, 41: 3 and 4 (Fall/Winter, 2006), p. 114
10

63

As outlined below, Connollys analyses of Irish history and the contemporary

political landscape did not amount to an idealised endeavour that absolved the
Irish of all responsibility for their meagre existence. One of the real
consistencies in his writings was the frequent targeting of the Irish bourgeoisie,
and the Home Rule Party in particular, which he described as a capitalist party
inspired solely by a consideration for capitalist interests.13 He laid out his
position in unrefined terms in Erins Hope The End and the Means, his first
major published work:
Beginning by accepting a social system abhorrent to the best traditions of
a Celtic people...[the middle class] next abandoned as impossible the
realisation of national independence. By the first act they set the seal of
approval upon a system founded upon the robbery of their countrymen,
and by the second they bound up the destinies of their country with the
fate of an Empire in the humiliation of whose piratical rulers lies the
Irish peoples only chance of national and social redemption. As
compensation for this gross betrayal the middle class politicians offer
Home Rule.14
One can observe that Connollys pronouncements on Home Rule are vague and
sometimes contradictory. Indeed, up until around 1913, it is possible to identify
tacit support for Home Rule as a prelude to labour control of the Irish
legislature and, eventually, socialism. However, there could be no equivocation
about Connollys view that the interests of the bourgeois Home Rulers were
bound up with the survival of the British economic system in Ireland, a link
that needed to be broken in order for the Irish working class to thrive.
It is instructive to comment on the language and composition of Erins Hope
in the context of the Gaelic revival, which clearly reinforced support for Irish
independence. Erins Hope contained the first acknowledgement of intellectual
debt to Lewis Morgans Ancient Society and a reference to the idea of the
primitive communism or Celtic communism that he later celebrated in Labour
in Irish History and The Re-Conquest of Ireland. One common theme running
through Erins Hope is the juxtaposition of class dynamics and nationalist
imagery. The important question is whether Connolly argued for the continuity
of the nation from antiquity or merely drew upon the myths, memories and
symbols of an ancient Irish nation to pursue a new form of political and social
13
14

Workers Republic, October 1901

Quoted in Lane, The Origins of Modern Irish Socialism, p. 218

64

organisation in Ireland.15 His early writings support the latter interpretation

and point away from an essentialist description of Celtic Ireland. In spite of this,
there is little doubt that he responded impulsively and opportunistically to
nationalist momentum.

Internationalism and Industrial Unionism

Howell notes that up until 1899/1900, Connolly expressed misguided optimism
for the peaceful and political transition to socialism. However, the Boer War had
an immediate impact on his understanding of international relations and
estimation of British socialists. Connolly viewed the war as a colonial crusade
waged
by a mighty empire against a nation entirely incapable of replying in any
effective manner, by a government of financiers upon a nation of farmers,
by a nation of filibusterers upon a nation of workers, by a capitalist ring
who will never see a shot fired during the war, upon a people defending
their own homes and liberties.16
He reserved special criticism for the English people, who
encourage their government in its campaign of robbery and murder
against an unoffending nation; a people who, secure in their own homes
permit their rulers to carry devastation and death into the homes of
another people, assuredly deserve little respect, no matter how loudly
may boast of their liberty-loving spirit.17
Combined with fierce criticisms of the British socialist movement for its
complicity in allowing the British ruling class to conquer weaker nations, these
statements signal a shift towards a rudimentary understanding of imperialism
and of social imperialism. However, the Boer War also raised important
questions that lingered over Connolly for the duration of his short career. First,
it offered his critics faint evidence of an underlying hostility to all things
British. Secondly, it undermined the integrity of focusing on national selfdetermination when class and ethnic antagonisms were evident within the state
in question.

15

Jonathan Githens-Mazer, Ancient Erin, Modern Socialism: Myths, Memories and Symbols of the
Irish Nation in the Writings of James Connolly, Interventions, 10: 1 (2008), pp. 90, 92
16
Quoted in Howell, A Lost Left, p. 40
17
Ibid.

65

Although Connolly did not formally join Arthur Griffiths Irish Transvaal
Committee, he participated in pro-Boer agitation and the ISRP joined with
radical nationalists in anticipation of a British defeat. Donal P. McCracken has
argued that Connolly was remarkably ignorant of South African conditions.18
This lack of knowledge applied equally to the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP)
contingent that supported the Boers:
all [Irish Transvaal] committee members sympathised with the Boers, all
professed acute Anglophobia and all were aware of the singular lack of
success of recently advanced nationalist societies in achieving anything.
The 98 celebrations had been a flop. An Amnesty Association, ostensibly
formed to obtain the release of political prisoners, had failed to stir the
masses, and the IRB [Irish Republican Brotherhood] was still only a
shadow of its previous self.19
This narrow nationalism and Anglophobia may be true of a number of the proBoer enthusiasts, but does not entirely correspond with the trajectory of
Connollys politics. It is inconceivable that he was unaware of or unconcerned
with British material interests in South Africa, namely gold, particularly as
Griffith had worked on the Transvaal mines at the outbreak of the war.
Furthermore, even one of Connollys detractors concedes that He would
certainly not have endorsed Maud Gonnes hysterical anti-Britishness.20 A more
valid criticism is that Connolly had nothing to say on the white supremacist
policies the Boers pursued domestically in spite of British liberal influences.
However limited his involvement with the pro-Boer camp, he clearly neglected
the rights of the black South African majority, which gave rise to an ostensible
hierarchy of oppression.
There is much conjecture about taking Connollys statement on British
expansionism the capitalist class is a beast of prey and cannot be moralised,
converted, or conciliated, but must be extirpated21 as an indication of his
willingness to participate in an armed insurrection. In a carefully worded
passage, Greaves suggests that Connolly viewed British armed engagement
abroad as an opportunity to bring about a revolutionary crisis, in which it

18

Donal P. McCracken, Forgotten Protest: Ireland and the Anglo-Boer War (Belfast, 2003), p. 40
Ibid., p. 44
20
Morgan, James Connolly, p. 38
21
Quoted in W.K. Anderson, James Connolly and the Irish Left (Dublin, 1994), p. 61
19

66

would be possible to free Ireland.22 But while Connolly indicated that he would
welcome the humiliation of the British arms in any of the conflicts in which it is
at present engaged, or with which it has recently been menaced,23 there is
nothing to suggest that he deemed this a possibility in Ireland. He retained
ultimate faith in the ISRP and its organ, the Workers Republic, and combined
party politics with a renewed interest in trade unionism. This was of utmost
importance in the context of the formation of Cumann na nGaedheal by Arthur
Griffith, which congested the political system and limited the ability of the
numerically insignificant ISRP to make inroads.
Connollys successful campaign to secure Irish representation at a 1900
international socialist congress in Paris provided a much-needed boost to the
ISRP.24 It also bolstered his standing on the international left. In February 1902
the People, organ of the Socialist Labour Party (SLP), republished Erins Hope
with the addition of a number of radical articles that met with the approval of
Daniel de Len, party leader and the papers editor.25 Connolly arrived in
America later that year to embark on a speaking tour at the behest of de Len,
receiving a warm welcome upon his arrival in New York.26 He returned to
Ireland with his eyes open to the possibilities of syndicalism and with tangible
international links upon which Irish socialists could build. However, with the
ignominious collapse of the ISRP and the Workers Republic, Connolly was
confronted with the prospect of raising a large family with no obvious source of
income. Thus, he returned quickly to America and became acquainted with the
practice of syndicalism and industrial unionism on a large scale.
Connollys time with the SLP and Wobblies (Industrial Workers of the
World) exposed him to new tactics and methods of organisation, which in turn
led to him to advocate industrial unity and agitation as a complement to
political activity. Connolly parted ways with de Len on the issues of wages,
marriage and religion. Yet he also found himself at odds with the anti-political
forces that had continued to amass strength within the IWW. By 1910, when
Connollys life in America reached an end, he had demonstrated a balanced
22

C. Desmond Greaves, The Life and Times of James Connolly (Third Edition) (London, 1986), p. 123
Quoted in Anderson, James Connolly and the Irish Left, p. 61
24
T.A. Jackson, Ireland Her Own: An Outline History of the Irish Struggle (Fourth Edition) (London,
1985), p. 369
25
Stephen Coleman, Daniel de Len (Manchester, 1990), p. 107
26
Greaves, The Life and Times of James Connolly, p. 147
23

67

commitment to ongoing political activity and industrial unionism with a

syndicalist flavour.27 The publication of Socialism Made Easy in 1909, the
second half of which focused specifically on the relationship between industrial
unionism and politics, serves to illustrate the impact of Connollys American
experiences.28 Although Connolly was not at home in ultra-leftist American
circles, the ideas accrued during this time helped define his career between 1910
and 1914.
A job as paid organiser of the new Socialist Party of Ireland (SPI) was the
practical incentive for Connollys return to Dublin in 1910, a role secured
through William OBriens unremitting efforts.29 The feats of Jim Larkin as
organiser of the workers in Belfast gave Connolly added encouragement that
industrial unionism could succeed in Ireland.30 Larkin saw Ireland as a breeding
ground for new unionism and the ITGWU as the basis for establishing one big
union. OConnor adds that the ITGWU set out explicitly to decolonise labour
consciousness, arguing that Irish workers should rely on their own resources
and build a movement geared to tackling native conditions.31 Larkin and
Connolly were markedly different in character and approach: the former was a
huge presence, full of revolutionary spontaneity, while the latter was a
meticulous theoretician. There is little evidence to suggest that they even liked
each other on a personal level. To the contrary, a reading of one biography of
Larkin gives the impression that a great degree of personal animosity
prevailed.32 Crucially, though, they converged on labour strategy and the
national question. Both lamented the apathy shown by British socialists
towards Ireland and believed that conventional trade unionism was, in Larkins
words, a played-out fallacy.33 It is also significant that Connolly transferred to
Larkin editorial control for his socialist and cultural nationalist newspaper The
Harp. This preceded the Irish Worker, which ran from 1911 to 1914 and, under
Larkins editorship, fully endorsed Irish independence. When Connolly assumed
his position as Belfast organiser of the ITGWU in 1911, a new wave of socialist
27

Howell, A Lost Left, Chapter 4

James Connolly, Socialism Made Easy (Chicago, 1909)
29
Sen Cronin, Young Connolly (Dublin, 1978), p. 92
30
Emmet Larkin, James Larkin: Irish Labour Leader, 1867-1947 (London, 1965), Chapter 2
31
Emmet OConnor, A Labour History of Ireland, 1824-2000 (Dublin, 2011), p. 76
32
Emmet OConnor, James Larkin (Cork, 2002), pp. 23-41
33
Quoted in Priscilla Metscher, Republicanism and Socialism in Ireland: A Study in the Relationship of
Politics and Ideology from the United Irishmen to James Connolly (New York, 1986), p. 350
28

68

republicanism began in earnest. This had the effect of differentiating

nationalists on social and economic questions.34
An immediate challenge, relating circuitously to Connollys view of the
Protestants in the north-east, came with his union responsibilities in Belfast.
His bitter polemic with the Belfast Independent Labour Party (ILP) leader
William Walker underlines the problematic nature of northern labour politics.
This debate stemmed from Connollys call for labour unity under the SPI
banner, which he described as
the only International Party in Ireland, since its conception of
Internationalism is that of free federation of free peoples, whereas that of
the Belfast branches of the ILP seems scarcely distinguishable from
Imperialism, the merging of subjugated peoples in the political system of
their conquerors.35
During the ensuing Connolly-Walker controversy,36 Connolly easily brushed
aside accusations of nationalist prejudice. Walkers gas and water Fabianism
was no match for the international socialist sources upon which Connolly was
able to draw. A number of authors have attempted to mount a defence of Walker
on the strength of his work, opportunistic though it may have been, towards the
goal of independent labour politics in Belfast.37 Yet it is difficult to escape the
conclusion that Walkers Unionism dominated his labourism. He reproduced the
Unionist denunciations of southern Ireland as backward and reactionary, and
notoriously pandered to sectarianism during a 1905 election.38 But while
Connollys internationalism shone through on this occasion, the exchange
demonstrated how ethnic polarisation could potentially frustrate the socialist
republican project.
In spite of his enthusiasm, Connolly shared neither Larkins bullish
personality nor his ability to cut across the sectarian divide. Thus he was unable
to replicate Larkins achievements in Belfast. The relative decline of antiUnionist Protestant labourism also served to create a more difficult working
34

OConnor, A Labour History of Ireland, pp. 87-88

Quoted in Anderson, James Connolly and the Irish Left, p. 47
36
See the debate in full: The Connolly-Walker Controversy on Socialist Unity in Ireland (Cork, c.1974)
37
Bob Purdie, An Ulster Labourist in Liberal Scotland: William Walker and the Leith Burghs Election
of 1910 in Ian S. Wood (ed.), Scotland and Ulster (Edinburgh, 1994); OConnor, A Labour History of
Ireland, pp. 71-73
38
Henry Patterson, Class Conflict and Sectarianism: The Protestant Working Class and the Belfast
Labour Movement, 1868-1920 (Belfast, 1980), pp. 56-84
35

69

environment than Larkin had faced. However, with a form of Home Rule
impending in 1912, Connolly and Larkin convinced an overwhelming majority of
Irish Trade Union Congress (ITUC) affiliates to vote for the independent
Labour representation of Labour upon all public boards. The formation of the
catch-all Irish Trade Union Congress and Labour Party (ITUCLP) encapsulated
Connollys thinking on two fronts. First, it ensured that organised labour would
deny the conservative IPP a political monopoly in the event of Home Rule,
paving the way for class politics to mature. Second, it combined a commitment
to revolutionary, syndicalist trade unionism with anticipated complementary
political action by Irish socialist parties. Four out of the five ILP branches in
Belfast matched trade union support for these moves, which put this expression
of socialist republicanism on a secure footing across the island.39
Connollys participation in the 1913 Dublin Lockout is well documented.40
The Lockout marked a high point in the ITGWUs influence and saw the
foundation of a workers defence corps in the form of Jack Whites Irish Citizen
Army (ICA). Fundamentally, the Lockout centred on the assertion of the right to
organise by skilled and unskilled workers. But while the dispute ended in defeat
for a number of reasons, and failed to produce electoral gains for Labour in
1914, it helped to consolidate the ITGWU and the concept of industrial
unionism. It also strengthened Connollys commitment to syndicalism whilst
drawing Larkins attention to cooperativism as an alternative to the
individualism and primacy of accumulation that the British capitalist system
fostered.41 Finally, the battle between Larkin and William Martin Murphy
personified the struggle between contending classes that would repeat itself in
subsequent years, often with remarkable parallels.
In terms of the tenets of Connollyism, the Lockout accentuated divisions
between conservative and advanced nationalism on social issues. For example,
W.B. Yeats wrote a passionate critique of Murphys starvation tactics in his
poem, September 1913. Most notably, 1913 awakened Pdraig Pearse to the
grievances that brought 15,000 people onto the streets of Dublin and spawned

39

OConnor, A Labour History of Ireland, pp. 89-90

See Pdraig Yeates, Lockout: Dublin 1913 (Dublin, 2000) for the most detailed account of the
Lockout
41
OConnor, A Labour History of Ireland, pp. 90-95
40

70

sympathetic action across Ireland and, to a lesser extent, in Britain. In A

Hermitage, written during the Lockout, Pearse remarked:
I do not know whether the methods of Mr. James Larkin are wise
methods or unwise methods (unwise, I think, in some respects), but this I
know, that there is a most hideous wrong to be righted, and that the man
who attempts honestly to right it is a good man and a brave man.42
In contrast, Arthur Griffith sided with the employers, admonishing the
activities of the ITGWU and Larkin in particular.43 Connolly had already taken
him to task for his pre-disposition towards unfettered capitalism in The Harp.44
amonn Ceannt, a candid left-wing republican, entered the fray and
remonstrated with Griffith: You have no condemnation of the Employers
Federation, or is there one law for them and another for their servants?45 Irish
nationalist opinion split along lines that made it possible to identify progressive,
potentially revolutionary elements from those who would not be inclined to take
Ireland beyond legislative independence.

A Labour History of Ireland The Conquest

In 1913, Connolly remarked that only a literature native to the soil could
provide an accurate portrayal of Irish history and account for the conditions
that frustrated Irelands development.46 Hence Spurgeon Thompson relates
Labour in Irish History to Gramscis later theorisation of the histories of
subaltern social groups. Thompson notes correctly that Connollys intention
was to deal with the industrial working class as well as the peasant insurgency
that concerned writers such as William Thompson. In this sense, labour is
preferable to working class in the title of Connollys seminal, though imperfect,
essay.47
Published in 1910, Labour in Irish History developed points that Connolly
made in Erins Hope and articles published in The Harp. Though based heavily
on Alice Stopford Greens 1908 romantic nationalist history, The Making of
42

Quoted in Samuel Levenson, James Connolly: A Biography (London, 1973), p. 249

Berresford Ellis, A History of the Irish Working Class, p. 191; James McConnel, The Irish
Parliamentary Party, Industrial Relations, and the 1913 Lockout, Saothar, 28 (2003), pp. 25-36
44
The Harp, April 1908
45
Quoted in Greaves, The Life and Times of James Connolly, p. 274
46
James Connolly, North East Ulster in Ireland Upon the Dissecting Table: James Connolly on Ulster
and Partition (Cork, 1975), pp. 40-41
47
Spurgeon Thompson, Gramsci and James Connolly: Anticolonial Intersections, Interventions, 5: 3
(2003), p. 378
43

71

Ireland and its Undoing, Connollys ambitious work contradicted conventional

nationalist historiography in many ways, combining a historical materialist
analysis with idealistic segues into ancient Gaelic society. Connolly described
the history of Ireland as a lengthy process of Anglicisation through which the
nation suffered socially, nationally and intellectually from a prolonged arrested
development.48 This process created the conditions that gave rise to rebellion
against English rule in each generation.49 He deemed political independence
necessary in order to facilitate the uncorrupted development of the Irish
economy, society and nation. Situated firmly in the context of the Gaelic
revival, Connolly often drew upon nationalist imagery and referred frequently to
ancient Gaelic social systems. However, as Howell acknowledges, he attempted
here to develop a productive rather than a destructive relationship between
socialist and nationalist perspectives.50
Connolly, who as a boy adopted John Mitchels Jail Journal as his bible,51
made his admiration for past republican endeavours patently clear. He speckled
the two chapters devoted to Young Ireland with tributes to Mitchel, who
possessed the faculty of combining thought with action.52 Of greater
significance was his positive discussion of James Fintan Lalor. Against the
backdrop of the Famine, during which over one million people were sacrificed
upon the altar of capitalist thought,53 Lalor constructed
principles of action and of society which have within them not only the
best plan of campaign suited for the needs of a country seeking its
freedom through insurrection against a dominant nation, but also held
the seeds of the more perfect social peace of the future.54
Introducing land as a subject of importance, Connolly reiterated the
interdependence of social and national questions. Thus, a select few Young
Irelanders typified the type of agrarian radicalism that formed a component
part of Connollys socialist republicanism. It was unfortunate that, aside from
an early reference to peasant proprietorship as an obstacle to land socialisation,

48

James Connolly, Labour in Ireland (Dublin, 1930), Foreword

Ibid., p. 13
50
Howell, A Lost Left, p. 79
51
Cronin, Young Connolly, p. 18
52
Connolly, Labour in Ireland, p. 132
53
Ibid., p. 135
54
Ibid., pp. 146-147
49

72

he failed to follow late developments in rural Ireland with anything approaching

a sufficient level of sophistication.
Describing Marx as having set forth the key to history,55 Connolly
acknowledged a methodological debt to Marxism without necessarily having to
do so loudly. He indentified a pattern of colonisation followed by the Industrial
Revolution,56 in which the domestic industries we had inherited from the
Middle Ages were finally replaced by the factory system of modern times.57 In
conjunction with this historical process,
the Irish Gael sank out of sight, and in his place the middle-class
politicians, capitalists and ecclesiastics laboured to produce a hybrid
Irishman, assimilating a foreign social system, a foreign speech, and a
foreign character.58
In Connollys view, the middle class descendents of the Irish chieftains were
complicit in the conquest of Ireland by assimilating the social system of the
conqueror and absorbing the principles of that political society based upon
ownership, which had replaced the Irish clan society based upon a common
kinship.59 According to this narrative, the 1641 rebellion marked the last
appearance of the Irish clan system, founded upon common property and a
democratic social organisation.60 This preceded a series of failed uprisings
missed opportunities and a succession of betrayals by the Irish middle class,
the guarantors of the English system. Here, he broke with romantic nationalist
historians and delivered fierce criticisms of a section of the Irish bourgeoisie.
Connollys assessment of the Act of Union and Robert Emmets botched uprising
in 1803 The working men fought, the capitalists sold out, and the lawyers
bluffed61 applied to a series of junctures in nineteenth and early twentieth
century Irish history.
It is on this point that Lloyd encourages one to transcend theories of
modernisation and recognise that it has not been the case that revolutionary or
emancipatory movements have been the most active or most progressive where
55

Ibid., p. 20
Ibid., p. 27
57
Ibid., p. 40
58
Ibid., Foreword
59
Ibid., pp. 67-68
60
Ibid., p. 66
61
Ibid., p. 52
56

73

capitalism has been most developed.62 Indeed, we can interpret Connollys

many positive references to Gaelic cooperativism as an attempt to highlight the
morally superior aspects of pre-capitalist Ireland to the system of social and
economic organisation that supplanted it. Howell notes that Connolly was not
alone among Marxist theorists in his attempt to combine a modern conception of
socialism with elements of an evolutionary sociology. The influence of Morgans
Ancient Society was far-reaching in Marxist circles, not least on Engels
discussion of primitive communism.63 Thus while his suggestion that Connolly
anticipated Frantz Fanon is questionable, the parallel that Lloyd draws
between Connollys Celtic communism and Jos Carlos Mariteguis Inca
communism is well founded.64
In contrast to Mariteguis Siete Ensayos de Interpretacin de la Realidad
Peruana (Seven Interpretative Essays on Peruvian Reality), Labour in Irish
History neglected to mention the use of slavery in, and hierarchical structure of,
the ancient system under discussion. This exposes Connolly to charges of
utopianism. A second problem is that he refused to accept the Anglo-Irish
hybrid constitution of contemporary Irish society the result of an irreversible
historical transformation whereas Maritegui frequently embraced his mestizo
heritage. In his influential States of Ireland, Conor Cruise OBrien became
perhaps the first to argue that not only did Connollys definition of the Irish
nation ignore the existence of Ulster Protestants, but directly excluded them.65
To accept this proposition in its entirety is to accept that Connolly aspired to the
same culturally-defined Gaelic Catholic Ireland as the revivalists. Authors such
as Priscilla Metscher have argued convincingly that this is simply not the case.66
It would also be to overlook Connollys anti-sectarianism, substantial criticisms
of Catholic conservative nationalism, and vision of an egalitarian and
democratic Ireland that functioned in the interests of the working class as a
whole. However, it is important to deal with Connollys treatment of the
industrial north-east in detail. As much as these writings generated useful

62

David Lloyd, Rethinking National Marxism: James Connolly and Celtic Communism,
Interventions, 5:3 (2003), pp. 346-347
63
Howell, A Lost Left, p. 81
64
Lloyd, Rethinking National Marxism, pp. 357-358
65
Conor Cruise OBrien, States of Ireland (London, 1972)
66
Priscilla Metscher, James Connolly and the Reconquest of Ireland (Minnesota, 2002), p. 115

74

insights into Irelands relationship with Britain, they also lacked depth and
sophistication in parts, producing unhelpful ethnic generalisations.

Connolly on the North-East

As a result of his mixed fortunes in Belfast, and quite possibly an upshot of his
polemic with William Walker, Connolly made a real effort to deal with Belfast
and Its Problems. Interestingly, he discerned the contrasting effects of the
uneven development of capitalism in Ireland. He noted that Belfasts industrial
conditions are the product of modern industrial slavery and can be paralleled
wherever capitalism flourishes, and acknowledged in the same breath that
From a municipal point of view Belfast is a distinct improvement upon
Dublin.67 However, echoing Marx and Engels description of a Celtic character
reinforced by colonial oppression, Connolly contrasted the Catholic workers of
southern Ireland rebels in spirit and democratic in feeling with the
Protestant workers of the north-east the least rebellious slaves in the
industrial world.68 These sentiments reflected in part his understanding of the
Plantation: the dispossession and subjugation of the natives by a Protestant
settler elite. Written in 1913, these articles also reflected a period of industrial
militancy in Dublin and the level of Connollys disappointment with his
relatively fruitless endeavours in Belfast. Ultimately, of course, the assumption
of inherent differences in attitude and consciousness had little grounding in
reality.
Connolly alluded frequently to the existence of a labour aristocracy in the
north-east, but he failed to elaborate on the concept. Another recurring theme in
his writings on Ulster was the apparent manipulation of the Protestant working
class by the Unionist bourgeoisie:
The things in which Belfast is peculiar are the skilful use by the master
class of religious rallying cries which, long since forgotten elsewhere, are
still potent to limit and weaken Labour here, and the pharisaical spirit of
self-righteousness which enables unscrupulous sweaters of the poor, with
one hand in the pocket of their workers, to raise the other hand to
heaven and thank God that they are not as other men.69

67

Connolly, Labour in Ireland, p. 210

Connolly, North-East Ulster in Ireland Upon the Dissecting Table, pp. 38-41
69
Connolly, Labour in Ireland, p. 210
68

75

Although Connolly did not develop this point substantively, its implications are
obvious. Bew et al. claim that he failed to acknowledge the emergence of the
Independent Orange Order, which attracted significant working-class support
and demonstrated that there was already a populist strain within Protestant
ideology which articulated all the lessons Connolly wanted to teach the
Protestant masses.70 The Home Rule crisis, which quickly engulfed the
Independent Order, raises questions about the longevity and overall significance
of this expression of class awareness within Orangeism. In spite of this caveat,
class antagonisms within the Unionist bloc did challenge Connollys view that
working-class agitation went hand in hand with aspirations for Irish
independence. Connolly believed that workers of both denominations were
victims of British colonial capitalism. Yet there was little by way of historical
evidence to indicate that with the advent of Home Rule, nay even with the
promise of Home Rule and the entrance of Ireland upon the normal level of
civilised, governing nations, the old relation of Protestant and Catholic begins to
melt.71
Connolly produced some of his more incisive writings on Ulster in response
to two events: the mobilisation of Edward Carsons Ulster Volunteer Force
(UVF) against the third Home Rule Bill, and the development of subsequent
proposals for the territorial division of Ireland. In an article that has been
quoted exhaustively, he prophesised that partition would mean a carnival of
reaction both North and South, would set back the wheels of progress, would
destroy the oncoming unity of the Irish labour movement and paralyse all
advanced movements whilst it endured.72 Similarly, he stated that it would be
reckless to leave a northern Catholic minority at the mercy of an ignorant
majority with the evil record of the Orange party.73 In the context of the
widespread intimidation suffered by Catholic workers, particularly in the
shipyards, Connollys fears were perfectly rational. Rather than an overriding
nationalist concern, he was preoccupied with the potentially devastating
ramifications that partition would have for a relatively solid labour movement.
In the interests of democracy, and in anticipation of Labour establishing a
70

Paul Bew, Peter Gibbon and Henry Patterson, The State in Northern Ireland, 1921-72: Political
Forces and Social Classes (Manchester, 1979), p. 9
71
Connolly, Catholicism, Protestantism and Politics in Ireland Upon the Dissecting Table, p. 26
72
Connolly, Labour and The Proposed Partition of Ireland in Ibid., p. 53
73
Connolly, The First Hint of Partition in Ibid.

76

strong presence in a Home Rule legislature, he repeatedly urged the working

class to resist any attempt to divide the people of the island.
Building on the idea of Ulster exceptionalism, authors such as Patterson
have suggested that Connolly was prepared to countenance a British
imperialist army crushing Protestant working-class resistance to Home Rule.74
However, Connollys intention when writing on the threat of UVF violence was
to bring to light a subversion of British democracy and serious contradictions in
the British governments response to it. The IPP, whatever its many faults,
massively outnumbered the Unionists at Westminster. Yet after some thirty
years, peaceful agitation for Home Rule failed to bear fruit. Whereas the British
government had no qualms about crushing the activities of anti-colonial
nationalism and the labour movement, it rewarded Unionist threats of civil war
with a veto on Home Rule.75 It did reach a point at which it became impossible
for the Liberals to deliver on their promises. Hence, the third Home Rule Bills
postponement in 1914. However, the Liberal government also played into the
hands of Empire enthusiasts in the Tory Party and allowed opposition to Home
Rule to gather momentum in preceding years by making it an issue of domestic
concern and political posturing. As a result, what Broin describes as an
aggressively Imperial discourse developed at Westminster, which encouraged
and consolidated an emergent political expression of Ulster Unionism.76 It is
also important to note that Connolly represented labour opinion across the
island. At its annual conference in June 1914, the ITUC condemned the
partition proposals by a margin of 84 votes to 2. Those in attendance included
twenty Belfast delegates and four who had made the trip from Britain.77 In the
historical context, Connollys views on Ulster were not as irrational as his critics
have suggested. But while he understood the British governments role in
frustrating democratic Irish nationalism, there is no doubt that Connolly
underestimated the real and autonomous nature of Ulster Unionism. There is
no contesting the significance of over 200,000 men adding their signatures to
the Ulster Covenant in 1912.

74

Patterson, Class Conflict and Sectarianism, p. 87

Connolly, The Exclusion of Ulster, Ireland Upon the Dissecting Table and The Liberals and
Ulster in Ireland Upon the Dissecting Table, pp. 58-66
76
Broin, Sinn Fin, pp. 83-84
77
OConnor, A Labour History of Ireland, p. 96
75

77

Imperialist War, The Re-Conquest and Easter Week

For Connolly, the IPPs pledge of National Volunteer reinforcements for the
British war machine was tantamount to selling the bodies of their countrymen
as cannon fodder in exchange for the gracious smiles of the rulers in England.78
Redmonds support for the British war effort led Connolly to the conclusion that
Only the working class remain the incorruptible inheritors of the fight for
freedom in Ireland.79 However, international socialist complicity appeared to
confound this belief, initially at least. In voting for the war credits, the socialists
of Germany, France and England capitulated to the demands of their respective
national elites. Connolly expressed great disappointment at this development in
one of many articles written for Forward and the Irish Worker in 1914:
like the proverbial bolt from the blue, war is upon us, and war between
the most important because the most Socialist, nations of the earth. And
we are helpless!!! What then becomes of all our resolutions, all our
protests of fraternisation, all our threats of general strikes, all our
carefully-built machinery of internationalism, all our hopes for the
future? Were they all as sound and fury, signifying nothing? 80
He continued by pleading with the continental socialist comrades of ours to
rethink their involvement and consider directing their attentions to an anti-war
effort:
If these men must die, would it not be better to die in their own country
fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition of war, than to
go forth to strange countries and die slaughtering and slaughtered by
their brothers that tyrants and profiteers might live?81
Connolly attributed much of the blame for the war to the monopolistic and
predatory instincts of British capitalism: since Germany could not be beaten in
fair competition industrially, it must be beaten unfairly in organising a military
and naval conspiracy against her.82 He felt compelled to explain to British
working class its predicament:
Enslaved socially at home, the British people have been taught that what
little political liberty they do enjoy can only be bought at the price of the

78

Connolly, Cannon Fodder for British Imperialism in Ireland Upon the Dissecting Table, p. 77
Connolly, Labour in Ireland, p. 9
80
Forward, 15 August 1914
81
Ibid.
82
Irish Worker, 19 August 1914
79

78

national destruction of every people rising into social or economic rivalry

with the British master class.83
In essence, Connolly understood the war as a clash of contending imperialist
interests. Under the banner of Neither King nor Kaiser, but Ireland, he
described the war as one of nation against nation in the interest of royal
freebooters and cosmopolitan thieves.84 In The Re-Conquest of Ireland, he
affirmed his faith in the ability of the working class to win power through
industrial action and electoral participation.85 Elsewhere he told supporters that
Revolutions do not start with rifles; start first and get your rifles after.86 He
gradually became convinced that that the Irish working class had a central role
to play in the destruction of capitalism, but only in setting the torch to a
European conflagration.87
It is highly fanciful to suggest, as Morgan does, that Connolly would have
favoured an alliance with Germany had Roger Casements efforts succeeded.88
However, Connolly did view German imperialism as less vile than its British
variant, and thus expressed pro-German sentiments. Working under the
assumption that members of the German working class enjoyed superior
liberties to their British counterparts, he described the Germans as a highly
civilised people, responsive to every progressive influence.89 Connolly did not
have the privilege of reading Lenins theory of imperialism, or any of the
classical Second International texts on the subject.90 At the very least, he should
have been aware of the substantial research done by Hobson, who dealt with
German imperialism in some detail.91 A second problem, of more practical
concern, was that Connolly underestimated the extent to which reactionary
impulses pervaded the labour movement in Britain. He continued to encourage
socialist unity across borders the socialist of another country is a fellow

83

Ibid., 31 October 1914

Forward, 22 August 1914
85
Connolly, Labour in Ireland, pp. 192-193
86
Quoted in Metscher, Republicanism and Socialism in Ireland, p. 435
87
Irish Worker, 29 August 1914
88
Morgan, James Connolly, pp. 157-162
89
Irish Worker, 22 August 1914
90
Howe, Ireland and Empire, p. 62
91
Hobson was especially critical of Britain, Russia, France and Germany in how they conducted
themselves in the international arena. See Imperialism: A Study (Third entirely revised and reset
edition) (London, 1968), pp. 5, 42, 80, 104, 146 for specific criticisms of German imperialism
84

79

patriot, as the capitalist of my own country is a natural enemy92 and

demanded that every man and woman who has reaped the advantages which
organised Labour has won in the past must now rally to the flag.93
The Re-Conquest of Ireland, the second instalment of Connollys Celtic
communist vision, clarified some of his views on the thorniest issues and
complicated others. He looked to fill a major lacuna in Labour in Irish History
by attaching new importance to the Cromwellian settlement as the final
consummation of the conquest of Ireland.94 He also returned to the question of
religion, disputing Orange claims that the Williamite Wars represented the
beginning of an era of civil and religious liberty. As descendants of the rankand-file of the conquerors armies, Connolly reasoned, the Presbyterians
suffered as much persecution as the native Catholic population. As a case in
point, he evidenced Presbyterian subservience to the Episcopalians.95 However,
it was a patent oversimplification to draw from this the conclusion that the
same Presbyterian descendants are now an integral part of the Irish nation.96
This was all too reminiscent of the deficiencies of Labour in Irish History,
particularly the tendency to underestimate the political appeal of Ulster
Unionism. The misapprehension of Unionism as an illusion, dictated by
bourgeois manipulation and material interests, proved a more serious problem
in the long history of socialist republicanism.97
In dealing with the suppression of information on the Ralahine cooperative
by historians and politicians, Connolly had a pretext for revisiting the
experiment and evoking the merits of common ownership. As Colin Graham has
argued, Ralahine for Connolly did not by necessity represent a directly
applicable model. More accurately, it served as a reminder of the ills of
landlordism and provided hope for those in search of alternative social
systems.98 According to Connolly, Unionist politicians opposed the co-operators
because the movement tended to bring together Protestant and Catholic on a
92

Forward, 15 August 1914

Irish Worker, 14 November 1914
94
Connolly, The Re-Conquest of Ireland in Labour in Ireland, p. 171
95
Ibid., pp. 186-188
96
Ibid., p. 180
97
This argument forms one of the key threads of Henry Pattersons Class Conflict and Sectarianism,
Chapter 6 and Conclusion in particular; and The Politics of Illusion: A Political History of the IRA
(London, 1997), Passim
98
Colin Graham, Deconstructing Ireland: Identity, Theory, Culture (Edinburgh, 2001), p. 18
93

80

basis of friendly and fraternal helpfulness. The Home Rulers voiced opposition
for the reason that the practice of co-operation would necessarily interfere with
the profits of what he described as the gombeen men, middlemen and dealers of
one kind or another.99 Herein lay an important point. Connolly believed that the
middle classes on both sides of the ethnic divide stood to benefit from the
division of the Irish working class. Consequently, he urged workers to join the
ranks of the Irish Labour Party, which will speak with a prophetic voice, when
it proclaims its ideal for a regenerated Ireland an Ireland re-conquered for its
common people.100
Writing in The Re-Conquest of Ireland, Connolly argued that the time has
come for a new marshalling of forces to face the future. He took the
collectivisation of land for granted, in the context of Land Acts that guaranteed
the private property rights of small and medium landowners.101 Connolly was
clearly more comfortable discussing the urban proletariat than the agricultural
labourer. In this regard, he outlined the leading role of the industrial union:
branches can be formed to give expression to the need for effective
supervision of the affairs of the workshop, shipyard dock or railway...Add
to this the concept of one Big Union embracing all, and you have not only
the outline of the most effective form of combination for industrial
warfare to-day, but also for Social Administration of the Co-operative
Commonwealth of the future.102
Along with the battles won in the industrial field, Connolly envisaged a spirit of
public ownership transforming the political domain into a truly democratic one
immune from bourgeois distortion the realisation of Freedom in his words.
For this to come about, it required the cooperation of the ordinary day
labourers and those other workers whose toil was upon the intellectual
plane.103 A problem with this was that it spoke to urban Ireland Dublin in
particular and almost no one else. Prescribing the struggle for political
freedom, he ignored the development of a rural middle class with separatist

99

Connolly, Labour in Ireland, p. 240

Ibid., pp. 246-247
101
For a concise account of the successive Land Acts and their effects, see: Samuel Clark, The
Importance of Agrarian Classes: Agrarian Class Structure and Collective Action in Nineteenth-Century
Ireland and Paul Bew, The Land League Ideal in P.J. Drudy (ed.), Ireland: Land, Politics And People
(Cambridge, 1982)
102
Connolly, Labour in Ireland, p. 248
103
Ibid., pp. 248-253
100

81

inclinations, a major faux pas in the study of a mainly agricultural country.

Patterson points to Connollys

assumption that

the

only substantial

bourgeoisie, in Catholic Ireland at least, was urban and economically tied to the
British market, with a limited form of Home Rule as its ultimate political
ambition.104 Within the somewhat ambiguous final chapter of The Re-Conquest,
there was a hint that an alliance with revolutionary nationalism would be
acceptable in the short term. However, this did little to account for agrarian
republicanism or to reconcile his positive, revolutionary assessment of the Irish
working class with the IRBs aspirations.
In 1915, Connolly informed the ICA that it always been at the disposal of
the forces of Irish nationality for the ends common to all and would now cooperate in a forward movement...in an effort to plant the banner of freedom one
reach further towards its goal.105 He added to this an explanation of what such
a commitment entailed:
The Irish Citizen Army in its constitution pledges its members to fight
for Republican Freedom for Ireland...at the call of duty they may have to
lay down their lives for Ireland, and have so trained themselves that at
the worst the laying down of their lives shall constitute the starting point
of another glorious tradition a tradition that will keep alive the soul of
the nation.106
This reference to an Irish soul, which he repeated,107 sat comfortably alongside
Pearses cultural nationalist writings. More importantly, though, Connolly
began to speak of the Irish national struggle in terms of its anti-imperialist
purpose. In a March 1915 article, he remarked that:
The signal of war ought also to have been the signal for rebellion...when
the bugles sounded the first note for actual war, their notes should have
been for the tocsin for social revolution...Such a civil war would
not...have resulted in such a loss for socialist life as this international
war has entailed.108
It was not until April 1916 that Lenin wrote of the revolution having its roots in
the transformation of the imperialist war into civil war for socialism.

104

Patterson, The Politics of Illusion, p. 15

Workers Republic, 30 October 1915
106
Quoted in Donal Nevin, James Connolly: A Full Life (Dublin, 2005), p. 600 (emphasis added)
107
Greaves, The Life and Times of James Connolly, p. 376
108
International Socialist Review, March 1915
105

82

In early 1916, Connolly stated in the clearest terms yet that it was possible
for Ireland to deliver the first real blow to the British Empire:
Ireland is in that position of tactical advantage, that a defeat of England
in India, Egypt, the Balkans or Flanders would not be so dangerous to
the British Empire as any conflict of the armed forces in Ireland.109
Under the threat of conscription, and with Connollys economic rhetoric
ostensibly closer to the ISRP and Sinn Fin manifestos,110 he joined Pearse,
Plunkett, MacDermott, Ceannt and Clarke on the IRB-dominated military
council of the Volunteers. He took the ICA with him, but chose wisely not to
implicate the ITGWU in plans for the Rising.111 Hoisting the green flag over
Liberty Hall, Connolly summed up the new alliance between the socialists and
nationalists with the enduring comment: The cause of labour is the cause of
Ireland, the cause of Ireland is the cause of labour. They cannot be
dissevered.112
Austen Morgan interprets Connollys participation in the Rising as a sudden
and radical shift in the direction of Fenianism, by which he means a narrow and
violent expression of nationalism.113 This echoes Sen OCaseys assessment:
Jim Connolly had stepped from the narrow byway of Irish Socialism onto
the broad highway of Irish Nationalism. The high creed of Irish
Nationalism became his daily rosary, while the higher creed of
international humanity that had so long bubbled from his eloquent lips
was silent forever, and Irish Labour lost a leader.114
English presents a similar argument, stressing the appeal of Irish nationalism
and arguing that Connolly embraced a non-Marxist conception of the nation. He
also argues that Connolly failed to abide by his own criteria for a successful
uprising, set out in 1899.115 In sharp contrast, Larsen and Snoddy argue boldly

109

Workers Republic, 22 January 1916

See, for example, an article in the Workers Republic, 15 January 1916, in which he advocates
making the materials of distribution and the land the property of the Irish state
111
OConnor, A Labour History of Ireland, p. 100
112
Workers Republic, 8 April 1916
113
Morgan, James Connolly, pp. 139-204
114
Quoted in Howell, A Lost Left, p. 51
115
Richard English, Reflections on Republican Socialism in Ireland: Marxian Roots and Irish Historical
Dynamics, History of Political Thought, Vol. 17, No. 4 (1996), p. 567
110

83

that the Easter Rising was a perfect picture of a socialist revolution in the way
Lenin and Marx and envisaged it in their writings.116
In truth, neither of these contrasting views really captures Connollys
thinking or demonstrates a sufficient appreciation of the context. While it is
relatively straightforward to dismiss Larsen and Snoddys misguided claims,
Englishs arguments prove more challenging. He accurately conveys the extent
of Connollys frustration with labours progress in the months preceding the
Rising. This disenchantment related primarily to the loss of international
socialist solidarity on the war, while Irish labour had also softened by 1913
standards.117 There is no doubt that the ICA represented a minority of the
dissenting Volunteers and it is remiss to exaggerate the degree of socialist
influence on the IRB. However, English seems to deduce that Connollys real
weakness was in choosing nationalism over the mutually exclusive path of
socialism, when really there was nothing contradictory about his support for a
rebellion that was anti-imperialist in character if not personnel. At no stage in
his career did Connolly separate the social and national aspects of his socialist
republicanism. Rather, assessing the available political options, he advocated a
tactical alliance with revolutionary nationalism in order restore credibility to
socialist rhetoric and secure the ITUCLP a prominent negotiating position in
any resulting settlement.
Greaves contribution is useful because he draws parallels between
Connollys rationale and Lenins Two Tactics, concluding that the former held
that the national revolution was a prerequisite of the socialist revolution.118 The
distinction between Irish independence as a means to an end (Connolly) and an
end in itself (the overall objective of the IRB) is an important one. Connolly
realised that it was impossible for labour, in its weakened state, to initiate a
struggle for socialism. Hence he probably conceived of the revolution in stageist
terms, in the loosest possible sense. This notwithstanding, Broin is right to
point out that Greaves is guilty of imposing his own conceptual framework for
socialist advance in Ireland on Connolly and his involvement in 1916.119
Greaves speculative assessment ignores the fact that Connolly never made the
116

Quoted in Metscher, Republicanism and Socialism in Ireland, p. 441

OConnor, A Labour History of Ireland, p. 97
118
Greaves, The Life and Times of James Connolly, p. 425
119
Broin, Sinn Fin, p.93
117

84

distinction between democracy and socialism. In fact, he often used the two
terms interchangeably, thus failing to match the specifics of Lenins analyses. In
spite of this, it is possible to argue that, far from a blood sacrifice,120 Connolly
hoped that participation in the Rising would buy socialist republicanism the
right to mobilise in the revolutionary conditions that followed.
Conclusion
The tendency to focus on Connollys martyrdom in 1916 is often to the detriment
of a more holistic assessment of his politics. From the earliest stages of his
career to his death, he stressed the interdependence of social and national
questions. There is no reason to suggest that he would have abandoned labour
in the aftermath of the Rising. In his writings, we find a theoretical expression
of Irish socialist republicanism that was otherwise lacking in his time. This
socialist republicanism was multi-dimensional, amalgamating cultural and
revolutionary nationalism with syndicalism, and a notion of modernisation
incorporated with the positive aspects of an ancient communal society. His
acerbic critique of the effects of British colonial capitalism on Irish development
shared more in common with Marx and Engels, and with Hobson, than with
Lenins definition of imperialism. Yet his work overlapped with the era of
transnational, monopolistic imperialism that fascinated theorists of the Second
International. Moreover, although he failed to produce a classical text of
comparable acuity or importance, he did refer to the imperialist war in the
essentially Leninist language of a territorial carve up. Two concerns therefore
underpinned his opposition to imperialism and social imperialism. The first
was Irelands experience as a subject nation under British rule unsurprising,
given his proximity to developments in Britain and Ireland. The second concern
mirrored European socialist interest in the First World War as a threat to and
at once an opportunity for the advancement of international working-class
solidarity.
There are many redeeming features of Connollys political writings and
activities, particularly when viewed in their specific context. For instance, his
and Larkins contribution to the development of an independent Irish labour
movement and the concept of one big union have been unmatched. They
directly inspired the 1917-1923 revolutionary period, during which syndicalist
120

C. Desmond Greaves, 1916, A History: The Myth of Blood Sacrifice (Dublin, 1991), pp. 24-27

85

and

radical

agrarian

activities

occurred

in

unison

with

anti-colonial

republicanism.121 Another of Connollys strengths was his critical approach

towards the islands bourgeoisie. In one important respect, he demythologised
the legacy of figures such as OConnell and challenged conservative
nationalisms domination of what he referred to as the Irish patriot movement.
It also exposed the interests of the middle class in maintaining the link with
Britain and perpetuating working-class divisions along ethnic lines. Finally, he
delivered a sound critique of the contradictions of Ulster Unionism and
attitudes of the main British political parties towards Ireland.
Had Connolly survived until 1923, it is quite possible that he would have
refined his analyses to reflect the circumstances, namely the existence of two
separate Irish states. Even the most ardent defenders of Connollys legacy
concede that successive socialist republicans have failed in some measure due to
a selective re-reading of Connolly. Significantly, they have done so in order to
vindicate their ideology, without a real sense of context.122 These deficiencies
have manifested themselves in three main ways. Most significant is the
repeated failure to acknowledge the substantive cultural and material basis of
working-class Unionism. Secondly, despite the apparent conversion of
individuals such as Pearse to a more egalitarian form of republicanism,123
Connolly underestimated the strength of middle-class separatism and
misinterpreted the meaning and significance of Tones men of no property.
Lastly, in what has proven a major lacuna in Marxist histories of Ireland,
Connolly paid disproportionate attention to the urban working class at the
expense of the peasantry. This was typical of European Marxists in Connollys
era, but all the more fatal in his case due to the predominance of agriculture
and existence of a large and powerful rural middle class in Ireland.124

121

Emmet OConnor, Syndicalism in Ireland, 1917-1923 (Cork, 1988), pp. 127-131

Broin, Sinn Fin, pp. 94-97
123
Berresford Ellis, A History of the Irish Working Class, pp. 223-225
124
Patterson, The Politics of Illusion, p. 15
122

86

Chapter 3 The Making of an Irish Republican Bolshevik

Sen Murray was born on 15 June 1898 into a rural Catholic environment in
Cushendall, the Glens of Antrim area, to Patrick Murray and his wife Mary
Anne (ne Gore). Christened John on 18 June at the local St. Marys Church, he
came to be known as Sen by most friends and comrades.1 We know little about
Murrays background apart from what he recorded in a short autobiography
written for the Comintern in 1932. He recalled that his fathers siblings had
been seamen and labourers, and his mothers had emigrated to England and the
USA to find employment as railwaymen, carters and linen workers. His parents
remained in the locality and settled into poor peasant life,2 with his father
inheriting the family farm at Ballybrack. It is difficult to establish the size of
these holdings. However, 1901 and 1911 census records reveal that the Murray
farm included one stable, a cow house, calf house and piggery. It is perhaps
more accurate to describe Murray as coming from small farming stock.
Census records also indicate that Sen spent much of his childhood living on
his maternal uncle James farm at Laney, another Cushendall townland, along
with his mother and sisters Mary, Kate and Margaret. Whatever the reasons for
these living arrangements one can only speculate that they were born out of
practical necessity we can be sure that Sen became immersed into and
agricultural way of life at an early age. Indeed, he claimed to have started to
work at 7 years of age on the land.3 He used the term working in the loosest
possible sense, though it would not have been uncommon at the time for a boy of
his age to lend assistance on the family farm. From the age of six, he attended
Glenaan National School. Despite showing some promise under the tutelage of a
Master McNamee, his formal education ended when he was just eleven years
old. At this point, he commenced full-time work on the family farm.
Opportunities for further education were thus limited to evening school, which
he attended for several years in the winter months, and self-study. He became

Emmet OConnor, John (Sen) Murray in Keith Gildart, David Howell and Neville Kirk (eds.),
Dictionary of Labour Biography, Vol. XI (London, 2003), p. 200
2
Russian State Archive for Social and Political History (Rossiiskii Gosudartsvennyi Arkhiv SotsialnoPolitischeskoi Istorii, hereafter RGASPI), 495/218/1/57-63, Sen Murray autobiography, 11 August
1932; Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI), Sen Murray Papers, D2162/M/1, Letter to
Pat Murray from Wongan Hills, Western Australia, 14 November 1924, uncovers evidence of an
uncle working in Australia as a farmhand
3
RGASPI, 495/218/1/57-63, Sen Murray autobiography, 11 August 1932

87

acquainted with histories of the Irish national struggle and proceeded towards
participation in that very struggle.4

Sen Murray the Republican

Murray came from a long line of republican activists. His great grandfather was
a United Irishman and a number of his ancestors participated in the rebellions
of 1848 and 1867.5 A chance encounter with Roger Casement further stimulated
his interest in the struggle for national independence,6 while the ensuing 1916
Rising was undoubtedly a formative event in his political development. He
described the execution of Connolly as among the blackest crimes of
imperialism against the Irish nation and against the international Labour
movement. Crucially, in Murrays view, events subsequent to the Easter Rising,
including the 1918 elections, vindicated the actions of the Volunteers in 1916.7
Although he did not participate in the Rising itself, Murray became officially
involved with the republican movement shortly afterwards, joining Sinn Fin
sometime in 1917. He became secretary of the local cumann and a leading
member of the district organisation.8 In September 1918 he joined the 2nd
Brigade, 3rd Northern Division of the IRA and made considerable progress as a
military leader, becoming Commandant of his Company shortly after enlisting.9
It was around this time that he began to get acquainted with Marxian
literature as a result of reading the works of Connolly.10 His younger sister
Kate, meanwhile, became involved with Cumann na mBan. She was later
awarded the Survivors Medal and continued to receive a military pension until
her death in 1980.11
Throughout the War of Independence period, IRA violence in Ulster was
disorganised and sporadic Antrim was no exception.12 In the course of a rare

Ibid.
Interview with Eoin Murch, 17 May 2010
6
Ibid.; For another reference to the Casement meeting, see: PRONI, Sen Murray Papers,
D2162/I/43, Irish Section of the British-Hungarian Friendship Society, In Memoriam and Dedicated
to Sen Murray: A Courageous Irishman and Valiant Fighter for International Peace (1961)
7
Sen Murray, The Irish Revolt: 1916 and After (London, 1936), pp. 5, 8
8
RGASPI, 495/218/1/57-63, Sen Murray autobiography, 11 August 1932
9
National Archives UK (NAUK), Security Service, KV2/1185, Sen Murray; C. Desmond Greaves
Papers, Original IRA membership list (c. 1923)
10
RGASPI, 495/218/1/57-63, Sen Murray autobiography, 11 August 1932
11
I am obliged to Fionntn McElheran for this information
12
Michael Hopkinson, The Irish War of Independence (Dublin, 2002), Chapter 17
5

88

operation against a British Army patrol in July 1921, Murray was arrested on
his way to join a flying column. Interned without charge or trial, he spent
approximately eight months in Crumlin Road Jail, Belfast, and the Curragh
Camp, Kildare. The signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty on 6 December 1921
secured his release. Yet this period of imprisonment failed to deter him from
further IRA endeavours.13 He attended the banned anti-Treaty convention of
March 1922 at the Mansion House, Dublin, as one of 211 delegates. It was at
this meeting, chaired by Liam Mellows, that the IRA reiterated its opposition to
the Treaty and the Provisional Government. This convention also held great
personal significance for Murray. He first met Peadar ODonnell, who was to
become his closest friend and most ardent supporter. ODonnells quixotic
recollection of the meeting was simply: We found each other somehow.14
Reflecting on the truce more than a decade later, Murray described it as a
compromise fraught with disastrous consequences to Ireland and a clear
indication that the national bourgeoisie loved their class more than their
country.15 It should not be surprising to learn, therefore, that he remained
committed to the anti-Treaty cause until at least the end of 1922. He had
returned to the Glens in the aftermath of the banned convention, expressing to
his northern comrades support for the Army executive and a deep mistrust of
GHQ.16 This coincided with plans by the executive to launch a widespread
assault on Crown forces and Unionist establishment figures north of the border.
It was to be carried out by the five Northern Divisions, with auxiliary support
from the 1st Midland Division.17 According to the plan, the successful capture of
Musgrave Street Barracks, Belfast, on 19 May would provide the impetus for
similar attacks across Ulster. With the date set, a major glitch hit operations in
Antrim almost immediately. An oil tanker carrying a supply of 150 rifles for
each of the three brigades of the 3rd Northern Division broke down outside the
home of a British Colonel in Carrickfergus. The failure of the initial Musgrave
Street attack was another ominous sign. A guard managed to fire an early shot,
alerting those within the barracks. Outnumbered and disoriented, the twenty13

UCD Archives (UCDA), Sen MacEntee Papers, P67/528(1), Department of Justice Notes on
Communism in Saorstt ireann (Supplement) (1937); RGASPI, 495/218/1/57-63, Sen Murray
autobiography, 11 August 1932
14
Quoted in Michael McInerney, Peadar ODonnell: Irish Social Rebel (Dublin, 1974), p. 97
15
Murray, The Irish Revolt, pp. 10-11
16
Bureau of Military History (BMH), WS. 389, Roger E. McCorley, pp. 36
17
C. Desmond Greaves, Liam Mellows and the Irish Revolution (London, 1971), pp. 316-317

89

two strong Belfast unit quickly retreated. According to Roger McCorley, Officer
Commanding of the 1st Brigade, 3rd Northern Division, Murrays brigade was
still able to carry on and did so under the greatest difficulties.18 Murray led his
unit in an attack on the Cushendall police station, while a bank raid was
amongst a total of twenty-six outrages in the area over a six day period.19
However, the sheer lack of manpower and weapons, and confusion surrounding
the coordination of attacks, meant that the whole enterprise was always doomed
to failure.
A wave of repression swept the North in the aftermath of Mays events.
Feidhlim MacGuill, active as an Intelligence Officer with the Antrim Brigade,
painted a clear picture of what this entailed in his area:
Since the Rising in the North had not been as general as first planned, it
allowed the British to concentrate their forces on the areas where
partial Risings took place. It soon became evident to us, after our Rising
had failed, that to remain in Co. Antrim was almost an impossibility for
those who had taken part. Round ups and mass raids were the order
of the day, not only for those who took part an active part in the
operations during the Rising but also for all those who were known to
have Republican tendencies. Many active men were on the run and
trying to escape the drag-net which the British authorities were
relentlessly using. Every day the possibility of evading arrest became
even more difficult.20
An incident in Cushendall on 23 June, resulting in the death of three men and
wounding of two others in very suspicious circumstances, is a notable example
of such measures in action around the Glens. The newborn Unionist government
issued an official statement that the killings were the direct result of an
attempted ambush on a group of Specials.21 An inquiry into the incident refuted
this allegation and concluded that all five males were innocently occupied and
unarmed. But the report also confirmed that British Army and RUC incursions
were a direct and coordinated response to the IRAs activities in May.22 All signs
pointed to a difficult existence for Murray had he decided to remain in the
locality.

18

BMH, WS. 389, Roger E. McCorley, pp. 29-32

NAUK, CAB/24/138, The Cushendall Enquiry report, 9 September 1922
20
BMH, WS. 609, Feidhlim S. MacGuill, p. 13
21
Irish Times, 9 September 1922
22
NAUK, CAB/24/138, The Cushendall Enquiry report, 9 September 1922
19

90

In the autumn of 1922, Murray travelled to Glasgow with MacGuill and

another member of the brigade named Jack OLoan, to track down an unnamed
volunteer who had left Ireland in haste, accused of misappropriating around
400 from the bank raid in May. After interrogating this individual and
becoming sufficiently convinced of his innocence, the three travelled directly to a
special training camp at the Curragh. Assembled at this ad hoc facility were all
northern units of the IRA. They were to be given intensive military training and
returned to their respective areas reinvigorated and fully equipped to launch
another campaign. But in the context of a Civil War ripping through the South,
the general feeling was that the Dublin leadership would not provide material
support for another northern offensive. For prominent Antrim IRA members,
the real choice was between emigration and enduring a clandestine existence at
home.23 Fearing reprisals at the hands of the B Specials or RUC, Murray chose
the former and returned to Glasgow in December 1922, seeking work as a
labourer on the Clyde.24

A British Communist Initiation

From working in Scotland during the era of Red Clydeside, Murray gained an
introduction to British labour politics. This celebrated period of industrial and
political radicalism, centring on the Glasgow area in the late 1910s and early
1920s, spawned such influential Scottish labour figures as John Maclean,
Arthur MacManus, Harry McShane, Tom Bell and William Gallacher. The Irish
socialist connection with Clydeside found its greatest expression in James
Connolly and the SLP, established in 1903 as a breakaway from Hyndmans
SDF.25 At least two notable graduates of 1916 Connollys son Roddy, and Sen
McLoughlin, the Boy Commandant plied their political trade in Glasgow
between 1918 and 1920, establishing mostly positive working relationships with
the Scottish socialists. Their time on Clydeside did not overlap with Murrays,26
but these three examples of interaction between British socialism and Irish
republicanism in the immediate aftermath of the October Revolution are
important for their lines of continuity through Connolly and for arriving at an
understanding of the origins of Irish Bolshevism.

23

BMH, WS. 609, Feidhlim S. MacGuill, pp. 13-18

RGASPI, 495/218/1/57-63, Sen Murray autobiography, 11 August 1932
25
David Howell, A Lost Left: Three Studies in Socialism and Nationalism (Manchester, 1986)
26
Charlie McGuire, Sen McLoughlin: Irelands Forgotten Revolutionary (Pontypool, 2011), pp. 50-58
24

91

In 1924, Murray left for London, where he found work as a labourer and
became a district secretary for Jim Larkins Irish Worker League (IWL) on the
basis of a recommendation by Jack White.27 The IWL was the successor to the
first CPI and precursor-cum-rival of the Workers Party of Ireland (WPI). As
Emmet OConnor has pointed out, The IWL never functioned as a communist
party, and the big noise [Larkin] had an extraordinarily troubled relationship
with the Comintern.28 In spite of this, Murray continued to progress in English
communist circles. By 1925, he was an organiser for the CPGBs Islington
branch, a member of the partys London district committee, and a paid up
member of the Central London branch of the National Union of Distributive and
Allied Workers (NUDAW). He participated in the 1926 general strike, during
which the police raided his lodgings, and earned NUDAWs nomination as a
delegate to Tower Hamlets Trades Council.29
The All-Russian Co-operative Society (ARCOS) Ltd., a company formed by
the Soviet government in 1921, seemed to offer the prospect of secure
employment. However, in May 1927, the company closed its London offices amid
accusations of espionage and communist propaganda. Quickly compensated with
a job in the London depot of Russian Oil Products (ROP), where he worked for a
few months, his political work continued unabated.30 Incidentally, a Dublin
subsidiary of ROP, established later that year, was to become the centre of great
controversy. Not only was the company investigated as a communist front
(which, by and large, it was) for the duration of its existence,31 but within two
years of its formation the branch became part of an increasingly bitter dispute
between Larkin and the Comintern. On this occasion, Larkins grievance was
that ROP had overlooked members of his Workers Union of Ireland (WUI) for
employment in favour of non-union labour. He wrote what OConnor describes
as a weasel-worded letter seeking Stalins arbitration in the dispute. While the
27

UCDA, Sen MacEntee Papers, P67/528(1), Department of Justice Notes on Communism in

Saorstt ireann (Supplement) (1937)
28
Emmet OConnor, Reds and the Green: Ireland, Russia and the Communist Internationals, 1919-43
(Dublin, 2004), p. 3. See Chapter 5 for the IWLs collapse and deterioration of Larkins relationship
with Moscow
29
OConnor, John (Sen) Murray, p. 201; Denis Smyth, Sean Murray, A Pilgrim of Hope: The Life and
Times of an Irish Communist, 1898-1961 (Belfast, 1998), p. 25
30
UCDA, Sen MacEntee Papers, P67/528(1), Department of Justice Notes on Communism in
Saorstt ireann (Supplement) (1937)
31
National Archives of Ireland (NAI), Department of Justice (DJ), 2007/56/120, Russian Oil Products
Company (1928-1931)

92

Comintern laid out instructions for the ROP to employ union labour only
thereafter, Stalins Politburo made it clear that the company would not grant
the WUI a monopoly on employment or give Larkin access to oil deals.32
This affair marked the decisive rupture between Larkin and the Comintern,
which had begun to make alternative arrangements for organising in Ireland.
Between November 1927 and March 1928, the first Irish intake arrived at the
International Lenin School in Moscow for preliminary training. The group
included Pat Breslin, Bill Denn, Charlie Ashmore, Dan Buckley, Sen Shelly
and Jim Larkin junior.33 The last named was a notable inclusion given his
fathers frosty relationship with Moscow. Young Jim, as he was known, was
keen to reassure the Executive Committee of the Comintern (ECCI) that the
IWL had the capacity to function as a communist party if nudged in a particular
direction, a claim without great substance. Meanwhile, Big Jim held residual
hope that some IWL representation would help rescue his standing in Moscow.34
The overconfidence of Jack Carney, his loyal lieutenant, encouraged this belief.
It was only to Larkins credit that he came to the conclusion, albeit belatedly,
that any lasting deal with the Comintern was impossible.35 In notifying
Bukharin of his decision to withdraw from active work, he gave assurances
that there would be no interference in young Jims activities and that his son
was working in earnest. He also asked for those placed in charge of the
movement in Ireland to receive undivided support from the Comintern.36
Although not a ringing endorsement of decisions made in Moscow, Larkins
support for the new generation of leaders helped to create the space for the
ECCI to press ahead with its new strategy in Ireland.

Selected for the International Lenin School

The fifth congress of the Comintern in 1924 passed an explicit resolution that
marked out a policy of Bolshevisation and paved the way for the establishment

32

Emmet OConnor, Bolshevising Irish Communism, 1927-31, Irish Historical Studies, 33: 132
(2003), p. 455
33
Barry McLoughlin, Proletarian Academics or Party Functionaries? Irish Communists at the
International Lenin School, Moscow, 1927-37, Saothar, 22 (1997), p. 64
34
OConnor, Reds and the Green, pp. 127-128
35
Ibid., pp. 131-139
36
RGASPI, 495/89/49/18-19, Letter from Larkin to Bukharin (1929)

93

of party schools in Moscow for the benefit of foreign communists.37 In May 1926,
the International Lenin School opened with the specific purpose of creating
in every Party at least a small group of leaders capable of
comprehending in a Leninist Bolshevik spirit the contradictions of the
present historical epoch, analysing the concrete historical situation in
their own country and of dialectically applying and distinguishing that
part of the experience of the Russian Revolution which is applicable to
all countries from that is specifically Russian.38
The school curriculum consisted of the two fundamental subjects of political
economy and the history of the labour movement, followed by seminars (groups
of ten to fifteen people, sub-divided into groups of four or five for each particular
topic) on Leninism, agriculture, agitation and propaganda. The fourth and final
term covered dialectical and historical materialism, the world economy and
additional lessons on agitation and propaganda. The students were required to
learn Russian for the duration of the course. Compulsory also were excursions
and participation in the practical work of the national sections of the Agitprop
of the Comintern.39 In all, school lessons, private study and practical work
amounted to some seventy-two hours per week.40 The Lenin School was far from
a holiday camp for even the most able scholars and activists in attendance.
Sen Murray (using the pseudonym James Black) joined the Irish students
on 11 December 1927 after attending the CPGB national congress in Salford in
October.41 As with other members of the Irish group, Larkin Jnr to a lesser
extent, Murray arrived untainted by the dramatic failure of successive Irish
communist incarnations. Murray was exceptional in that he attended, not on
the instructions of Dublin, but as one of ten CPGB delegates. This is significant
because the CPGB was in the midst of a transitionary period, with internal and
external pressures shifting the party hastily to the left and its relationship with
Moscow reaching a high point.42 The ECCI singled out the British party for its

37

Robert Service, Comrades: Communism, A World History (Basingstoke, 2007), p. 113

RGASPI, 495/164/500/50-72, Sixth ECCI Plenum, 8 March 1926
39
Ibid.
40
Barry McLoughlin, Left to the Wolves: Irish Victims of Stalinist Terror (Dublin, 2007), p. 25
41
RGASPI, 495/218/1/57-63, Sen Murray autobiography, 11 August 1932
42
Andrew Thorpe, The British Communist Party and Moscow, 1920-43 (Manchester, 2000), Chapter
6
38

94

rigorous methods of selection for the Lenin School.43 Consequently, the

proletarian credentials of its students have been described as second to none.44
Barry McLoughlin is correct, therefore, in his observation that the role
reserved for Murray as Moscows most important and trusted representative of
Ireland was due to his long Party record and links with those British emissaries
who supervised Comintern business in Ireland.45 At the behest of the AngloAmerican Secretariat, which generally dealt with Irish affairs, Tom Bell and
Bob Stewart, two Scots, travelled to Ireland in September 1929 to oversee
preparations for a new political formation under the slogan United Free
Workers and Peasants Irish Republic.46 The Comintern deemed Bell and
Stewart, two stalwarts of the Irish communist efforts of the early twenties, most
capable of initiating the foundation of a new party. Their experience counted for
much and it was hoped that through the CPGB conduit they would develop
effective lines of communication between Dublin and Moscow, which had been
lacking in previous years. It is significant that the Comintern did not trust
Larkin. But nor did it have faith in the existing Irish communist leadership.
With Bell and Stewart preparing the ground with a rump of committed local
activists, Murray was to receive the training deemed necessary for organising
and cultivating a revolutionary party.

Murray at the Lenin School

Having been enrolled on the longest and most demanding of the courses on offer,
it seems that Murray made great strides to justify early admission to the AllUnion Communist Party, Bolshevik (VKP/b). Despite having little formal
education and no Marxist training, he quickly became one of the best
performing English-speaking students. An early progress report stated: Worked
well and has made progress. Good attitude to party and social work. However,
it continued, he still showed confusion on some questions, and should make a
bigger effort to understand the fundamentals of Leninism. A later report
indicated that he had advanced sufficiently. It described Murray as very
capable, very active and praised his independence of thought. More
43

RGASPI, 495/164/500/50-72, Sixth ECCI Plenum, 8 March 1926

Gidon Cohen and Kevin Morgan, Stalins Sausage Machine. British Students at the Lenin School,
1926-37, Twentieth Century British History, 13: 4 (2002), p. 337
45
McLoughlin, Left to the Wolves, p. 25
46
OConnor, Bolshevising Irish Communism, p. 458
44

95

significantly, he had developed a good grasp of Marxist-Leninist methods the

primacy of democratic centralism, a vanguard party of the proletariat led by a
group of professional revolutionaries, and the penetration of all aspects of
society by agents of the party. This would have been the most pleasing aspect of
Murrays development in the eyes of his instructors.47
By October 1929, the Comintern had rewarded Murray and Larkin Jnr with
placements on a specialised agrarian group within the Anglo-American
Secretariat. They were permitted to attend meetings and conduct independent
research, the culmination of which was the publication of a 100-page Marxist
pamphlet on Irish conditions.48 Spread over six chapters, the pamphlet dealt
with a wide range of issues partition; the Civil War; womens labour; land
reform and the rural economy; trade unionism, living conditions; the role of
labour and republican parties; and Anglo-American antagonism in Irish
political life and looked forward to the establishment in Ireland of a
proletarian dictatorship. Translated into Russian and published with an initial
print run of 7,000 copies, this pamphlet was a gauge of the two Irish students
progress and a sure sign of the Cominterns faith in them as Marxist scholars.49
In early summer, the students embarked on their second practical a short
field trip to one of the Soviet regions. Murray, Larkin Jnr and Harry Wicks,
along three others Charlie Stead from South Wales, an Indian named
Magharab and a Canadian known only as Porter set off for Dagestan, one of
the autonomous Soviet Republics in the North Caucasus region, bordering the
Caspian Sea. Their first stop was the regions capital, Makhachkala, where they
attended party meetings and had an opportunity to study the citys economy.
Among the sights to which their eyes were unaccustomed were the lavishness of
hospitality at meetings and the poor treatment of women. This certainly
contrasted with their experience of Moscow. Subsequently making their way to
Shamil, one of the remotest towns of the predominantly Muslim region, they
witnessed examples of primitive life. The people were uneducated, food was in
short supply, and again the treatment of women was slave-like. Wicks described
the state of social relations as pre-feudal. With little evidence of Socialism in
47

Quoted in OConnor, John (Sen) Murray, p. 201

James Larkin junior and Sen Murray, The Life and Struggle of the Working-Class and Peasantry in
Ireland (Translated from English by N. Kaminskaya) (Moscow, 1930)
49
I am obliged to Stephen White for this information
48

96

One Country in action, they returned to Moscow with a greater of

comprehension of realities on the periphery, all agreeing that the trip
challenged their desire to be loyal party concepts.50
The Irish group did not have to wait long for their faith in the party to be
tested, when, in February 1930, Nikolai Bukharin lost his position as Director of
the Lenin School. But it was the real evaporation of Bukharins influence in late
1929, when expelled from the CPSU and Comintern, which removed the
remaining obstacle to replicating CPSU purification measures across the
board.51 The school initiated a chistka (purge), which lasted a few weeks and
caused the suspension of all other activity. In the case of the Irish students, the
most intense scrutiny fell on right wing Larkinites. Unsurprisingly, the first
significant act in the process was to replace Larkin Jnr with Harry Wicks as
partorg (party organiser) of the Anglo-Irish group. Losing such an important
position, one which entailed responsibility for all political aspects of student
life, was a huge blow to the Irish contingent.52 Yet there is no evidence to
suggest that the episode had a destructive impact on Wicks relationship with
his Irish comrades. On the contrary, Wicks remembered the Irish students as
good militants and knew Larkin Jnr in particular very well. He had also
travelled with Larkin and Murray because we fitted each others interests and
temperaments.53 Besides, all students had experienced the same humiliating
cleansing process to some extent. Even though Wicks classmates failed to
speak in his favour during a particularly brutal grilling, his memoirs do not
reveal any deep feelings of resentment about the incident or towards the Irish
group in general.54
The most frustrating aspect of the chistka for the Irish students was that
the Comintern and Irish communist leadership in Dublin bypassed them during
policy negotiations. A letter from Arthur to Tom Bell on 17 November noted
strained and difficult relations within the school. At a special commission set
up to deal with the Irish students grievances, the group (NB: with Murrays
objective support) presented a number of accusations. The main concern was
50

The account of this trip is solely that of Harry Wicks, Keeping My Head: Memoirs of a British
Bolshevik (London, 1992), pp. 109-113
51
McLoughlin, Proletarian Academics or Party Functionaries?, p. 64
52
Ibid., p. 68
53
Wicks, Keeping My Head, pp. 90, 109
54
Ibid. p. 92

97

that there had taken place a progressive and intentional exclusion of the Irish
students from the discussion of Irish questions. Appointed as chair of the
commission was Harry Hall (Haywood), an influential American communist and
pan-African theorist.55 Haywood, an imposing figure, shared a room with
Murray at the Lenin School and counted him as a close friend. More generally,
he was excited by his encounters with the Irish revolutionaries as he described
them, with whom he shared a lot in common as members of oppressed
nations.56 Unsurprisingly, he held a minority position on the commission,
coming down strongly on the side of the Irish students and sustaining their
objections. He argued for an outright condemnation of the methods employed by
Bell and Buckley (the latter had made an early return to Ireland to assist Bell
and Stewart) and of the complete ignoring of the Irish students who must form
a basis for the carrying out of the CI line. An intervention by Harry Wicks, no
less, facilitated a resolution. In future, the Comintern and Irish communist
leadership would consult the students when developing policies in preparation
for the formation of a communist party. That is, pending an agreement to sweep
the whole affair under the carpet in time for the visit of an Irish delegation to
Moscow.57
In an interesting footnote, Arthur argued that it was a tactical mistake to
have excluded Murray from Irish policy debates.58 We can draw two possible
conclusions from this: first, that as a CPGB delegate with an impeccable record,
Murray was held in higher regard than the other Irish students; or second, that
he demonstrated a certain level of aptitude to justify a positive assessment. It is
likely to have been a combination of the two factors. Added to this is the fact
that Murray had not incurred any blemishes on his record since arriving in
Moscow. By contrast, the Lenin School censured Larkin Jnr and Ashmore when
they failed to keep in step with the notion of socialist competition, defined by
McLoughlin as the efforts of workers loyal to the regime to fulfil obligations
over and above their normal work quotas. In this instance, they failed to meet
the expected contribution of two to three months allowance to the national loan
scheme, created to fund the industrialisation programme of the Five Year
55

RGASPI, 495/89/54/53-61, Letter from Arthur to Frank, 17 November 1929

Harry Haywood, Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist (Chicago, Illinois,
1978), p. 205
57
RGASPI, 495/89/54/53-61, Letter from Arthur to Frank, 17 November 1929
58
Ibid.
56

98

Plan.59 Larkin Jnr had also been compelled to repudiate his fathers politics, a
particularly degrading experience even in the context of the purge.60 But even
this paled in comparison to the fate suffered by Pat Breslin, whose unusual
political ideas drew criticism from his fellow students and eventually led to
expulsion from the school.61 Generally, times of crisis, Murray kept a low profile,
only raising his head above the parapet briefly to criticise the Dublin
leadership.62 This non-deviationist attitude seems to have ensured him a
smoother passage through the school than some of his classmates.
In the same year, Breslin married a Russian woman named Katya and
successfully applied for Soviet citizenship. Murray also married a local woman,
a fellow member of the VKP/b. However, he neither managed to secure his wife
a passport for a return to Ireland nor was prepared to take up Soviet citizenship
in order to remain in Moscow.63 The decision to surrender Irish citizenship
effectively sealed Breslins fate. He fell afoul of the Soviet authorities, who
refused him permission to return home to be with his second wife, Daisy
McMackin from Belfast. Breslin eventually died of ill-health in a Soviet camp in
Kazan in 1942. Murray was friendly with McMackin and kept in contact with
her during the 1930s. He provided her with a reference to gain employment in
Moscow and commissioned her to write an Irish translation of The Communist
Manifesto.64 Murray and Breslins different trajectories highlight not only the
formers good fortune but also his direct proximity to Stalins Terror. It raises
questions about his knowledge of the extent of repression in the Soviet Union,
and Breslins fate in particular.
Despite calls from Tom Bell for their early repatriation, the remaining Irish
students from the first deputation completed the long course in the summer of
1930.65 For Murray, the Lenin School experience was a mixed one. Culturally,
the trip to Dagestan was an education, though it exposed the limitations of
socialist policies in primitive areas. Politically, it left him with unpleasant
memories of isolation and infighting associated with the chistka. Yet he escaped
59

McLoughlin, Left to the Wolves, pp. 33-34

OConnor, Reds and the Green, p. 145
61
McLoughlin, Left to the Wolves, pp. 34-38
62
RGASPI, 495/89/54/53-61, Letter from Arthur to Frank, 17 November 1929
63
OConnor, Reds and the Green, p. 169
64
McLoughlin, Left to the Wolves, Part 1
65
OConnor, Reds and the Green, pp. 149-150
60

99

relatively unscathed in comparison to a number of fellow students. He gained

vital knowledge in Marxist theory and history, the latter extending to sessions
on the colonial world and on Ireland in particular. Equally consequential was
his introduction to Bolshevik methods of party organisation and discipline,
which had been lacking in previous Irish communist leaderships. Finally, he
had added to his arsenal a number of contacts from which he and the Irish
communist movement could draw inspiration and assistance in subsequent
years. Hence, Murrays two and a half years at the Lenin School was a largely
constructive prelude to his return to Ireland.

Taking the Reins

Upon completion, all but one of the successful Irish students made their way to
Dublin to commence party work. Murray was first required to report to CPGB
headquarters in London for briefing, which serves as a reminder that he was
first and foremost a representative of the British party. This he did within hours
of arriving in England, alongside Charlie Stead and Harry Wicks.66 In 1929, in
the midst of his studies, Murray had attended another CPGB national congress,
this time in Leeds, as a delegate from the Lenin School nucleus.67 Relying on
Wicks for information, it appears that one of Murrays key duties was to convey
the ECCIs basic policy message to the CPGB rank and file: These two [Murray
and Bob McIlhone, a Scottish steel worker of Irish descent] were expected to
plug the Cominterns left line as against the right one represented by the
British Central Committee.68
The return of Murray and Larkin Jnr, recommended by the Lenin School for
leading Party work with his national Party after having seemingly been purged
of his fathers influence,69 coincided with a broadening and intensification of
class against class in Ireland. The ECCI had hitherto been prepared to work
with left-wing republicans, led by Mick Fitzpatrick and Peadar ODonnell, in
areas of mutual interest.70 From the early Twenties, the Comintern pursued
this strategy with relative consistency, tailoring it in 1929/30 to accommodate

66

Wicks, Keeping My Head, p. 126

RGASPI, 495/218/1/57-63, Sen Murray autobiography, 11 August 1932
68
Wicks, Keeping My Head, p. 93
69
McLoughlin, Left to the Wolves, p. 25
70
Adrian Grant, Irish Socialist Republicanism, 1909-36 (Doctoral Thesis, University of Ulster, 2010),
Chapter 5
67

100

republican grassroots.71 But while the extension of class against class was
likely to bring a new sense of urgency to efforts to establish a new Irish
communist party, Moscow failed to understand the wider implications of
applying the policy universally to republicans:
It was a rash move against a constituency on which the Irish secretariat
was heavily dependent. In addition to supplying the core of the Dublin
communist group, republicans dominated all of the communist fronts,
and had proved useful in INUM [Irish National Unemployed Movement]
demonstrations, the bus strike [May 1930], and providing sympathetic
coverage in An Phoblacht, which claimed to sell 8,000 copies per week.72
For Murray, this new strategy would act as a litmus test on his Bolshevik
credentials, his capacity to put republican sympathies to one side, and his
commitment to a policy of rejecting united frontism in the short term.
Upon his arrival in Dublin in July (without his Russian wife) Murray
became a paid organiser on the Cominterns books.73 As a signal of his
intentions to Moscow, he laid out the public position of the Revolutionary
Workers Party (RWP) in its organ, the Workers Voice:
The Irish bourgeoisie are no longer oppressed by British imperialism,
but are ruling Ireland, North and South, in alliance with British
capitalism. They have abandoned the struggle for the Republic. Not
a single move can now be made for independence without a struggle to
overthrow the Irish capitalist class. This means that old slogans
(correct in their time) of Ireland against England, Independence,
Republic, must now be replaced by the slogan of class against class.74
This statement was perceptive in its assessment of a ruling party that continued
to uphold the British economic system in Ireland, despite the achievement of
limited political independence. Over the subsequent two months, the Workers
Voice continued in a more overt Third Period vein, with its public declarations
ostensibly ruling out alliances with left republicans and rival labour groups.75
One consequence of this was a brief souring of relations between the RWP and
Peadar ODonnell, who had been the main facilitator of cooperation between the
71

OConnor, Bolshevising Irish Communism, p. 457

OConnor, Reds and the Green, p. 153
73
RGASPI, 495/218/1/57-63, Sen Murray autobiography, 11 August 1932; UCDA, Sen MacEntee
Papers, P67/528(1), Department of Justice Notes on Communism in Saorstt ireann (Supplement)
(1937)
74
Workers Voice, 19 July 1930
75
Ibid., 30 August, 6, 13 September 1930
72

101

communist and republican movements.76 To compensate for the loss of

ODonnells assistance, the ECCI suggested that the Irish communists try
accessing and utilising the WUI without any dealings with Larkin. This
misguided ploy had its roots in wildly exaggerated membership figures provided
by Jack Carney and in the failure to comprehend the lengths that Larkin could
go to prevent infiltration of the union.77 In the event, the ECCI was reluctant to
display any real direction on the matter, isolating the RWP from another
potential constituency.
In August 1930, Murray and Larkin Jnr outlined the delicate and complex
nature of WUI organisation and internal dynamics. Their joint report drew
attention to Big Jims influence, of serious significance in Dublin, and
emphasised that only through cooperation with him would it be possible to
transform the WUI into a revolutionary vehicle. They identified among its
membership a desire for political activity and education and explained that any
tendencies towards reformism were the direct result of a detachment from the
international revolutionary movement i.e. from the Comintern. Interestingly,
they levied specific criticisms at the language and tone of Workers Voice
editorials, which had adopted an anti-Larkinite policy and tarred the WUI with
the same brush as the reformist National Union of Railwaymen (NUR) and
ITGWU. Clearly frustrated with the failure to exploit the potential base that the
WUI and IWL offered, Murray and Larkin Jnr recommended that the
Comintern make overtures to deal with Larkins misgivings about the ROP
affair. They hoped that this could be done quickly and that it would be entrusted
it to a responsible party comrade.78
The available evidence suggests that a dividing line formed between the
Bell-Stewart caretaker leadership and the Larkinites. Suspicious of the former,
the latter group asked the Comintern for clarification of its exact position in
relation to instructions that Bell had passed down. Furthermore, in an apparent
jibe at Bell, Murray and young Jim called for a period of self-reflection: Only by
proving our group to be worthy of serious consideration and not of ridicule can
we expect to be seriously accepted by the WUI section of the workers in Dublin

76

OConnor, Reds and the Green, p. 155

OConnor, Bolshevising Irish Communism, p. 457
78
RGASPI, 495/89/63/20-27, Joint report on WUI, Sen Murray and James Larkin Jnr, 2 August 1930
77

102

and by the workers in general.79 At a RWP meeting of around 100 people in

Belfast on 24 August, Murray used his newly acquired knowledge of Marxist
economics and history to deliver a lengthy analysis of the global economic
downturn and its local implications. Naturally, he prescribed the solution
embraced by the Russian workers and peasants and concluded with a confident
call for those in attendance to come into the ranks and fight in the terrific
struggle for the overthrow of capitalism.80 While he and Larkin Jnr
undoubtedly remained confident of the possibility of fomenting the conditions
for a Bolshevik-type revolution in Ireland, it is clear that they were
uncomfortable with aspects of the Comintern line.
On a practical level, the communist groupings began to reap in small
amounts the rewards of their agitation. In September, Larkin Jnr successfully
contested the Dublin Corporation election. Though outperformed by the Labour
Party and Fianna Fil, he won a seat for the RWP with 967 votes.
Representation in local government gave the party the necessary platform to
press ahead with a recruitment drive. Important also was Larkin Snrs election
on an IWL ticket. He outpolled the Labour Party candidate,81 confirming
Murray and young Jims suspicion that the latters father remained a
formidable political force, despite warnings that he planned to retire from
politics and concentrate on industrial agitation.82 Murray, meanwhile, attended
a League Against Imperialism (LAI) meeting on 24 September, demonstrating
that he had not broken all links with republicans. Frank Ryan, who had
assumed editorial control of An Phoblacht from ODonnell, ended these meetings
calling for three cheers for the Workers Revolutionary Party and the singing of
the Red Flag.83 A rather opportunistic anti-imperialist IRA campaign ran
concurrently with these events, targeting mainly symbolic figures of local
resentment such as moneylenders, ex-servicemen and British monuments. Only
the least militaristic of the IRAs anti-imperialist activities Poppy Day
protests had an appeal beyond their ranks.84 In fact, these Armistice Day
79

Ibid.
PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs (HA), HA/32/1/545, RUC Special Branch report of Irish Workers
Revolutionary Party meeting, 27 August 1930
81
Mike Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland: The Pursuit of the Workers Republic Since 1916
(Dublin, 1984), p. 103
82
OConnor, Reds and the Green, p. 148
83
Donal Drisceoil, Peadar ODonnell (Cork, 2001), p. 63
84
Brian Hanley, The IRA, 1926-1936 (Dublin, 2002), pp. 71-76
80

103

demonstrations became the primary LAI activity in Ireland between 1930 and
1932.85
Murrays continued friendship with Ryan, ODonnell and Roddy Connolly
were indicative of what was possible on the ground in difficult circumstances,
almost two thousand miles away from head office in Moscow.86 However, in
typical fashion, a letter from the ECCI in September confirmed that the line
articulated in the Workers Voice was fundamentally correct. In the face of stark
realities, the Comintern still believed that the semi-proletarian and proletarian
elements of the IRA could be separated from its petty bourgeois leadership and
brought under communist control. But whereas the Comintern was disinclined
to listen to genuine concerns about policy content, it was more than willing to
enforce personnel changes where it felt it was being failed. In this instance, Bell
was dishonourably discharged due to his sectarian attitude and replaced with
three of the strongest graduates of the Lenin School. Murray, Larkin Jnr and
William Denn were to assume gradual control from the diligent Bob Stewart.87
Paradoxically, Bell appeared to have been implementing class against class
with a fundamentalism with which Murray and Larkin Jnr were ill at ease.
Their private deliberations, and Murrays association with the anti-imperialist
movement, indicated that they favoured a more pragmatic approach. But the
perceived need was for a leadership that would run with the escalation of class
against class with fewer interruptions than under Bells guidance.
Bells removal preceded that of Christy Ferguson, another troublesome
figure. Having returned from the Lenin School in disgrace after just a few days,
Ferguson took up work with the INUM. However, the new Revolutionary
Workers Groups (RWG) leadership saw him as a negative influence, guilty of
what they described vaguely as unprincipled conduct.88 The leadership reached
an agreement to expel Ferguson, confirming the decision at a meeting in
January 1931 with Bob Stewart and the particularly militant Belfast group. The
Belfast group had hitherto been unaffiliated with the Comintern and was
therefore largely unacquainted with Bolshevik methods of organisation and

85

Drisceoil, Peadar ODonnell, p. 63

Charlie McGuire, Roddy Connolly and the Struggle for Socialism in Ireland (Cork, 2008), pp. 132135
87
RGASPI, 495/89/61/19-22, Draft resolution on Ireland, 1 September 1930
88
RGASPI, 495/89/65/7-8, Case of F. (1930)
86

104

discipline. Consequently, the Belfast comrades raised a number of taxing

questions about the RWGs direction. One topic of discussion was the IRA, with
which no serious collaboration had taken place in Belfast. Murrays first
contribution was to repeat his criticisms of Bell and join Larkin Jnr in
reiterating support for Big Jim. He also tried to convince his Belfast comrades
that the north-east ought to be the centre of anti-imperialist activity. Stewart
explained with unwarranted optimism that the Comintern line allowed for
cooperation with ODonnell and the establishment of a united front of the
working class and peasantry. At the same time, he joined Murray in attempting
to assuage concerns about a republican takeover, noting that fewer than half of
RWG national committee members were republicans and emphasising that all
came from working-class backgrounds. The Belfast leaders seemed generally
satisfied with these answers and admitted to forejudging the RWGs
relationship with the republican movement.89 The northern authorities
welcomed this frank discussion as a split in the RWGs national structures, akin
to When thieves fall out,90 which failed to discern the incongruous process of
centralisation underway.
Further evidence of this concentration of power surfaced in February.
Returning to Dublin fairly satisfied with the outcome of the Belfast meeting,
Murray was unaware that the Belfast group had decided to go above his head
and complain to the Anglo-American Secretariat that decision-making processes
were now in the hands of three persons who have constituted themselves a
dictatorship. A supplementary document expressed a reluctance to work under
the direction of Bob Stewart, who was guilty of pandering to a clericallydominated, fascist-in-embryo Republican Party through its leader Peadar
ODonnell and the Peasants Movement. This was among a number of problems
identified by the Belfast group. One divisive issue was the decision to base
Murray and Denn in Dublin, from where they dole out their training in the
form of resolutions from which there can be no appeal. Another was the
apparent lack of communication regarding the nature of Fergusons return from
Moscow and subsequent expulsion. Finally, the Belfast comrades suspected that
a secret visit by Murray to the North was designed to bring another newly89

RGASPI, 495/89/65/9-11, Minutes of RWG meeting, 3-4 January 1931

PRONI, HA/32/1/546, RUC Special Branch report of Irish Workers Revolutionary Party meeting, 28
January 1931
90

105

formed contact (Ballymoney) under the direct control of Dublin. Although it

remained committed to ECCI directives and agreed not to undermine Stewarts
work, the Belfast secretariat effectively communicated a vote of no confidence in
the Dublin leadership. Harry Pollitt, the CPGB leader, arbitrated and was
partly effective in allaying the Belfast groups concerns. Murray also met with
these members and gave assurances regarding their input within the framework
of democratic centralism.91 A July communication from the ECCI eventually
brought the dispute to a conclusive end, stating in no uncertain terms that the
Belfast group had taken a wrong attitude towards the Dublin secretariat. A
united, yet centralised structure was one of the pre-requisites for developing
the RWG and establishing a communist party.92 The implication was clear: the
central trinity of Murray, Denn and Larkin was sacrosanct as long as the
Comintern retained confidence in their commitment to class against class.
As outlined above, there were genuine concerns, usually expressed implicitly
or in private, about the potential ramifications of creating a movement that
would sit in isolation from trade unions and left-wing republicans. Ultimately,
the same group of cadres subordinated such pragmatism to the need to retain
access to the international communist apparatus. In January 1931, the RWGs
inaugural congress conditionally endorsed class against class. Remaining open
to the possibility of unifying the working class, peasantry and discontented
bourgeoisie in a mass movement, the Dublin secretariat stressed the necessity
of tirelessly exposing the character of petty-bourgeois nationalism in the
leadership of the Irish Republican Army. Similarly, it now emphasised the
importance of delivering the clearest revolutionary criticism of the centrist
policy of the trade union leadership (i.e. Larkin and the WUI), which
threatened to transform this organisation of revolutionary workers into a left
screen for the social fascist Labour Party.93 Incidentally, one can find only
scant evidence of the term social fascist in usage, whether in RWG publications
or statements. However, the Workers Voice did denounce as traitors the NUR
and Building Trades Council leaders in Belfast, which included RWG cadres, for
91

RGASPI, 495/89/66/16-24, Letter from M. McLarnon, Belfast Communist Group, to AngloAmerican Secretariat, and Statement to the ECCI, 28 February 1931; Letters between Comrade
Pollitt and the Belfast Group, 19 February - 6 March 1931; Letter from Belfast Communist Group to
RWG Secretariat, 9 March 1931
92
RGASPI 495/89/59/?, Instructions on Ireland (c. July 1931)
93
OConnor, Reds and the Green, pp. 159-160

106

agreeing pay cuts with employers. Likewise, the partys relationship with the
Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP) deteriorated during this period.
Specifically, the RWG dismissed the NILPs proposals for greater regulation of
industry as a cynical attempt to prevent the collapse of their [capitalist]
system.94 Whatever his genuine concerns about alienating potential allies,
Murray briefly succumbed to the self-destructive policy of left sectarianism.
In March, the RWG had informed Moscow of its confidence in membership
numbers and intention to set up a communist party.95 And while the RWG
continued to jettison what little prospect there was of reaching out to
republicans on a meaningful scale, the IRA had identified, in the context of the
Wall Street crash of 1929 and continued growth of Fianna Fil, an opportunity
to consider a more radical social programme. The republican leadership
commissioned a debate on the movements approach to social and economic
issues, a gesture Murray welcomed the in the pages of the Workers Voice
without going as far as to offer any concrete proposals of his own.96 From within
the IRA, ODonnell was again the main protagonist. At the same time, the
importance of pitching the message to the wider republican audience drew the
notable contribution of Moss Twomey, the IRA Chief of Staff. Under the pen
name Manus ORauirc, Twomey published in An Phoblacht a draft constitution
entitled The Sovereignty of the People: Suggestions for a Constitution for an
Irish Republic. The tracts language of Pearsean communalism naturally
provoked debates around the issue of private ownership and accentuated
tensions on the role of Catholic social teaching.97 However, challenging the
argument presented by Richard English, Brian Hanley and Adrian Grant have
developed a nuanced account of events that led to an IRA split and the
formation of Saor ire in March 1931, concluding that the schism was not
ideologically predestined. Rather, it stemmed from Twomeys desire to keep the
republican movement together as a broad church. The critical failure, for Grant,
was that Twomey refused to cut loose a minority of right-wing enthusiasts

94

Workers Voice, 11 April, 9, 16 May 1931

OConnor, Reds and the Green, p. 159
96
Workers Voice, 25 October 1930
97
Richard English, Radicals and the Republic: Socialist Republicanism in the Irish Free State, 1925-37
(Oxford, 1994), pp. 124-126
95

107

within the IRA and reach a compromise with ODonnell.98 For the RWGs part,
token references to Connolly and the decision to attend the Easter
commemoration alongside ODonnell failed to disguise the most consequential
development within its ranks.99 The decision to launch a communist party
marked the definite conclusion to the process of Bolshevisation that had begun
around 1927.
Two developments effectively condemned united front politics to failure in
the immediate term. The first was the RWG leaderships conscious decision to
embrace Third Period doctrines, which was to have far-reaching implications for
the communists relationships with other labour formations on the island and
with the republican movement. The second, the IRA split and launch of the
largely ineffective Saor ire, saw a small band of progressive republicans make
what ODonnell described as a great lurch to the left on definite terms.100 This
went beyond a reticent IRA leadership, floundering in the effort of selfpreservation yet managing to retain the loyalty of rank-and-file members. One
obvious problem for communist and left republican leaders was that they could
no longer count on the support of grassroots republicans for their respective
projects. An equally significant obstacle was that Saor ires only ideologically
compatible ally, the RWG, shifted the goalposts hastily to the left and closed out
cooperation between the two groups. As Grant succinctly puts it, Irish
communists and leftist republicans were now on parallel tracks en route to
similar destinations. Comintern strategy acted as the sleeper between the
tracks preventing any crossover.101
Conclusion
There is little to be said against the authenticity of Sen Murrays
republicanism. We recall that the revered Irish national struggle gave Murray
his first taste of political activism. Spurred into action by the events of 1916, he
joined Sinn Fin at a key point in the partys history. He took up arms and
played an important role in the local activities of the IRA during the anticolonial and revolutionary War of Independence period, suffering approximately
98

Brian Hanley, Moss Twomey, Radicalism and the IRA, 1931-1933: A Reassessment, Saothar, 26
(2001), pp. 53-60; Grant, Irish Socialist Republicanism, pp. 222-228
99
Workers Voice, 4, 11 April 1931
100
Quoted in Henry Patterson, The Politics of Illusion: A Political History of the IRA (London, 1997), p.
52
101
Grant, Irish Socialist Republicanism, p. 219

108

eight months imprisonment as a consequence. Although the Treaty secured his

release, Murrays rejection of it was unequivocal. Accordingly, he proceeded to
lead and participate in further operations in his area and, on one occasion, in
Britain. It was not until a more brutal wave of repression commenced that he
ended his direct affiliation with the republican movement and moved to
Scotland.
It was to the formal structures of British and international communism that
he owed a more direct if not greater political debt. He made great progress as a
working-class leader in England and it was due to his rapid political
development that CPGB gave him the exclusive opportunity to study at the
newly established Lenin School in Moscow. As outlined above, his spell at the
Lenin School was at times fraught. But he returned to Ireland more educated,
experienced and conversant in methods of Bolshevik organisation. Bowler is
right to state that Murray learnt his trade in a particular context, which was
the source of both his strengths and also of his weaknesses.102
While he expressed an affinity with individuals operating within the
broader labour and republican movements, Murray was tied to the Cominterns
ideological shifts. Murrays early political career epitomised the central
contradiction of the Bolshevisation process: in McDermott and Agnews words,
the tension between Bolshevik universalism and national specificity.103 In
electing for the path set out for them by Moscow, the Irish leadership placed
severe limitations on who they could realistically work with. Of the members of
the Dublin secretariat, this was most problematic for Murray. However, added
to the ideological reasons for retaining the link with Moscow were strong
practical incentives. The relatively small Irish communist movement as a whole
owed the Comintern a great deal. It relied on Moscow for the myth, the model of
organisation, the cadres, and, to a degree, the finance which made the struggle
possible.104 As the party entered into arguably its most successful phase, the
level of discipline and organisation inherited from the Comintern was to prove
valuable in guaranteeing its survival at crucial junctures.

102

Stephen Bowler, Sen Murray, 1898-1961, And the Pursuit of Stalinism in One Country, Saothar,
18 (1993), p. 51
103
Quoted in OConnor, Reds and the Green, p. 160
104
Ibid.

109

At the same time, the Irish revolutionary period weighed heavily on

Murray. For someone who experienced the events of 1916-1923 first hand, it
was natural to associate class politics with revolutionary nationalism. His
disapproval of the Treaty settlement thus continued to inform his outlook. This
explained in part his obvious reluctance to accept the conditionality of
Comintern

support.

In

different

circumstances,

he

may

have

chosen

instinctively to make greater connections with the broader labour and

republican movements in spite of Comintern diktats. This tension between
Murrays internationalism and republicanism, between his commitment to
Marxism-Leninism and desire to respond effectively to shifting conditions on the
ground, was to resurface on a number of occasions. We should view and
interpret his political career through that lens.

110

Chapter 4 Reviving the United Front

At a meeting with the Anglo-Irish Secretariat in September 1932, Murray
provided a retrospective assessment of the relationship between the RWG and
Saor ire:
We did not call it names, say it was a petty bourgeois party and did not
tell them we were the only people that would lead the revolution because
we were not at that time in a position to come forward with our own
party and give it as an alternative. The rank and file of the IRA were
undoubtedly moving forward and Saor ire represented an attempt of
the proletarian and revolutionary peasant elements within Republican
Ireland to escape from bankrupt policies of the old nationalist movement,
to seek a revolutionary way out. At the same time it...represented an
attempt on the part of a section of the leadership, such as the MacBrides
and those people who are really representatives of De Valera within the
IRA, to hold back the development of the revolutionary movement and
keep it within the petty bourgeois nationalist orbit, and the fact is we
were not long in seeing the futility of endeavouring to form a
revolutionary Party on the basis on which Saor ire was formed.1
Murrays claim to have acted with such tactical clarity is not entirely
convincing. What is plausible is that he was eager to avoid alienating the
revolutionary elements brought together by Saor ire.2 ODonnell consulted
Murray on the Saor ire programme, and the RWG leader helped to establish
local branches of the new republican organisation.3 Rather than viewing Saor
ire as counter-offensive against the RWG,4 Murray adopted an ambiguous
position towards it. Saor ire held its inaugural congress on the last weekend of
September, with 120 delegates and around 30 observers in attendance.
Although it remained in existence until 1933, the organisation effectively
receded in October 1931. The circumstances of its downfall had mixed
implications for the RWGs development.
On 17 September 1931, the Irish Department of Justice circulated to the
Catholic bishops a report highlighting an alleged IRA-communist conspiracy

RGASPI, 495/72/188/164-165, Murray report to Anglo-American Secretariat meeting, 10 June 1932

Ibid.
3
Emmet OConnor, Reds and the Green: Ireland, Russia and the Communist Internationals, 1919-43
(Dublin, 2004), p. 173
4
Donal Drisceoil, Peadar ODonnell (Cork, 2001), p. 67
2

111

and the radicalisation of republicanism.5 On 18 October, after further exchanges

between the bishops and government, priests in every parish in Ireland read out
a pastoral letter condemning the IRA and Saor ire for attempting to impose
upon the Catholic soil of Ireland the same materialistic regime, with its
fanatical hatred of God, as now dominates Russia and threatens to dominate
Spain.6 The bishops stated unequivocally that it was not possible to be a
Catholic and communist, because one stood for Christ and the other for antiChrist. William T. Cosgraves choreographed response was the introduction of a
Constitutional (Amendment No. 17) Bill, which inserted Article 2A (a Public
Safety Bill) into the constitution. This became law on 21 October, setting up
military tribunals and granting garda increased powers to enforce the
legislation with rigour. Garda Commissioner Eoin ODuffy, an antagonist of
communists and left republicans for the duration of the Thirties, began
identifying communist agitators by name and successfully requested an
additional two hundred Special Branch officers to put in place his own
suppressive measures.7
These mechanisms succeeded in their primary objective of putting Saor ire
out of commission. However, the authorities left nothing to chance, proscribing a
number of groups including the IRA, Fianna ireann, Cumann na mBan, the
Irish Labour Defence League (ILDL), Friends of Soviet Russia, the Irish
Working Farmers Committee (IWFC), the Workers Defence Corps and the
Workers Revolutionary Party (i.e. the RWG).8 The IRA leadership reacted to
this joint Church-state assault by putting distance between themselves and the
communist movement. Even progressive republican figures such as Sen
MacSwiney, former secretary of the LAI, now spoke of the incompatibility of
Christianity and communism.9 The pressure generated by the Catholic public
relations machine only neutralised the RWG temporarily, with the Workers
Voice losing the support of three different publishers over a period of around
twelve months. When the paper resumed publication, it attempted an
5

Patrick Murray, Oracles of God: The Roman Catholic Church and Irish Politics, 1922-37 (Dublin,
2000), pp. 320-321
6
Quoted in Dermot Keogh, Ireland and the Vatican: The Politics and Diplomacy of Church-State
Relations, 1922-1960 (Cork, 1995), p. 83
7
Mike Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland: The Pursuit of the Workers Republic Since 1916
(Dublin, 1984), p. 110
8
Ibid., p. 109
9
Brian Hanley, The IRA, 1926-1936 (Dublin, 2002), pp. 178-180

112

uncomfortable compromise, balancing criticisms of clericalism at home with

praise for religious freedoms in the Soviet Union.10 Murray assured the radical
feminist Hanna Sheehy Skeffington that the RWG would take up a correct
position on this dirty business [religious interference] which is becoming very
prevalent down here.11 Quite sagely, he subsequently went to great lengths to
make religion a non-issue in the Irish communist movement. The Workers Voice
adopted a less pronounced stance on religious belief from early 1932 onwards.
However, clerical reaction in the South continued unabated, proving a very
difficult and persistent obstacle to overcome.
Throughout these years, anti-communist Catholicism was an equally potent,
if unnecessary force in the North. Graham Walker presents as evidence of the
Churchs influence the reticence of Connollyists such as William McMullen, then
of the NILP, to engage in communist-revolutionary politics. Walker argues that
this was because
McMullen and others were to find that Catholic anti-socialist
propaganda from the pulpit and in the pages of the Irish News, the
mouthpiece of the Nationalist Party led by Joe Devlin, was an obstacle
just as daunting as the unionist-Orange machine on the other side of the
sectarian divide.12
Of course, Connolly had had a few choice words to say about wee Joe, the
Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) and the poisonous suggestion used against
labour by Irish News editors.13 However, in Murrays era the Catholic Church
only had a limited influence on the fate of socialist movements in the North for
two main reasons. First, the Catholic hierarchy did not have the same level of
access to instruments of the state as in the South. Second, the Unionist regime
was more than capable of monitoring and curtailing communist activities
unilaterally. RUC detectives were frequent observers (and meticulous
notetakers) at communist meetings until the onset of the Second World War.
Special Branch reported to the Minister of Home Affairs on almost a weekly
basis. More importantly, the Special Powers Act (1922), uglier sister of the
10

OConnor, Reds and the Green, pp. 166-167

National Library of Ireland, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington papers, MS 41178, Letter from Murray to
Hanna (1931)
12
Graham Walker, The Northern Ireland Labour Party, 1924-45 in Fintan Lane and Donal Drisceoil
(eds.), Politics and the Irish Working Class, 1830-1945 (Basingstoke, 2005), pp. 234-235
13
James Connolly, Press Poisoners in Ireland in Ireland Upon the Dissecting Table: James Connolly
on Ulster and Partition (Cork, 1975), pp. 48-52
11

113

Public Safety Bill, provided the authorities with the necessary legal cover to
harass and exclude subversive elements. In September 1930, Loftus Johnston
became the first of many communists jailed for sedition under this legislation.14
Thus while there was a common cause in fighting communism from different
perspectives, the Catholic Church did not need to intervene to the same extent
as in the South.
The precarious economic climate threatened a dispersal of working-class
loyalties away from the Unionist Party and conservative nationalism. The Great
Depression hit the industrialised north-east hard, with unemployment rising
from 35,000 in 1929 to 72,000 in 1930 and 76,000 in 1932.15 On average, these
figures worked out at an annual rate of 27 percent, compared with 22 percent in
Britain.16 The militant Ulster Protestant League (UPL) emerged in 1931 to
launch a jobs for Protestants appeal, coinciding with an expansion of Orange
Order membership.17 Prime Minister James Craig did not yield to this reaction
directly, although he and his dominant populist wing certainly played to the
gallery. Against the advice of the anti-populist Minister of Finance Hugh
Pollock, Craig artfully extended specific aspects of British social legislation to
the North. This he did with the support of Richard Dawson Bates, Minister of
Home Affairs, and John Andrews, Minister of Labour and head of the Ulster
Unionist Labour Association (UULA), which had fallen under the direction of
the Unionist Party in 1918.18 As Walker notes, this step by step approach could
be touted by the unionists as proof that they in Northern Ireland were no less
British when it came to material benefits.19 Complicating labour politics further
was the emergence of the anti-partitionist Northern Ireland Socialist Party
(NISP) from the ashes of the Belfast-based ILP, and the continued strength of
the pinkish NILP, which moved in a Unionist direction under Harry Midgleys
leadership.20 The labour movement in the North was deeply fragmented along
political lines. But the severity of the recession created windows of opportunity
for the communists to make an impact on social and economic issues.
14

Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, p. 126-127

Michael Farrell, Northern Ireland: The Orange State (Second Edition) (London, 1980), p. 117
16
Thomas Hennessey, A History of Northern Ireland, 1920-1996 (Dublin, 1997), p. 59
17
OConnor, A Labour History of Ireland, 1824-2000 (Dublin, 2011), p. 200
18
Paul Bew, Peter Gibbon and Henry Patterson, Northern Ireland, 1921-2001: Political Forces and
Social Classes (London, 2002), pp. 52-55, 60-61
19
Walker, The Northern Ireland Labour Party, p. 235
20
Ibid., pp. 232, 236
15

114

Due to the absence of heavy industries and a reliance on agricultural and

cattle exports, the impact of the global downturn was more gradual in the
South. Although both export and import prices fell sharply from 1929-31, the
price of feeding materials fell more than the price graziers received for their
livestock.21 In addition, there was a small increase in employment in some
sectors between 1926 and 1931, namely in building and construction, clothing,
electricity, and in the public sector.22 However, emigration figures between 1921
and 1931, averaging at 33,000 per annum, were disconcerting. Higher than the
rate for the previous two decades, these numbers pointed to a failure to create
new employment in the form of native industries and a strong export base.23
Fianna Fil came to power in 1932 on the back of its appropriation of the
land annuities campaign and a commitment to an economic nationalist
programme of industrialisation and land reform.24 In the election, the party
increased its share of the vote from 35.2 percent to 44.5 percent. Labour lost six
deputies, but its transfers and support for de Valera as Taoiseach were
determining factors in the consolidation of Fianna Fils strong position.25 As
one historian of Fianna Fils adolescent years has noted, the Labour Party
effectively fought in 1932 on a platform that accepted Fianna Fil leadership of
the country.26 Cooperation with Labour continued into and beyond the 1933
snap election, in which de Valeras party increased its share of the vote to a
commanding 49.7 percent and secured an overall majority.27 Labour transfers
continued to travel in Fianna Fils direction and voices in America hailed the
anti-Treaty party as the youthful champions of the New Deal and the Irish five
year plan.28 The emergence of the anti-republican and anti-socialist Army
Comrades Association (ACA) in 1932 also fashioned a republican split in de
Valeras favour. The IRA leadership lent ambiguous support to Fianna Fil in

21

Kieran A. Kennedy, Thomas Giblin and Deirdre McHugh, The Economic Development of Ireland in
the Twentieth Century (London, 1988), p. 39
22
Brian Girvin, Between Two Worlds: Politics and Economy in Independent Ireland (Dublin, 1989), pp.
64-65
23
Kennedy et al., The Economic Development of Ireland, p. 38
24
Paul Bew, Ellen Hazelkorn and Henry Patterson, The Dynamics of Irish Politics (London, 1989), pp.
37-42
25
J.J. Lee, Ireland, 1912-1985: Politics and Society (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 170-171
26
Richard Dunphy, Fianna Fil and the Irish Working Class, 1926-38 in Lane and Drisceoil (eds.),
Politics and the Irish Working Class, p. 258
27
Lee, Ireland, p. 179
28
Ibid., p. 169

115

both elections. De Valera kept his part of the Faustian pact by suspending
Cosgraves Public Safety Bill, releasing republican prisoners and allowing the
IRA to regroup.29 A high concentration of working-class support thus formed the
basis of Fianna Fils success. Nevertheless, since Saor ire had vacated the
scene, there existed a degree of political space for a radical movement to step
into the breach and act as a small thorn in the governments left side.

Building a Local Base

Murray rose to prominence as the leading RWG representative in late 1931. As
a paid organiser, he assumed editorial control of the Workers Voice and
responsibility for communicating the theory underpinning RWG activities. With
Bob Stewart organising in Belfast and William Denn occupied with trade union
work, Jim Hale and Joseph Troy joined the Dublin secretariat in their place,
though Hale left for the Lenin School in December. The RWG in the South
proved effective in organising on the shop floor. It played a leading role in the
Dublin building strike at the beginning of 1932 and made some progress
recruiting within the WUI. However, this support dissipated just as quickly in
the atmosphere of Catholic reaction, leaving the group back at square one.
Polling figures for Larkin Jnr and Troy in the 1932 election 917 and 170 votes
respectively were an accurate reflection of the partys progress, even
accounting for the fact that Troy was forced to run against Larkin Snr in North
Dublin. A recruitment drive in the North looked to capitalise on the British
Labour governments collapse, deploying Tom Mann as its trump. This faltered
dramatically in a hostile environment fostered by a reactionary state on the
defensive. By May 1932, the RWG had an estimated Belfast membership of just
fifty.30 Murray reported a lack of effective political leadership in Belfast.
Membership figures for the Dublin group seventy-eight members, fifty-eight of
which were active were only marginally better, though arguably more stable.31
The RWG leaderships critical task was to consolidate support in the South and
identify opportunities for a breakthrough in the North.
Assessing the 1932 election, the Comintern stated that Fianna Fil had
raised false hopes with extravagant election promises. Obscuring the potent
29

Henry Patterson, The Politics of Illusion: A Political History of the IRA (London, 1997), pp. 61-62;
Hanley, The IRA, pp. 14-16
30
OConnor, Reds and the Green, pp. 162-165, 175
31
RGASPI, 495/89/78/30-37, Murray report on Ireland, Group Organisation, 8 June 1932

116

legacy of the Irish Civil War, it made no distinction between the previous
Cumann na nGaedheal government and the new Fianna Fil administration.
According to the Comintern, the RWG campaign failed because it did not focus
enough critical attention on the capitalist way out of the crisis, with its election
literature

favouring

the

phraseology

of

nationalism.

In

the

same

communication, it criticised the Irish communists for failing to apply the united
front to the militant workers of the WUI and IRA members who are breaking
away from their petty-bourgeois leadership. Here was a spectacular failure to
understand the appeal that Fianna Fils manifesto held for urban and agrarian
workers, which included republican grassroots. Combining its socio-economic
programme with a promise to continue the national struggle, Fianna Fil won
over the very constituency the Comintern believed it could reach with
revolutionary sloganising.32 De Valeras party promised to dismantle Cumann
na nGaedheals rentier capitalism and achieve full political independence. In
this limited sense, Murray and RWG could view Fianna Fil as an antiimperialist ally.
As early as mid-1932, there were clear signs that Murray had expended all
patience with the obsolescent class against class policy. Upon its reappearance
on 9 April, the Workers Voice denounced de Valeras government for pursuing
Cumann na nGaedheals programme under other forms and phrases.33 Yet the
nostalgic republican focus of its next issue expressed Murrays proclivity for a
nationally specific strategy. Firstly, against the backdrop of impending Fianna
Fil land reforms, a picture of Charles Stewart Parnell occupied the front page.
Inside, Murray contributed a piece relating the Irish national struggle to anticolonial movements in India and China, accompanied by a Liam Mellows article
on the same subject.34 In the absence of immediate chastisement from London or
Moscow, the editorial line continued in much the same vein, with the writings of
John Mitchel and James Fintan Lalor featuring in successive issues.35 Most
interestingly, Murray published Lenins positive contribution on the principle of
national self-determination, a rare example of Irish socialist republican

32

RGASPI, 495/72/197/14-16, Results of the Irish Free State Elections (1932)

Workers Voice, 9 April 1932
34
Ibid., 16 April 1932
35
Ibid., 23, 30 April 1932
33

117

literature going beyond Marx and Engels.36 On 4 June, he finally circumvented

all ambiguity, switching critical attention from de Valera to Cosgrave and tying
the concept of a successful national struggle against Britain to the fortunes of
the working class.37 With this, he responded to qualitative changes in the Irish
political environment and pre-empted the official shift away from class against
class.
In May, the Communist International journal published an article on
Ireland by the influential German communist Gerhart Eisler. Noting the
significance of the land annuities campaign and Fianna Fils abolition of the
Oath of Allegiance, Eisler concurred broadly with Murrays position.38 This
intervention offered the RWG leadership some hope of gaining policy
concessions from the Comintern. Having indicated a shift in party orientation,
Murray and Joe Troy travelled to Moscow in mid-June to present their case to
the Anglo-American Secretariat. Troy concentrated on trade union matters,
explaining that the work of the RWGs three industrial fractions was generally
weak. Murray proceeded in addressing the politically precarious issues
regarding ideology and tactics, informing the Secretariat that the Comintern
line had proved unworkable in Ireland. He bemoaned the absence of an antiimperialist aspect to RWG activities and argued that the communists had
regrettably been too sharp with de Valera. The clear alternative, according to
Murray, was for the Workers Voice to persevere with its nationalist line and for
party policy to reflect the fact that republican Ireland was engaged in a struggle
against British imperialism and its native agents.39
In a further effort to bolster Murrays case, Eisler helped draft a letter
correcting the CPGBs vulgar distortion and deep-rooted misunderstanding of
the Irish national struggle. They took issue with a Daily Worker article which
downplayed the significance of the conflict between Ireland and Britain.40
Although it would take the pol-commission (Comintern political sub-committee)
over two months to deal with Murrays concerns directly, it was prepared to
request in the interim that the CPGB support Irish national independence and

36

Ibid., 7 May 1932

Ibid., 4 June 1932
38
Barry McLoughlin, Left to the Wolves: Irish Victims of Stalinist Terror (Dublin, 2007), p. 59
39
OConnor, Reds and the Green, pp. 176-177
40
McLoughlin, Left to the Wolves, p. 60
37

118

reach out to the Irish diaspora in working-class areas of Britain.41 The

Comintern also issued letters in Britain and America to raise funds for the
RWG, while granting Murray a subvention of $1,088 to cover wages, printing
debts and costs incurred during the election.42
On cue, at the end of August, Murray ratcheted up the pressure, delivering
what the attending Special Branch detective described as an Irish rebels
speech at an LAI meeting in Liverpool. He related a critical history of British
involvement in Ireland and said that the [communist] Movement was 100%
behind De Valeras Government in all that it did if it stood up to the British
National Government. Under Moscows radar, Murray made an enthusiastic
call for an anti-imperialist front under the LAI umbrella.43 The language of this
speech bypassed the united front from below and placed the accent on a
broader alliance with republicanism. Murray clearly wished to banish the
perception of the communists as intransigent dogmatists and gain some
purchase for reviving a united front of sorts in Ireland.
An interesting British intelligence report claims that Murray rejoined the
IRA in 1932 with the CPGBs support and secured a position on the GHQ staff.44
Yet there is nothing in the literature or archives to corroborate this. Eoin
MacNamee, a northern IRA leader who acted as Chief of Staff in the early
1940s, admits in his memoirs that the republican leadership consulted Murray
on political issues during the 1930s. However, he maintains that the RWG
leader was not privy to internal IRA discussions and stresses that the
republican leadership did not present Murray with a copy of the 1932 Army
convention report, contrary to rumours circulating that year.45 On 9 September,
Murray did inform the Comintern of his intention to work with David
Fitzgerald, an old War of Independence comrade and founding member of Saor
ire. The purpose was the establishment of a joint training and education
centre with left republicans. He sold this idea to the Comintern as a last resort
and a means of reducing the RWGs outgoings. He also delivered a strongly
41

RGASPI, 495/4/207/168-171, Letter to the CPGB on the Irish Question, 13 August 1932
McLoughlin, Left to the Wolves, p. 60
43
NAUK, Security Service, KV2/1185/18c, Extract relating to Sen Murray, Special Branch report on
League Against Imperialism meeting in Liverpool, 29 August 1932
44
NAUK, Security Service, KV2/1185/17a, Extract relating to Sen Murray, Special Branch report on
Irish matters, 13 July 1932
45
I am obliged to Jim Monaghan for this information
42

119

worded reminder that Moscow had not yet allayed his policy-related concerns.
Seeking to popularise the way out of the capitalist crisis, Murray believed it
was possible to pressurise the Fianna Fil government on its left flank. That the
RWG had not yet attempted to do this was a major failure. On a practical level,
he accused the Anglo-American Secretariat of reneging on a promise to provide
financial assistance and laid the blame at its door for the RWGs puny national
progress.46
Stephen Bowler observes that Murray led a rump of communist activists in
exceptional circumstances and speculates that they were mostly ill-served by
their political masters in Moscow.47 His general point finds some resonance
here in terms of the tug of war between Murray and the Comintern. Four
communications from Moscow over a short period conveyed mixed messages on
the RWGs progress under Murrays direction. On the one hand, the Comintern
acknowledged that Murray had already implemented significant changes in
both theory and practice regardless of its directives. Most notably, it accepted
the necessity of the RWG connecting with workers and small farmers among the
ranks of the IRA, Fianna Fil and the Labour Party in order to combat British
imperialism and Irish capitalism. Against these concessions, it looked to assert
its authority on a number of issues. Firstly, it addressed the content of the
Workers Voice in detail, noting the deliberate avoidance of even the word
Communist and an editorial policy diametrically opposed to the line laid down
for the guidance of the comrades in Ireland. No leeway was given on this
subject, and the letter received by Murray duly emphasised the importance of
the paper in preparing the ground explicitly for the formation of a new Irish
communist party. Secondly, it reiterated the importance of applying class
against class to the bourgeois and petty bourgeois political leaderships.
Thirdly, that pooling resources with republicans was not an acceptable
substitute for a communist training centre in its own right. Fourthly, that the
RWG should avoid succumbing to clerical pressure and instead educate
supporters tainted with religious prejudices. Finally, taking aim at Murrays

46

RGASPI, 495/89/83/42-44, Murray to Moscow, 9 September 1932

Stephen Bowler, Sen Murray, 1898-1961, And the Pursuit of Stalinism in One Country, Saothar,
18 (1992), p. 44
47

120

cavalier approach to Dublin-Moscow communications, the Comintern requested

more elaborate and concrete reports on the Irish party in future.48
Murray took the Cominterns few concessions and applied them liberally. On
8 October, in order to maximise its appeal in republican circles, the Workers
Voice became the Irish Workers Voice. Murray continued to develop links with
leading left republicans, taking up a position on the executive of the Boycott
British [Goods] League for instance. On 3 November, the RWG and its allies
launched the Workers College in the home of Charlotte Despard, a long-time
communist sympathiser. Mrs Despard acted as president and the governing
committee consisted of Peadar ODonnell, David Fitzgerald, Jim Larkin Jnr,
Betty Sinclair, Bob Stewart and, of course, Murray.49 The safeguarding of the
bond between the communists and anti-Treaty politicos thus continued,
principally via Murray and ODonnells friendship. ODonnell was even prepared
to relinquish his position as head of the IWFC for the greater good i.e. for
Murray to resuscitate the movement and lead a new campaign: He, too, is of
small farming stock and upbringing. His being a communist would be no
barrier, for my being no communist is no asset! In the end, this plan gave way
to a more roundly supported system of collective leadership.50 But ODonnells
gesture typified his and Murrays readiness to exchange places as subordinate
allies when the political situation demanded it.
Economic conditions ensured that the united front on offer in the North was
an easy sell in the short term. As noted above, the recession brought about a
sharp increase in unemployment, pushing levels in excess of the British
average. When Ramsay MacDonalds national government cut unemployment
benefit by 10 percent, the number of cases recorded by the Poor Law Guardians
increased dramatically, from 884 cases in early January, involving 4,008 people,
to 2,612 in September, involving 11,983 people. With the support of various
labourists in Belfast, the communists formed an outdoor relief workers
committee, with the intention of launching a campaign to bring relief rates into
line with Britain and reform the Board of Guardians administration of relief
48

RGASPI, 495/89/75/22-25, Letter to Ireland, 17 September 1932; 495/20/251/89-98, Letter to

Ireland, 23 September 1932; 495/89/75/26-28, Letter to Ireland, 1 October 1932; 495/89/75/29-30,
Letter to Ireland, 20 October 1932
49
NAI, Department of Taoiseach (DT), 97/9/73, General ODuffys Report on Communism, 27
November 1932
50
Drisceoil, Peadar ODonnell, pp. 78-79

121

payments.51 On 11 September, Murray travelled to Belfast to deliver a longwinded speech to a crowd of around 800 at Speakers Corner, Custom House
Square. After describing the paltry donations offered by the crowd as
scandalous for the lack of financial commitment to the party was a particular
vexation of his he proceeded in attacking the widespread introduction of the
means test. He praised the efforts of the Belfast communists, who had launched
what he termed united front Committees in solidarity with the relief workers.52
The Daily Worker, the CPGB paper which enjoyed a substantial increase in
sales in Belfast during these years, adopted an upbeat posture in its coverage of
events and predicted gains for the working class.53
On 3 October, the outdoor relief workers committee called a strike, which
escalated into an unprecedented campaign for improved wages and working
conditions. Murray shared a platform with Betty Sinclair and Jack Beattie,
pledging the Dublin RWGs full support to the 30,000 people in attendance.54
The Belfast RWG leadership Sinclair, Tommy and Maurice Watters, Tommy
Geehan, William Boyd and Billy McCullough successfully connected the relief
workers grievances with the plight of the large number of unemployed in the
city. The RWG encouraged unemployed workers to defy the ban imposed on the
11 October demonstration; the very demonstration that led to intense rioting in
working-class areas of Belfast, with Catholics and Protestants uniting in clashes
with heavily armed RUC officers. On the same day, RWG representatives on
Belfast Trades Council called for a general strike. This was unsuccessful for the
principal reason that the 1927 Trade Disputes Act and Trade Unions Act,
introduced as a response to the events of 1926, deemed general strikes illegal
and subject to swift punishment.
The outdoor relief riots, the significance of which scholars have inflated and
disputed in equal measure, are etched into the northern labour consciousness.55
With Murray based in Dublin, he played a relatively small role in comparison to

51

Hennessey, A History of Northern Ireland, p. 60

PRONI, HA/32/1/547, RUC Special Branch report of Irish Workers Revolutionary Party meeting, 11
September 1932
53
Paul Bew and Christopher Norton, The Unionist State and the Outdoor Relief Riots of 1932,
Economic and Social Review, 10: 3 (April 1979), p. 256
54
PRONI, HA/8/276, RUC Special Branch report of Relief Workers demonstration, 3 October 1932
55
The most detailed and dispassionate account of the outdoor relief strike is Paddy Devlins Yes We
Have No Bananas: Outdoor Relief in Belfast, 1920-39 (Belfast, 1981), pp. 116-136
52

122

popular Belfast trade unionists such as Geehan. Collectively, and with some
justification, the communists claimed the concessions granted by the
government and Board of Guardians as the fruit of their efforts. The events of
1932 ignited a renewed wave of agitation by the INUM, which formed new
groups in Belfast, Carrick on Suir, Clonmel, Dublin, Longford and Waterford.
Moreover, the brief transcendence of religious antagonisms in the north-east
coincided with a rapprochement between Belfast and Dublin communism and
an upturn in support for the RWG. From around 200 in June, RWG membership
increased to 339 in November. Over the same period, weekly circulation figures
for the (Irish) Workers Voice doubled to 3000.56 An aura of class against class
superiority pervaded the attitudes of individual RWG representatives during
and in the immediate aftermath of the strikes.57 Murray displayed an
ambivalent public stance towards the NILP and trade union leadership,
condemning and praising them in the same breath. While undoubtedly selfdefeating in the long run, this evidence of left sectarianism does not detract
from Murrays view of the strike as a welcome coalescence of labour forces in the
North. He described the campaign as a model for the working class in the six
counties and reported to the Comintern that the Irish communist group had
taken a decisive step forward: All we can say at the moment is that we have got
a place in the mass movement.58
Years later, Betty Sinclair claimed that Murray sought the protection of the
IRA for outdoor relief committee meetings in Belfast.59 Here the northern
republican leadership missed an opportunity to end its separation from the
Protestant working class and prove its worth as a vehicle for grassroots
radicalism. The Belfast RWG established solid links across the northern labour
movement on economic issues. But despite the IRAs poor showing, Murrays
faith in republicanism remained intact. At a CPGB congress in November, he
reaffirmed his commitment to Connollys re-conquest:

56

OConnor, Reds and the Green, pp. 179-180

Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, pp. 132-136; Adrian Grant, Irish Socialist Republicanism,
1909-1936 (Doctoral Thesis, University of Ulster, 2010), pp. 237-238
58
Irish Workers Voice, 29 October 1932; RGASPI, 495/89/83/42-44, Murray to Moscow, 9
September 1932
59
Ronnie Munck and Bill Rolston (with Gerry Moore), Belfast in the 1930s: An Oral History (Belfast,
1987), p. 154
57

123

The Communist Party must be the party of national independence....

This national issue is not something in the road of the CP keeping back
the struggle, but is the most powerful weapon in the hands of the
working class in Ireland.60
Murray continued to work within the progressive republican movement for
support, leaving the Belfast group to pursue tactics that suited local conditions.
The movement remained united in structural and ideological terms. However,
anti-imperialism did stretch the capacity of an Irish communist party to
mobilise its two strands in unison.

The Second Communist Party of Ireland

The increased circulation of the Irish Workers Voice coincided with the
commencement of weekly education sessions at the Workers College. RWG
intellectuals such as Murray, Bill Joss and Brian ONeill delivered lectures on
Marxist theory and history, but also on the more popular subjects of Connolly
and the Young Irelanders. In April 1933, Frank Ryan spoke on The Motives of
Irish Revolutions from the year 1798 to 1932, and, quite controversially
considering the company he kept, argued that Connolly was not a communist in
the modern sense but a loose socialist. Ryan also announced that he did not
intend to join a communist party, nor would he have any association with the
international communist movement. However, he encouraged cooperation
between the IRA and RWG, putting the formation of a National Workers
Revolutionary Party on the agenda. In the ensuing discussion, Murray and
Peadar ODonnell received Ryans proposal warmly.61 Yet in spite of these
hypothetical proposals, Murray knew that plans for the formation of a
communist party were already well underway, as ratified by a specially
convened RWG national conference some six months previous.62 It is also likely
that ODonnell knew such plans were afoot. But Murray wanted to ensure that
Ryan stayed on board in the event that the new communist party took on an
anti-imperialist form at the outset.
In January 1933, the RWGs Sphinx Publications distributed The Irish Case
for Communism, written by Murray as a draft programme for the second CPI.

60

Quoted in Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, p. 114

NAI, DJ, 2008/117/38, Garda Special Branch report on Communist influence in Dublin, 2 March
1933
62
RGASPI, 495/89/82/14-18, Report re national meeting of RWG, 5-6 November 1932
61

124

This pamphlet outlined the history of Irish republicanism in tandem with the
evolution of English capitalism from the mid-nineteenth century onwards.
Murray

imported

Connollys

central

arguments

and

applied them

to

contemporary developments, with Cosgraves party categorised as an agent of

the commercial class, large landowners, and rentier capitalist and professional
classes (lawyers, accountants and bankers). These Anglo-Irish imperialists, in
Murrays view, had strong economic ties to Britain and therefore shared a
history with the native forces which had acted always against the national
movement. It is interesting that Murray took a more ambivalent attitude
towards Fianna Fil, which he viewed as the party of the small capitalist and
lower middle class. He recognised that the allegiances of traditional Labour
Party supporters and small farmers, whose future lies in an independent
Ireland outside the Empire, resided with Fianna Fil. Concerning politics in the
North, he identified with Connollyists such as William McMullen in opposition
to the imperialist-labour camp led by Harry Midgley.63
Although one author has reduced Murrays pamphlet to misguidedness and
crudity,64 he in fact based his diagnosis of the Irish political and economic
system on in-depth research. Furthermore, it proved quite accurate on the Irish
banking system, the debilitating effects of the parity link between the Free
State currency and the pound, and on the class nature of the Treaty split.65 In
terms of concrete proposals, The Irish Case for Communism was ambitious. It
aspired to the creation of a Workers and Farmers Republic, which entailed:
nationalisation of key industries; confiscation of the property of all traitors, and
imperialist British interests; free and nondenominational education; the
establishment of workers and farmers committees to replace the parliamentary
system; and the guarantee of religious liberty across the island.66 Beyond these
prescriptive measures, there was no indication of how the communists would
unite the industrial working class and peasantry and instil them with the
necessary class-consciousness to advance towards the proposed republic. Whilst
praising the work of the IWFC, he dismissed the peasantrys capacity for
63

Sen Murray, The Irish Case for Communism (Dublin, 1933)

Richard English, Radicals and the Republic: Socialist Republicanism and the Irish Free State, 19251937 (Oxford, 1994), p. 181
65
Compare Murrays writings on these issues with: Lee, Ireland, pp. 121-124; Girvin, Between Two
Worlds, pp. 55-57; Conor McCabe, Sins of the Father: Tracing the Decisions that Shaped the Irish
Economy (Dublin, 2011), pp. 125-132; and Bew et al., The Dynamics of Irish Politics, pp. 26-33
66
Murray, The Irish Case for Communism, pp. 18-20
64

125

independent political action: They must act politically in alliance with one or
the other chief classes.67
In early 1933, the CPGB censured the RWG, primarily in relation to the
content of its election manifesto, but also on the proposed composition of a new
Irish party. Although the Anglo-American Secretariat identified an opportunity
to recruit the best revolutionary elements among the workers and farmers from
the IRA, it came with the proviso attached that this did not extend to leaders
such as ODonnell, whose commitment to an anti-capitalist programme was
wavering.68 The CPGB was unsettled that Murray had bypassed the united
front from below tactic in favour of cooperation with ODonnell and support for
independent republican candidates in the election.69 Fearing that the RWG had
become too close to republican leaders, the British party called Murray to its
colonial committee and instructed him to distinguish the RWG from the IRA by
removing from its election literature all flattering references to Fianna Fil.70
This interference foreshadowed a more embittered dispute between Murray
and the CPGB on the issue of forming a new Irish political party with a
communist title. Murray attempted to assuage grassroots concerns about the
implications of forming a Moscow-led party in Ireland.71 Privately, though, he
explained to the CPGB that the strength of religious opposition to communism
in Ireland was such that it would be imprudent to give a new organisation that
name. The CPGB executive committee rebuked this argument and Murrays
suggestion that interpreting Christian teachings in a communistic fashion
would help to mitigate the effects of clerical opposition. Failing to understand
the seriousness of the dangers Murray presented, the British party instructed
him not to run away from the enemy. As a last resort, Murray wrote to William
Gallacher seeking arbitration, to which he received no reply. Rather, Harry
Pollitt, probably in his capacity as a member of the Anglo-American Secretariat,
communicated the explicit instruction to proceed in the formation of a
communist party. The composition and orientation of this party was nonnegotiable. Pollitt also assured Murray that the CPGB had faith in him as head

67

Ibid., p. 16
RGASPI, 495.89/84/15-21, Tactics of the RWG towards the IRA, 1 January 1933
69
RGASPI, 495/89/90/23-30, The General Election in Ireland, January 1933
70
OConnor, Reds and the Green, p. 182
71
Ibid., p. 181
68

126

of the Irish communist movement. Unbeknown to Murray, the CPGB leadership

had come close to removing him for insubordination.72 This adds weight to the
view that the Comintern delegated to the CPGB responsibility for reigning in
the Irish party where there was a danger of the latter becoming too
autonomous. The Irish authorities certainly believed this to be the case.73
Murrays legitimate fears about entering into a collision course with the
Catholic hierarchy were quickly realised. The vilification and subsequent
deportation of Jim Gralton, a leading RWG figure in Leitrim, is one significant
example of social hostilities fomented by the clergy.74 Simultaneously, the
fascistic National Guard formerly the ACA, soon to be known colloquially as
the Blueshirts intensified its campaign against Fianna Fils protectionist and
redistributive policies while taking aim at the IRA and communist movement.75
De Valeras Public Safety Bill was designed to inhibit the Blueshirts influence,
but also served to legitimise attacks on the RWG and loosely affiliated
individuals. In this volatile environment, young Catholics joined groups such as
St. Patricks Anti-Communism League in large numbers and anti-communism
became more organised. At one communist meeting on Cathal Brugha Street,
Murray survived an attempted stabbing, with the blade just piercing his
overcoat. As Manus ORiordan remarks, this was just a relatively mild foretaste
of what was yet to come.76
On 27 March, months before the second CPI got off the ground, a mob of
around six thousand, inspired by a Lenten pastoral read at the Dublin ProCathedral, marched to Connolly House and laid siege to it for three days and
nights. These events have been recorded variously by narrative, first-hand
memory and contemporary sources, which converge on the main details of the
72

NAUK, Security Service, KV2/1185/21f, Special Branch Cross-Reference relating to Sen Murray, 6
April 1933; KV2/1185/22, Metropolitan Police Special Branch report on communism, 12 April 1933;
KV2/1185/23a, Special Branch Cross-Reference relating to Sen Murray, 1 May 1933
73
NAI, DJ, 2008/117/38, Garda Special Branch report on Communist influence in Dublin, 2 March
1933
74
Sen Nolan (ed.), Communist Party of Ireland: An Outline History (Dublin, 1975), pp. 48-50; Luke
Gibbons, Labour and local history: The Case of Jim Gralton, Saothar, 14 (1989), pp. 85-94; Pat
Feeley, The Gralton Affair: The Story of the Deportation of Jim Gralton, a Leitrim Socialist (Dublin,
1986)
75
Mike Cronin, The Blueshirts and Irish Politics (Dublin, 1997), Chapter 6; Fearghal McGarry, Eoin
ODuffy: A Self-Made Hero (Oxford, 2005), pp. 211-233
76
Manus ORiordan, Communism in Dublin in the 1930s: The Struggle against Fascism in H. Gustav
Klaus (ed.), Strong Words, Brave Deeds: The Poetry, Life and Times of Thomas OBrien, Volunteer in
the Spanish Civil War (Dublin, 1994), p. 220

127

attack. Leading RWG figures such as Murray, Joe Troy, Sen Nolan, Jim
Prendergast and Donie ONeill were amongst fourteen defenders of the building.
According to Brian Hanley, they mounted a stern defence of Connolly House,
throwing slates, bricks a range of other objects at the mob from a top-floor
window. On the last day of the siege, however, members of the crowd stormed
the building and set it alight. When the house filled with smoke, those inside
attempted to escape across the glass rooftops, Murray hurting his ankle. On the
orders of George Gilmore, a number of sympathetic IRA men Charlie Gilmore,
Jack Nalty, Donie OReilly and Bill Gannon, brother of Murrays second wife
Margaret came to the RWGs aid. Gilmore fired shots to hold off the advancing
crowd and OReilly received a beating from the police for his efforts. Garda
arrested Gilmore as he attempted to flee, though a judge later acquitted him of
all charges.77 Not for the first time was Murray lucky to escape with his life.
Murray continued to test left republican waters prior to the launch of the
CPI in June. In May, a committee formed with the purpose of disseminating
Connollys works, bringing together a group of kindred spirits. Those involved
included Murray, Larkin Jnr, the ubiquitous ODonnell, the Gilmore brothers,
Jack Carney (representing the WUI) and the radical journalist Rosamond Jacob.
The committees main aim was to give the communist movement a national
flavour by presenting its programme in the language of Connollyism.78
However, this proved a pyrrhic victory for Murray in the context of a shift in
republican opinion away from communism. The IRA leaderships refusal to
sanction the protection of Connolly House in March was a visible warning of
increasing hostility to the RWG. So too was the participation of IRA members in
the hounding of Jim Gralton. The Army convention which took place in the
same month saw the introduction of stringent rules concerning IRA members
political activities and associations, and Moss Twomey put Saor ire to bed in
an effort to disassociate the organisation from communism altogether. This
involved a revisionist campaign to refute any links, past or present, between the
IRA and RWG. Additionally, the language employed by An Phoblacht was
increasingly indistinguishable from pastorals and articles in the conservative

77

Brian Hanley, The Storming of Connolly House, History Ireland, 7: 2 (Summer 1999), pp. 5-7; NAI,
DJ, JUS/8/711, Anti-Communist Demonstrations (1933); Irish Times, 2 May 1933; ORiordan,
Communism in Dublin, p. 221
78
NAI, DJ, 2007/56/176, Garda Special Branch report on Communism, 18 May 1933

128

press. In one sense, Twomeys move was an expedient one, given the degree of
negative attention focused on the communists. However, the IRA also lost some
of its most politically capable and influential figures as a direct consequence:
Frank Ryan resigned as editor of An Phoblacht in protest, and Hanna Sheehy
Skeffington as deputy editor, while Peadar ODonnell withdrew from the
executive.79 ODonnells parting shot implied that, by prohibiting members from
joining the RWG, the leadership had abandoned what he considered the IRAs
raison dtre:
My first allegiance has always been to the Irish Working Class
movement. The I.R.A. was the most intense form of this. This is why I
joined the I.R.A. It is men outside the I.R.A. like Sen Murray who was
at one time an Officer in the I.R.A. who are collecting this unrest. If
you carry this resolution through in the spirit in which it is offered it is
the end of the I.R.A. as a revolutionary body.80
Brian Hanley has since arrived at a similar conclusion: The aftermath of the
1933 convention marked the IRAs abandonment of openly socialist policies.
Those within the IRA with an ideological commitment to these policies would
either reevaluate them or leave the organisation.81
The RWG cadres launched the second CPI on 4-5 June, with Murray named
general secretary and Larkin Jnr elected as chairman. Murray outlined the CPI
manifesto, Irelands Path to Freedom, and described the party as the United
Irishmen of the 20th Century. His speech pointed to a weakening of the British
Empire and paraphrased Engels and Lenin to underline Irelands role in that
process: The Communists who talk about Internationalism are so because they
are the greatest exponents of the National Independence struggles. At the same
time, he conceded that support for the CPI in Belfast would depend in part on
successful engagement with the mass economic struggles. While in broad
agreement

with

Murrays

tactics,

Larkin

argued

that

he

had

paid

disproportionate attention to the national question to the exclusion of the class

issue. Murray was unmoved by this. More importantly, the party membership

79

Drisceoil, Peadar ODonnell, p. 81; OConnor, Reds and the Green, pp. 191-192; Grant, Irish
Socialist Republicanism, pp. 262-264
80
Quoted in Grant, Irish Socialist Republicanism, p. 256
81
Hanley, The IRA, p. 180

129

adopted Murrays manifesto without amendment, confirming his authority and

the popularity of a Connollyist approach to communism.82
The CPI had a strong representation at the annual Wolfe Tone
commemoration at Bodenstown on 18 June. However, in the fallout from the
IRA Army convention, tensions flared and IRA members attacked the CPI
delegation. Moss Twomey also used the occasion to put further distance between
republicanism and communism, emphasising the supposed atheism and
irreligion of the latter. In response, the CPI released an oddly sympathetic
statement conveying a message of understanding that the IRA leadership had
felt called upon to declare where they officially stand due to the pressure of the
reaction. But whatever his reasons, Twomey had signalled an abandonment of
his organisations working-class membership in favour of joining the chorus of
anti-communism.83 In an appeal to IRA grassroots, Murray returned to Saor
ire, which at least had something to say about capitalists, their wealth,
private property and so on. Furthermore, he assured republicans that it was
not inconsistent for a Catholic to be a communist.84
A subsequent report to Moscow gave the impression that the CPI in Dublin
had made adequate progress.85 However, two sources suggest that the partys
secretariat was merely putting on a brave front. First, the performance of the
two CPI candidates in Junes municipal elections Murray received an
embarrassing seventy-five votes and Larkin Jnr lost his seat painted a clearer
picture of the Sisyphean task facing the party.86 Secondly, although Murray
understood the dangers of going down the route of illegality, the party decided
collectively on 18 July that any future meetings would be organised through
factory and street cells rather than in public.87 That the CPI accepted its role as
a clandestine organisation reflected to a certain degree the leaderships Leninist
education, though it was primarily an admission that circumstances had taken
a turn against the party. In Irelands Path to Freedom, which the party
82

RGASPI, 495/89/88/14-30, Founding Congress of the CPI (1933)

An Phoblacht, 17 June 1933; NAI, DJ, 2007/56/176, Garda Special Branch report on Communist
Organisations, 26 June 1933
84
Irish Workers Voice, 24 June 1933; Irish Independent, 7 June 1933
85
RGASPI, 495/89/90/13-18, Report from Ireland, July 1933
86
Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, p. 143; RGASPI, 495/89/88/14-30, Founding Congress of
the CPI (1933)
87
NAI, DJ, 2007/56/176, Garda Special Branch report on Communist Organisations, Personnel,
Organisers etc., 24 July 1933
83

130

membership formally endorsed as its manifesto, Murray reiterated the

Connollyist idea that the national liberation of Ireland is an inevitable task
which it will carry out on the way to Socialism.88 More generally, under the
intense pressure of Third Period doctrines, he attempted to make the party
relevant to the social and political outlook of urban and rural workers, North
and South.
Delineating The Irish Case for Communism and Irelands Path to Freedom,
which scholars of the period have too often equated with each other, one can
identify a number of substantive changes. The most radical amendment was the
replacement of references to Cosgrave by sharp criticisms of de Valera, now
likened to Daniel OConnell and Arthur Griffith and referred to as the
custodian of the interests of Irish capitalism.89 This was due in no small part to
Murrays dressing down from London. Yet it also reflected a growing perception
on the republican left that, in spite of its social reforms, Fianna Fil failed to
demonstrate a commitment to full political and economic independence.90
ODonnell certainly shared this view. However, in adopting an acutely
dismissive view of rural Ireland, Murray found little in common with
ODonnells overtures to small farmers and agricultural labourers. Irelands
Path to Freedom argued that the peasantry would become a powerful and
decisive force only under the leadership of another revolutionary class which is
in such conditions that it can organise its forces i.e. the industrial working
class.91 Without a spontaneous epoch-defining event to stir this potential
support base into action unlikely in the circumstances Murrays attitude did
nothing to convince the Irish rural majority of his projects viability. Finally, on
an unrelated note, Murray anticipated the collapse of capitalism and introduced
to the new draft a reference to the triumphant USSR.92 With the CPI in a state
of paralysis, it is evident that Murray balanced rather than synthesised his
Connollyism with Soviet platitudes in an effort to appease the Comintern and
guarantee the CPIs survival in the short term.

88

Sen Murray, Irelands Path to Freedom (Dublin, 1933), p. 9

Ibid., p. 12
90
Richard Dunphy, The Making of Fianna Fil Power in Ireland, 1923-1948 (Oxford, 1995), pp. 187188
91
Murray, Irelands Path to Freedom, p. 9 (emphasis added)
92
Ibid., p. 14
89

131

Rayner Lysaght argues that Irelands Path to Freedom was significant only
in its blunting of potential. He is right to point out that there was no
programme

whether

Transitional,

Maximum

or

Minimum.93

In

the

circumstances, to reflect the possibilities in the Free State, it may have been
most appropriate to replace the far-fetched promises contained in The Irish Case
for Communism with a minimum programme. But although it meant the
removal of the clause guaranteeing religious freedoms, Irelands Path to
Freedoms modest and ambiguous pledge to work for the destruction of national
and social oppression was a pragmatic improvement on its precursor.94 Another
improvement was Murrays direct call to northern workers, which presented the
outdoor relief riots as the basis for conflict with British imperialism.95 In
addition, Murray removed the passage which identified the CPI explicitly with
anti-partitionist labourists in Belfast and retracted his conditional support for
the Nationalist Party, arguing now that Devlin and Cahir Healy were as guilty
as the Unionist Party of making demagogic appeals to religious prejudice in
order to win support.96 It was a significant admission that to make progress in
Belfast, the CPI had to address and overcome sectarian divisions. Indeed a
report to the ECCI in July confirmed that the party intended to concentrate its
efforts on winning over the non-nationalist section.97
In the year subsequent to the outdoor relief strikes, relations within the
labour movement had deteriorated dramatically. This explains in part Murrays
reinterpretation of the strikes as anti-imperialist. The Irish Workers Voice
reported as early as January 1933 that the gains of the outdoor relief workers
were being systematically smashed in the absence of labour unity.98 The RWG
played only a marginal role in an abortive NUR strike in January, with the
British railway vigilance representative William Cowe delivering a sobering
assessment of work levels and the calibre of leadership in Belfast.99 On 15
October, Murray travelled north to address a banned celebration of the outdoor

93

D.R. OConnor Lysaght, The Communist Party of Ireland: A Critical History, Part 2 (1976),
http://www.workersrepublic.org/Pages/Ireland/Communism/cpihistory2.html (Accessed on 5
September 2012)
94
Murray, Irelands Path to Freedom, p. 14
95
Ibid., p. 2
96
Ibid., p. 13
97
RGASPI, 495/89/91/23, Report from Ireland to the ECCI, July 1933
98
Irish Workers Voice, 10 January 1933
99
OConnor, Reds and the Green, pp. 183-184

132

relief strike. Having managed to evade the RUC at the border, he made it onto
the platform at the ILP Hall in Belfast. However, before he could deliver his
speech, two detectives took him away at gunpoint and escorted him to the
Belfast-to-Dublin train, though legend has it that he got off at Lisburn and
returned to Belfast to see out his commitments for the week. The exclusion
order served upon Murray by the Minister of Home Affairs, Dawson Bates, did
not prevent him from speaking at another public meeting in Belfast on 22
October. Arrested the next day at James Katers house, Murray received a
sentence of one months imprisonment and returned to Crumlin Road Jail, more
than ten years after his previous visit. James Kater received the more severe
punishment of five months imprisonment for harbouring Murray, while Arthur
Griffin and Val Morahan were amongst a number of leading Belfast members
imprisoned over the course of a few months.100 The CPI called for the release of
all political prisoners, republicans included, and repeal of both the Special
Powers Act and Public Safety Bill. Increasingly, Murray used the Irish Workers
Voice to associate this campaign with the defeat of imperialism and fascism.101
This held some attraction in the twenty-six counties, but there was little
prospect of winning the support of Belfast Trades Council or Midgleys NILP to
a campaign that associated itself with the republican movement and aimed to
disrupt Unionist hegemony.
To have survived the difficulties of 1933 was a major achievement for the
CPI, though the party existed in a debilitated state. Only nine issues of the Irish
Workers Voice were published between April and mid-October, and the paper
struggled to attract contributors from outside the CPI milieu.102 Membership
figures at the end of the year fell short of the lofty expectations of 1932, which
had predicted a 1933 active membership of between five and six hundred.103 The
revelation that one party member, Frank Breen, had been working as an
informant for the Garda and the Standard newspaper also dealt a huge blow to

100

PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/M/2, Letter from RUC District Inspector to Murray, 4
November 1933; Interview with Jimmy and Edwina Stewart, 18 March 2010; RGASPI, 495/89/89/24,
To the working people of Ireland!, November 1933; Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, pp.
146-147
101
RGASPI, 495/89/89/27, Demand Sen Murrays release, November 1933; Irish Workers Voice,
28 October, 4, 18, 25 November, 16, 23 December 1933, 13 January 1934
102
Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, p. 142
103
RGASPI, 495/89/73/75-95, Tasks of the Revolutionary Workers Groups in Ireland, 1 August 1932;
495/89/99/2-3, CPI Politburo report, 10 March 1934

133

the partys efforts. During an internal inquiry, Breen admitted that he had
received payment for gathering information on the inner workings of the CPI.
Murray expelled Breen from the party and, most remarkably, ordered him to
leave Ireland within ten hours.104
Despite the organisational malaise and ideological confusion surrounding
the CPIs work, the Comintern refused to commission a policy adjustment.
Though not quite as intransigent as it had been in mid-1932, it produced a
progress report in November that contained a number of stinging criticisms:
Since the party Congress very little has been done to popularise the
manifesto adopted by the Congress. Besides some speeches delivered at
the Congress (in which the erroneous conception is put forward that the
CPI is a 20th century Society of the United Irishmen) the Workers Voice
has printed only one article on the manifesto...and in its contents
appears more as a Left republican journal rather than the organ of the
CPI.105
The Comintern also reprimanded the CPI for attempting to form a united front
against fascism. Throughout the second half of 1933, the Irish Workers Voice
had made several calls for such an alliance, finding more in common with
Trotskys assessment than the official Comintern version.106
As OConnor has noted, the nub of the problem for the Cominterns
ideologists was the absence of anything distinctly reflective of the third period
about the CPI.107 The Comintern and its Irish loyalists thus held Murray solely
responsible for having the party in a hopeless state.108 Bob McIlhone, Murrays
old comrade from the CPGB and Lenin School, echoed this view. He bemoaned a
lack of cadres, of leading local, district and national comrades who have some
knowledge of Leninist strategy and tactics, who are able to give political
direction to the party work.109 Murray graciously accepted that he had
neglected his duties on occasion and agreed to devote more time to the
104

NAI, DJ, 2007/56/176, Garda Special Branch report on Communist Organisations, Personnel,
Organisers etc., 24 July 1933; 2008/117/38, Garda Special Branch report on Communist
Organisations, Personnel, Organisers etc., 23 October 1933
105
Quoted in OConnor, Reds and the Green, p. 195
106
RGASPI, 495/89/89/10, The Fascist Danger, And the Workers Struggle against it!; Irish Workers
Voice, 19 August, 3 September, 4 November, 23 December 1933
107
OConnor, Reds and the Green , p. 195
108
NAI, DJ, 2008/117/38, Garda Special Branch report on Communist Organisations, Personnel,
Organisers etc., 11 September 1933
109
Quoted in Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, p. 144

134

movement in future. He dealt with Harry Pollitts concerns in a similarly selfeffacing way, whilst reiterating the point that local conditions were not
conducive to the work of a communist party. The hostility of IRA officers and
the Dublin populace in general, Murray argued, rendered it impossible to hold
meetings or distribute Communist propaganda. For these pleas, he gained the
concession of a reconstituted ILDL to defend all class war and political
prisoners, which provided the party with a platform for winning the support of
IRA members and working safely and publicly in unison with the republican
left.110
At an important meeting of the CPI central committee in March 1934,
Murray took the unpopular step of praising the bravery of those who had taken
to the streets against fascism in Austria, Spain and France. In another
departure from Comintern orthodoxy, and with little support from his local
comrades, Murray questioned the CPIs silence on the German Communist
Party (KPD) position on fascism. Rather than spending all its energy on
attacking the SPD, Murray argued, the KPD should have made a more resolute
fight against the coming to power of Hitler.111 This estimation of fascism as a
potent international threat shared the concerns of Heinz Neumann and
Hermann Remmele, two KPD theorists censured by the Comintern for
encouraging precisely the same militant opposition to fascism in Germany.
Murrays interpretation corresponded with Trotskys arguments for immediate
working-class action to defeat German fascism in particular and closely
resembled the official Irish Labour Party position.112 With his leadership briefly
under scrutiny, Murray diffused these unpopular views in a rambling attack on
the Labour Partys social reformism and the trade union leadership, along with
obligatory praise for the Soviet Union as the one great factor holding back the
outbreak of an imperialist holocaust. However, this failed to win the CPI
central committee round to an anti-fascist position. Consequently, the central
committee passed a resolution endorsing the decisions of the Comintern at its
thirteenth plenum, which associated the party with the erroneous definition of

110

NAI, DJ, 2008/117/38, Garda Special Branch report on Communist Organisations, Personnel,
Organisers etc., 20 January 1934
111
RGASPI, 495/89/99/13-37, CPI Politburo, 10-11 March 1934
112
E. Rumpf and A.C. Hepburn, Nationalism and Socialism in Twentieth-Century Ireland (Liverpool,
1977), p. 132

135

fascism as capitalism in its death throes.113 This decision went against Murrays
better judgement, and thus merely represented an academic exercise. At
Murrays instruction, the CPI continued to move away from Third Periodism
and pursue the broad united front in practice.

The Republican Congress

Murray travelled to Moscow at the beginning of April, and from there proceeded
to the US to embark on a speaking tour. Bob Stewart moved to Dublin to
oversee administrative duties and Brian ONeill deputised as the CPIs main
theorist in Murrays absence. According to British intelligence, the Comintern
chose Murray for the trip on account of his associations with the IRA and the
expectation that he would meet with an amount of success amongst the Irish
working class in America.114 Murray addressed the eighth national congress of
the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) in Cleveland, Ohio, where he was
reacquainted with Harry Haywood, his old International Lenin School
classmate.115 Subsequently, he visited Irish Workers Clubs in New York and
went on a speaking tour of big cities in the east and mid-west. He succeeded in
increasing the number of branches from two to sixteen, and secured funds to
sustain the CPI for a few months.116 Additionally, the Irish Workers Clubs
published Murrays Irelands Fight for Freedom and the Irish in the USA, a
pamphlet which lionised the role of the Irish diaspora in the national
struggle.117 It is clear that he made a lasting impression on Irish-American
communists during his brief visit. In January 1939, Murray received a letter
from the CPUSAs fifth assembly district, New York, announcing its intention to
form a Sen Murray Branch in honour of his brilliant and courageous
leadership of the struggle of the Irish people for true freedom and well-being.118
In Murrays absence, a historic development within republicanism caught
the CPI by surprise. When on 17 March an IRA Army convention rejected
proposals

for

an

anti-imperialist

republican

congress,

the

preeminent

113

RGASPI, 495/89/99/13-37, CPI Politburo, 10-11 March 1934

NAUK, Security Service, KV2/1185, Sen Murray; NAI, DJ, JUS/8/337, Garda Special Branch
reports on Communism, 10 March, 24 April 1934
115
Harry Haywood, Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist (Chicago,
Illinois, 1978), p. 418
116
OConnor, Reds and the Green, pp. 199-200
117
Sen Murray, Irelands Fight for Freedom and the Irish in the USA (New York, 1934)
118
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/M/4, Letter from the CPUSA Fifth District, New York, 3
January 1939
114

136

representatives of left republicanism Peadar ODonnell, Frank Ryan and

George Gilmore made a prompt exit from the IRA. Michael Price, who had
been consistent in his view on the necessity of a workers republic, left at an
earlier stage when the convention defeated his specific proposal.119 On 7-8 April,
after bringing together around two hundred republicans, socialists and trade
unionists, the resulting umbrella group issued a manifesto known as the
Athlone Call. This urged all progressives to rally around Connollys slogan
We cannot conceive of a free Ireland with a subject working class; we cannot
conceive of a subject Ireland with a free working class and replace Fianna Fil
at the head of the national movement.120 The CPI welcomed the Republican
Congress as a united front movement but warned against any attempt to form
a political party.121 Throughout the summer months, the Irish Workers Voice
added calls for the Congress to focus its attention on fascism, the urban
unemployed movements and on improving the working conditions of the
agricultural labourer.122 Within the united front rubric, the CPI extended
comradeship to Labour Party and trade union branches and Fianna Fil
cumainn.123 By contrast, its paper continued to pour vitriol on Labour leaders
such as Harry Midgley and William Norton, regarding them as no better than
the fascistic Blueshirts.124 The only figures of leadership status to escape
condemnation were Gilmore, ODonnell, Ryan, Price and other socialist
republicans who had publicly embraced the Congress ideal.
With Murray back at the helm, after a period of relative inactivity, the CPI
belatedly lent its support to the Republican Congress anti-imperialist basis and
set about mobilising its members towards that end.125 At the inaugural meeting
of the Congress in Rathmines Town Hall on 29-30 September, Murray put his
weight behind the minority resolution. This initially called for a united front of
the working class and small farmers to smash Imperialist and native
exploiters and progress towards an Irish Republic. Only in phraseology did this
differ from The Irish Case for Communism and Irelands Path to Freedom.
119

Drisceoil, Peadar ODonnell, p. 83; Sen Cronin, Frank Ryan: The Search for the Republic (Dublin,
1980), pp. 56-57
120
Quoted in English, Radicals and the Republic, p. 188
121
Irish Workers Voice, 14 April 1934
122
Ibid., 21 April, 5 May, 5, 23 June 1934
123
Ibid., 9 June 1934
124
Ibid., 14 July, 1, 8 September 1934
125
Ibid., 1 September

137

Before the main vote, ODonnell amended the wording of the resolution to entail
a commitment simply to the Republic. In opposition, Michael Price presented
his Workers Republic resolution, which differed in substance only in the
precedence it assigned to the immediate fight against Irish capitalism. It was
possible for the CPI to embrace aspects of both resolutions. A more significant,
seemingly intractable difference related to organisation. Namely, Price called
for the formation of a new political party, which ODonnell and Murray knew to
be an obstacle to CPI participation.126
In his statement endorsing the minority resolution, Murray addressed the
one outstanding interpretative problem. Specifically, he took issue with Prices
view that the British and Irish variants of capitalism worked in isolation:
We must be definitely clear on this point: we cannot rid ourselves of
capitalist oppression until we destroy the power of British imperialism.
And the majority resolution advocates the opposite that we must have
capitalism abolished before we can destroy English imperialist power....
This Congress...will fulfil its task by the creation of a united front as the
way forward to the unity and independence of Ireland and the realisation
of the ultimate goal of Connolly, the Workers Republic.127
Murray envisaged the same end goal as the faction led by Price, Roddy Connolly
and Nora Connolly OBrien, the divergence that this group attached less direct
significance to British imperialism. Price argued that the Workers Republic
slogan held greater appeal for Belfast Protestants, which even Gilmore found
difficult to dispute. Murray ignored this problem, turning his attention to the
prospect of uniting the industrial and rural workers under the Republic
banner. He contended that this vague objective was more appropriate for
allowing the peasantry and working class to get acquainted in the fight with
the common enemy, imperialism.128 For Murray, ODonnells resolution made
practical sense and, unlike Prices proposal, did not threaten to eclipse the
independent work of the CPI with the formation of a new political party. To a
certain extent, Murrays intervention was based on sound political logic and a
commitment to the party he had helped to found. Ultimately, whilst attempting

126

George Gilmore, The Irish Republican Congress (Cork, 1979), pp. 47-51; Republican Congress, 13
October 1934
127
Irish Workers Voice, 6 October 1934
128
Gilmore, The Irish Republican Congress, p. 57

138

to remain loyal to Connolly, he committed the CPI to a stageist conception of

the revolution and, in one sense, the Cominterns policy of the united front.
Murrays decisive contribution would ensure that CPI delegates helped to
pass ODonnells united front and the Republic resolution by 99 votes to 84.
Price and Connolly OBrien refused to put their names forward for the executive
and resigned from the Congress with immediate effect. Their exit and that of
their supporters severely weakened any prospect of success.129 On the CPI line
at Rathmines, Emmet OConnor has faulted CPGB interference, which he
claims prevented Murray from receiving the details of a Comintern
communication. The ECCI memo in question, dated 16 September, outlined a
proposal, independent of both the Republic and Workers Republic resolutions.
This committed the party to a united front of workers, farmers and agricultural
labourers against hunger, fascism and war, giving formal expression to the
CPIs announcements and activities in the lead up to the Athlone Call.
Crucially, the memo endorsed the slogan of a Workers and Farmers Republic
and a fifteen-point programme very similar to that presented in The Irish Case
for Communism.130 The case against Harry Pollitt, accused of intercepting and
interpreting Comintern messages to Ireland as he saw fit, is compelling.
Whether through malevolence or incompetence, Pollitt proceeded in delivering
vague instructions to the CPI that did not reflect the clarity of the ECCI
document. According to OConnor, this was the main cause of the major blunder
by Murray at Rathmines. Not being privy to Comintern support for the
Workers and Farmers Republic compromise, he improvised and caused a huge
rift in the Congress before it had taken off.131
It is quite possible that Murray did in fact receive the correct instructions
and simply chose to ignore them. Before leaving Ireland in March, Murray
reiterated the importance of an anti-imperialist slant to the CPIs work. Seeing
no contradiction in combating fascism and imperialism simultaneously, he
argued that the imperialist enthusiasts in both Irish states had in fact begun to
employ fascistic methods of repression.132 Murrays proximity to ODonnell is
another factor to note. Indeed, George Gilmore later claimed that the Congress
129

Ibid., pp. 57-58

RGASPI, 495/89/96/46-47, ECCI memo on the Republican Congress, 16 September 1934
131
OConnor, Reds and the Green, p. 201
132
RGASPI, 495/89/99/2-3, CPI Politburo report, 10 March 1934
130

139

was Murray and ODonnells joint idea.133 We also recall that Murray had taken
liberties with ECCI instructions on more than one occasion previously.
Therefore, it is possible to reach the conclusion that he directly disobeyed the
Comintern on the Republican Congress in favour of supporting ODonnells
resolution in its entirety. However, one must take into account the CPGBs
history of interference in CPI affairs and Pollitts discernible antipathy towards
Murray. This makes it wholly conceivable that Pollitt attempted to damage
Murrays standing in Moscow. It is somewhat mystifying that Murray did not
present the Workers and Farmers Republic option for consideration,
particularly as he had coined the slogan in the first instance. As Grant notes,
Murray missed an opportunity to deliver a compromise that could have carried
a larger majority and minimised the devastation of the Rathmines split.134
Unperturbed by the CPGBs role, the Anglo-American Secretariat sent a
letter to Ireland on 14 October that expressed displeasure with Murrays
apparent failure at Rathmines. The directive criticised his decision to
OBJECTIVELY place the CPI in a position of supporting a policy of
REVOLUTIONARY NATIONAL REPUBLICANISM as AGAINST a so-called
PROLETARIAN REPUBLICANISM and his failure to argue for the Workers
and Farmers Republic compromise. In addition, it reproached Murray once
again for allowing a dilution of the partys Communist identity. To rectify these
mistakes, the Secretariat demanded that the CPI begin making overtures to
supporters of the Workers Republic resolution, release a statement
dissociating the CPI from ODonnells republican agenda, and abandon the
policy of making the party the tailend of the ODonnellite Left Republicans.
The directive also carried with it suggestions concerning an escalation of work
with unemployed groups; trade union organisation and party recruitment; and a
refinement of policy summaries as presented in the Irish Workers Voice.135 On
16 November, the Comintern reinforced these instructions in a more concise
and, it must be said, temperate letter. But whatever the tone of the document,
the message remained the same: under Murrays direction, the CPI had failed to
stand out independently in the Congress.136

133

Drisceoil, Peadar ODonnell, p. 88

Grant, Irish Socialist Republicanism, p. 271
135
RGASPI, 495/89/94/56-64, Anglo-American Secretariat directive to Ireland, 14 October 1934
136
RGASPI, 495/4/318/8-11, Letter to the CP Ireland re Republican Congress, 16 November 1934
134

140

An interesting CPI circular indicated in response that party grassroots did

not wish to correct its position. In fact, the party membership showed no signs of
questioning Murrays efforts to establish the Republican Congress or his
leadership in general.137 The party delivered this optimistic and quite defiant
message against the backdrop of united frontism on the streets. In November,
the CPI and its allies, the INUM and the Labour League Against Fascism,
campaigned alongside the Republican Congress, Labour Party, trade unions and
IRA in opposition to the Unemployment Assistance Act. This protest secured
from the government a 25 percent increase in benefits, testifying to the
effectiveness of united action.138 On Armistice Day, the Republican Congress led
a 2,000-strong counter-demonstration, while broad unity proved increasingly
important in clashes with remnants of the Blueshirts.139 This may not have been
the decisive factor in the disintegration of fascism in Ireland. Yet it is clear that
these confrontations did have a positive effect on efforts to build and protect
democracy, whilst boosting the morale of the labour movement and republican
left in difficult circumstances.
Many of the Price-Connolly OBrien faction joined the Labour Party in the
aftermath of the Republican Congress. They assisted Roddy Connolly in making
a socialist impression on a centrist party and saw through the adoption of the
Workers Republic as a constitutional imperative in 1936.140 Although the
Congress remained in existence until 1936, the Rathmines split effectively
precipitated its sharp decline. So too, it appears, had Murrays status as the
leading Irish cadre suffered, at least in the eyes of the Comintern and CPGB.
For the leading functionaries of these two bodies, it was an unforgivable error in
judgement for Murray to support ODonnells resolution. What lay behind
Murrays decision did not factor into their considerations. Accordingly, the
CPGB sent Pat Devine, a Scot with an impressive party record, to work in
Dublin as a full-time instructor. OConnor remarks that Murray probably held
his post as general secretary by default, given that there was little appetite

137

RGASPI, 495/96/97-102, CPI circular, 1 December 1934

Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, pp. 158-159
139
Drisceoil, Peadar ODonnell, p. 90; Michael ORiordan, Connolly Column: The Story of the
Irishmen who Fought in the Ranks of the International Brigades in the National-Revolutionary War of
the Spanish People, 1936-39 (Dublin, 1979), pp. 25-26
140
Charlie McGuire, Roddy Connolly and the Struggle for Socialism in Ireland (Cork, 2008), p. 156
138

141

within the party membership to step into his invidious position.141 It is also
likely that Murrays affable manner and the respect he commanded ensured
that no one on the local scene wished to undermine him. However, the signs of
dissatisfaction emanating from London and Moscow, culminating in the direct
imposition of a trusted representative to supervise all CPI activities, put a
serious dent in Murrays hopes of taking the party forward with the same
purpose and authority that had hitherto characterised his leadership.
Conclusion
This period was one of just a few high points in Murrays political career. He
made a significant, albeit brief, contribution to the outdoor relief strikes in 1932.
Attempting to draw Belfast republicans into mass economic struggles and
appealing for moderation in the labour movement at a time when left
sectarianism prevailed in the international socialist arena, he demonstrated an
awareness of the significance of events around him. His consistent opposition to
domestic and international fascism, though unpopular with local comrades and
divergent from Comintern policy, is of utmost importance. His stance grated
against what many considered gospel, yet proved the correct one to adopt.
Murrays early career indicated that he was not ideal apparatchik material, not
a blank slate. And so it proved on a number of occasions. Although it was the
culmination of his work since 1927, Murray queried the very notion of forming a
communist party in Ireland. Yet he committed to the CPI as the vanguard
party, even when it may have been more expedient to jump ship. A speaking
tour of the US was a fitting reward for this commitment, confirming Murrays
international standing as a socialist leader.
It is clear that Murray viewed the republican constituency as the most
reliable source of support for an all-Ireland communist formation. He left
organisational responsibility for the Belfast group to those who understood the
northern political landscape and trade union movement, such as Loftus
Johnston, Betty Sinclair, Tommy Geehan and Billy McCullough. Of course, the
expulsion order served upon Murray in 1933 contributed to his lack of
enthusiasm for the Belfast groups activities. Though he recognised the
importance of winning over workers in the north-east, Murrays commitment to
this goal rarely went beyond platitudes. Aside from the administration of the
141

OConnor, Reds and the Green, pp. 205-206

142

party on a full-time basis, Murray concentrated his efforts on exploring a

synthesis of republicanism and socialism. In the first phase, he put forward a
distinctly socialist programme whilst arguing that the CPI should take its place
in the national movement alongside Fianna Fil and the IRA. In the second
phase, Murray accepted ODonnell et al.s arguments that only a broad front of
left republican elements could wrest control of the social and national struggles
from Fianna Fil and bring them to their logical conclusion. It is unlikely that
Murray considered this an abandonment of Connolly, though George Gilmore
later claimed that both Murray and Price had disposed of the oneness of the
struggle for working-class emancipation and for national independence from
different perspectives.142
The arguments regarding Pollitts interference gain credence when one
considers the CPGBs two clashes with Murray in 1933. It is difficult to avoid
the conclusion that Pollitts role was decisive. The CPI missed an opportunity to
facilitate cooperation between left republicans and the broader labour
movement, and between the industrial and rural workers of Ireland. One can
only speculate about the possibilities of the Workers and Farmers Republic.
Yet we can be certain that Murray never truly believed that a communist party
could function effectively in Ireland without the support of allies on the left.
This explains his attempts to place the CPI within anti-imperialist, anti-fascist
and broad labour fronts; why he focused so much attention on historical
precedents for the symbiosis of socialism and republicanism; and why he
departed from Comintern policy on more than one occasion. Murray favoured
pragmatic alliances that reflected local conditions and possibilities on the
ground. This necessarily involved anticipating shifts in Comintern thinking,
even with the constant prospect of being removed from the CPI leadership
looming over him.

142

Quoted in Drisceoil, Peadar ODonnell, p. 88

143

Chapter 5 Anti-Fascism and Anti-Imperialism: Dialectic or

Contradiction?
By 1935, Murray had for more than one year been striving to bridge the gap
between the CPI and potential allies on the left. Though this process was
fraught with difficulties, the ragged retreat of West European communism
from the Third Period shielded the Irish leadership from some of the
Cominterns more extreme bureaucratic procedures.1 This and Murrays sheer
persistence brought to fruition a formal alliance between labourists and socialist
republicans, while he also made progress in articulating the case for opposing
fascism home and abroad. The CPI continued to work within front movements
into 1935 and kept in close contact with minority resolution elements of the
Republican Congress.
Yet the demoralising Rathmines split left the party relatively isolated from
the broader labour movement and IRA. The CPIs trade union work fell behind
in the midst of Republican Congress deliberations and distance from the Labour
Party made it difficult for the communists to appear genuine in their efforts to
build unity from above or below. Roddy Connolly was the only leading Labour
politician fully convinced of the utility of forming an alliance with the CPI
against capitalism, fascism, international war and imperialism. He presented
this resolution to the Labour Party annual conference in October 1934,2
coinciding with a similar appeal from the CPI in the Irish Workers Voice.3 Given
the CPIs record of hostility towards the Labour Party leadership, it came as no
surprise when the latter initially rebuffed the formers overtures. In fact, the
conference passed a resolution that opposed strongly any attempt to introduce
anti-Christian communistic doctrines into the movement.4 At the same time,
while the IRA had not exactly proven a dependable ally over the course of 1934,
it became even more apolitical. In March 1935, an IRA Army convention
comprehensively defeated Sen MacBrides proposal for the formation of a new
republican political party.5 In the North, the organisation became a polarising

Emmet OConnor, Reds and the Green: Ireland, Russia and the Communist Internationals, 1919-43
(Dublin, 2004), p. 200
2
Niamh Puirsil, The Irish Labour Party, 1922-73 (Dublin, 2007), p. 54
3
Irish Workers Voice, 3 November 1934
4
Quoted in Puirsil, The Irish Labour Party, p. 54
5
J. Bowyer Bell, The Secret Army: The IRA (Revised Third Edition) (Dublin, 1998), p. 121

144

influence after responding hastily to an explosion of sectarian tensions and

remodelling itself as a Catholic defence force in all but name.
Religious fanaticism reared its ugly head to the detriment of CPI efforts
across the island. The shooting of Catholic barman Dan OBoyle in November
1933 the first sectarian killing since 1922 inflamed underlying animosities.
So too did the furore surrounding the Silver Jubilee of King George V in May
1935, subsequent Orange parades on 12 July, and the inflammatory behaviour
of senior Unionist figures. A violent few weeks ensued, from which a marginal
communist party could not escape. The reinvigorated Ulster Protestant League
mobilised its supporters against disloyal Catholics and the perceived
communist threat. The CPI and unemployed workers groups had several
meetings broken up by the UPL, and the offices of the CPI and NILP were
trashed.6 In the South, the case of the Belfast-born Waterford teacher Frank
Edwards hinted at the persistence of virulent anti-communism in the highest
echelons of the clergy. Bishop Kinane of Waterford and Lismore vilified
Edwards and dismissed him from his post at Mount Sion Christian Brothers
School for involvement with the Republican Congress. Frank Ryan and Peadar
ODonnell lent Edwards their support, challenging the rationale behind the
Bishops decision and offering their comrade asylum in Dublin. Murray
intervened in the affair by condemning the Bishop for only opposing the type of
republicanism that questioned the legitimacy of private property. He called on
the Church to issue pastorals dealing with the disparities in wealth on the
island and published a list of people worth 80,000 or more, contrasting their
privileged position with the large numbers across the country that had to
endure starvation.7 In February, James Hogan, a historian at University
College Cork and close confidant of General ODuffy, published Could Ireland
Become Communist?8 Though destined to become a relic of Blueshirtism, it was
a fine piece of conservative scaremongering with academic credibility. Its main
achievement was to help sustain the fearful Catholic populations hostility
towards the CPI and its allies.
6

Michael Farrell, Northern Ireland: The Orange State (Second Edition) (London, 1980), pp. 137-140;
Mike Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland: The Pursuit of the Workers Republic Since 1916
(Dublin, 1984), pp. 163-164; Thomas Hennessey, A History of Northern Ireland, 1920-1996 (Dublin,
1997), pp. 67-70
7
NAI, DJ, 2008/117/722, Frank Edwards File (January 1935); JUS8/386, Garda Special Branch Report
on Communist meeting, 29 January 1935
8
James Hogan, Could Ireland Become Communist? The Facts of the Case (Dublin, 1935)

145

The objective conditions for rebuilding the CPI were inauspicious. The
transformation of Fianna Fil into a catch-all party succeeded in part due to its
substantial material achievements in office, which in turn marginalised the
governments political rivals on the left. Official figures showed a marked
increase in industrial employment from 162,000 in 1931 to 217,000 in 1938,
following a commitment to such state enterprises as the Irish Sugar Company, a
Turf Development Board, an Industrial Credit Company, the Irish Tourist
Board, and a national airline, Aer Lingus. Membership of ITUC-affiliated trade
rose from 95,000 in 1933 to 161,000 in 1938, and the introduction of Joint
Industrial Councils, Trade Boards and the Conditions of Employment Act (1936)
all added to the perception of Fianna Fil as a party of the working class.
Likewise, the 1933 Unemployment Assistance Act provided support for small
farmers and agricultural labourers. The 1935 Coal-Cattle Pact with Britain
actually signalled a move away from tillage in favour of maintaining the
ranchers privileged position. However, de Valeras Machiavellian approach to
welfarism conferring benefits gradually allowed him to keep up pretences in
the west. The governments achievements in housing were indisputable: urban
and rural workers benefited from a slum-clearance project and commitment to
the provision of large-scale social housing. Between 1932 and 1942, the
government built or renovated around 132,000 houses. This averaged out at
12,000 houses per year, compared with fewer than 2,000 per year between 1923
and 1931.9
Pat Devines brief presence in Dublin undermined Murrays position as CPI
general secretary. Paradoxically, the weak state of the party, for which the
Comintern and CPGB blamed Murray, and thus the absence of an alternative
leadership, helped to preserve his place at the head of the movement. Under his
direction, the CPI moved inexorably towards a type of popular front, which for
Murray if not the partys more doctrinaire members was barely distinguishable
from the united front from above. For Murray, the difference tended to depend
less on an ideological construct than the tactics under consideration. The
Comintern met the CPIs moves to open up the united front with qualified
support, allowing for a movement which shall undertake a militant struggle for
the defence of the interests of the workers, the unemployed, and small farmers.

Henry Patterson, Ireland Since 1939: The Persistence of Conflict (Dublin, 2007), p. 22

146

Moreover, after months of prevarication, the ECCI endorsed a united front

which incorporated the struggle against fascism and war.10 In due course,
Murray hoped a clear line of demarcation between left and right would
materialise, thus broadening the parameters for cooperation on the Irish left. Of
more immediate importance was the task of guiding the communist movement
through some rough terrain, using the remnants of the CPIs base in Dublin and
Belfast to save the party from extinction.

Regaining a Foothold
In January 1935, the CPI returned to Rathmines Hall under the auspices of the
Labour League Against Fascism. Among the main speakers were Murray,
ODonnell and the literary scholar A.J. Leventhal, a Dublin-born Jew.
Scheduled to speak also was Ernst Toller, the German dissident writer and
fervent critic of Hitler, but the Irish authorities prevented him from entering
the country.11 Around the same time, Billy McCullough addressed a Labour
Defence League meeting in Belfast. He took up the issue of the Special Powers
Act and while making a clear distinction between the republican and communist
movements, explained how they found common cause in fighting the Unionist
administrations use of repressive measures against political activists. To
highlight glaring examples of these policies in action, he discussed workingclass leaders such as Murray, Harry Pollitt and Tom Mann, all of whom the
Ministry of Home Affairs had excluded from the North.12 Together, these fronts
represented two sides of the same coin: on the one hand, raising awareness of
the threat posed by international fascism, and on the other, bringing to the fore
a campaign to secure the basic political freedoms at home. That these meetings
continued to take place at all demonstrated that there was still life in the CPI,
at least in its two urban centres of activity.
With anti-fascist sentiments starting to take hold in the communist
movement, Murray attempted to drive home the significance of British
imperialism. Speaking at the CPGBs thirteenth congress, he contended that the

10

RGASPI, 495/18/1059/1-25, The CPI and the Irish Republican Congress, 19 January 1935
Manus ORiordan, Communism in Dublin in the 1930s: The Struggle Against Fascism in H. Gustav
Klaus (ed.), Strong Words, Brave Deeds: The Poetry, Life and Times of Thomas OBrien, Volunteer in
the Spanish Civil War (Dublin, 1994), pp. 228-229
12
PRONI, HA/32/1/552, RUC Special Branch Report on Irish Labour Defence League meeting, 21
January 1935
11

147

majority of the islands population had experienced no positive social or

economic changes as a result of the Treaty:
I would like to say that we have had experience for some centuries of
British imperialist slavery. Over the past 13 years we have had
experience of British imperialist-imposed freedom in Ireland, and the
imperialist-imposed freedom is not any more palatable than the slavery
that existed before.13
This notion of an unfinished revolution ran through Murrays speeches and
writings, and had dual implications. Firstly, that the national stage of the
revolution would not be complete until the British removed the running sore of
partition. This, he argued, was a prerequisite of unity between the British
masses and the Irish working-class and peasantry i.e. solidarity and
cooperation based on political equality.14 The second aspect entailed an ongoing
campaign against local capitalist interests, which he outlined to CPGB
delegates in these terms: The Irish working class will see to it that the
rebellions and revolutions of the future will not be for the benefit of capitalists
but for the establishment of the rule of the workers.15 Murray had hitherto
vacillated between a stageist view of the national question and a two-pronged
approach in which social struggles were of equal and immediate importance. At
this particular juncture, we can only be sure that Murray did not see an
explicitly national focus precluding class-struggling activities, or vice versa.
Openly admitting to the CPGB that the CPI was not a strong Party was an
exercise in stating the obvious. It was important nonetheless for Murray to spell
out, at the earliest opportunity since the Rathmines split, the need for the Irish
party to continue responding to local conditions. He explained that the CPI had
begun working to establish a strong presence in the Belfast and Dublin trades
councils, re-engage with the trade unions, assume leadership of the unemployed
movements, and regain the confidence of important republican elements. As in
October 1932, he believed the party could only grow by accepting the less
prestigious role of a factor in the political and economic struggles of the
masses.16 He was not about to dissociate the CPI from its closest republican
allies. On the contrary, he wished to facilitate the political transformation of
13

Daily Worker, 5 February 1935

Ibid.
15
Workers Voice, 9 February 1935
16
Daily Worker, 5 February 1935
14

148

IRA members who had not yet committed to the Republican Congress initiative.
Pat Devine agreed with Murray on the urgent need to place the CPI in a
position to influence the various movements that had emerged in recent months.
However, he was not impressed with the partys open displays of republicanism
thus far.17 The ECCI communicated a similar message whilst reminding the
Irish group of Moscows infallibility in all matters of policy.18
On 2 March, the Dublin tramway and bus workers went on strike, giving
the CPI the perfect opportunity to impress upon the trade union rank-and-file
its sincerity regarding class issues. Lasting almost three months, this was the
biggest industrial dispute of the period. It prompted the communists to commit
a six-man cell to the organisation of striking workers and publication of Unity, a
bulletin designed specifically to update and instil confidence in the striking
camp.19 The CPIs official newspaper also gave the strike extensive coverage.
Murray commissioned a series of articles devoted to a discussion on the partys
relationship with the two trade unions involved and the strikes implications for
the issue of trade union unity. His article, the fourth in the series, warned
against the tendency to criticise union leaders without offering an alternative,
an offence committed too often by the CPI in the past. While the Comintern
remained fixated on reformist trade union leaders, in theory it recognised the
utility of harnessing a united trade union movement for full political effect.20
Murray reiterated his belief that this new wave of agitation created an opening
for the CPI to contribute to the process of building and uniting the unions,
appealing to the workers for an opportunity to do so.21 The party assumed from
Larkin and Connolly its generational duty to confront the Murphy empire.22
Anti-communist elements within the DUTC circulated the Eyeopener newsletter
to curb the CPIs influence. Subsequently, in the midst of the strike, a hostile
crowd of 200-250 people interrupted a communist meeting, which then

17

RGASPI, 495/14/334/41-47, Letter from Pat Devine to Bob [McIlhone], 18 December 1934
RGASPI, 495/4/318/8-11, Letter to the CPI re Republican Congress, 16 November 1934;
495/18/1059/1-25, The CPI and the Irish Republican Congress, 19 January 1935
19
OConnor, Reds and the Green, pp. 205-206
20
RGASPI, 495/4/318/8-11, Letter to the CPI re Republican Congress, 16 November 1934
21
Irish Workers Voice, 13 April 1935
22
William Lombard Murphy inherited Dublin United Tramways Company (DUTC) and the
Independent Newspaper group from his father, William Martin Murphy, and was therefore an
obvious target for the CPI during this period
18

149

descended into a riot.23 At the risk of exposing the CPI to undesirable attention
from the conservative media, Murray in particular took on the role of exposing
Lombard Murphys lies over the course of the year. This commitment
demonstrated that the partys interest in grassroots labour agitation was not
simply a shrewd political move. It was tied to legitimate concerns about the
power of the commercial class in Dublin.
When on 20 March the government intervened in the strike by sending in
Free State Army lorries to provide public transportation, the IRA leadership
sanctioned action by its Dublin Brigade to disrupt these efforts. Viewing
government intervention as akin to the use of scabs, the IRA Army Council
released a public statement that confirmed its willingness to assist the workers
in their struggle. Consequently, the Dublin Brigade began sniping the tyres of
army lorries.24 In response, Moscow instructed the CPGB to support the CPIs
endeavours and encourage joint solidarity with supportive IRA units.25 In the
ensuing round-up operation, garda arrested forty-three republicans and
socialists in the Dublin area, including Tom Barry and Peadar ODonnell. By
the time the strike ended on 18 May, CPI headquarters had been raided five
times. The government reintroduced military tribunals and ensured that
uncooperative prisoners received harsh sentences.26 Roddy Connolly, one of
those arrested, commented sardonically that the governments reaction should
be taken as Fianna Fils contribution to the upcoming Jubilee celebrations.27
Similarly outraged, Murray condemned the arrests as a cynical attempt to
prevent an alliance of republicans and the striking workers. He told a meeting
at Cathal Brugha Street that, rather than persecuting fellow republicans, the
government would be better concentrating its efforts on dealing with the slums
of Dublin.28 Of course, this draws attention to a blind spot in Murrays research:
de Valeras impressive record on social housing. Yet it also underlines his
attempt to placate republicans and prepare the ground for a communistrepublican alliance in the long term.

23

Irish Independent, 29 March 1935; Irish Times, 29 March 1935

Bowyer Bell, The Secret Army, p. 121
25
OConnor, Reds and the Green, p. 206
26
Bowyer Bell, The Secret Army, pp. 121-122; Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, pp. 160-161
27
Charlie McGuire, Roddy Connolly and the Struggle for Socialism in Ireland (Cork, 2008), p. 157
28
NAI, DJ, JUS8/386, Garda Special Branch Report on Communist meetings, 18 March, 30 April 1935
24

150

DUTC eventually brought the strike to an end with a number of

concessions, accepted by the overwhelming majority of workers balloted. The
CPI published the list of wage increases and employment agreements on the
front page of the Workers Voice on 25 May. The accompanying article stated
that Whilst by no means as big as it could or should have been, the strike
represented a significant victory for organised labour in Dublin.29 The CPI
executive committee drew inevitable parallels with the outdoor relief strikes
and Murray attempted to use instances of strike action in Belfast to highlight
the possibilities for cutting across sectarian lines in the North. The rent strikes
in Belfast were a fitting example of inter-communal cooperation, with Mackies
foundry and the shipyards also experiencing a marked upsurge in shop-floor
agitation. For Murray, successful industrial action and the struggles for homes,
wages and bread across the island were the basis for future economic and
political battles in which the CPI could play a leading role.30
In contrast to this morale-boosting statement, Murray delivered a sober
assessment to the Anglo-American Secretariat just one month later. The tram
strike, he explained, generated harmony within the labour movement for only a
brief period and earned the CPI fleeting support. Weekly circulation of the
Workers Voice had increased from 2,000 to 2,200 since December, and this
growth came mainly from the key cities of Dublin and Belfast. Membership
figures added up to a disappointing 150.31 Murray felt compelled to advise the
Comintern in July that although the party remained committed to the ideal of a
united trade union movement, it had become necessary to view republicans as
more reliable allies. He admitted partial liability for the confusion surrounding
the partys position at Rathmines, yet baulked at the suggestion that ODonnell
had been a negative influence. Murray maintained that his friend was a
champion of left unity and the Republican Congress had proved a very valuable
ally in the struggle against the fascists and against the church, and for the
development of a mass movement in Dublin. A united front of the industrial
working class had, in Murrays estimation, no possibility, and would just be an
ideal in the prevailing climate. The survival and eventual growth of the CPI
depended, therefore, on its supporters rallying around the positive aspects of the
29

Workers Voice, 25 May 1935

Irish Workers Voice, 22 June 1935
31
OConnor, Reds and the Green, p. 206
30

151

Republican Congress model and promoting the formation of Congress groups

across the island.32 Murrays reversion to the broad anti-imperialist strategy
was not as sudden as has been suggested.33 His belief in its efficacy never really
faltered. More accurately, he responded to changes in Anglo-Irish relations,
focusing on specific aspects of imperialism and assessing the anti-imperialist
potential of elements within the labour and republican movements. He
recognised that as long as the party fought stubbornly to work in isolation, there
would continue to exist an impenetrable glass ceiling in terms of support.
Accordingly, he elevated anti-imperialism to a new level of importance.
By extension, Murrays enthusiasm for maintaining a working relationship
with republicans entailed his taking up of purely republican concerns. Prior to
the 1935 Bodenstown gathering, Murray discussed the arrest of the IRA leader
Mick Fitzpatrick, stating that the Fianna Fil policy of imprisoning republicans
did not give them the right to take part in upcoming commemorations. More
controversially, he criticised de Valera for announcing in the Dil that the
government would never allow foreign powers to use Ireland as a base for
attacking Britain.34 This stemmed from a genuine fear that de Valera was about
to acquiesce in British war efforts, undermining the gradual process of
dismantling the Treaty settlement. However, it also fed into the thinking of
republican militarists who viewed an IRA attack on British targets as a viable
option. Events at Bodenstown dealt Murray communist-republican vision a
severe blow. After Sen MacBride prohibited all non-IRA groups from carrying
their own banners, the IRA clashed with the CPI/Republican Congress
contingent, confiscating and tearing up the red flag.35 Nor did this incident occur
in isolation. During the tram strike, the respected IRA leader Tom Barry had
protested at the decision to try him alongside CPI members Christy Clarke and
Jack Nalty, making an anti-communist speech in court.36 These incidents,
combined with the worst levels of sectarian violence in the North since the War
of Independence, appear to have confounded Murrays faith in the republican
movements capacity to develop politically en masse.
32

RGASPI, 495/14/20/1-6, Sen Murray before the Anglo-American Secretariat, 19 July 1935
OConnor, Reds and the Green, p. 206
34
NAI, DJ, JUS8/386, Garda Special Branch Report on Communist meeting, 17 June 1935; Workers
Voice, 8 June 1935
35
UCDA, Sen MacEntee Papers, P67/534, Department of Justice Departmental Notes (1941); Sen
Nolan (ed.), Communist Party of Ireland: An Outline History (Dublin, 1975), p. 25
36
Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, p. 160
33

152

Pat Devine accompanied Murray to Moscow for the Cominterns seventh

congress, which ran from 25 July to 20 August. Murrays attendance
represented another rare high point in a political career blighted by a number of
disappointments. His congress speech was of minor significance, typical of the
contributions of delegates from peripheral parties, though he did admit to the
CPIs sectarian and opportunist errors and noted that the party had continued
to explore links with the republican movement regardless of international
directives.37 Of greater consequence to the Irish communists were the main
resolutions. After much prevarication and misdirection in the form of a lengthy
ECCI report in essence a distorted history of recent international
developments the delegates unanimously endorsed a resolution that
acknowledged the fiendishness of German fascism and the danger of a new
war. The Comintern now labelled social democrats and reformists as potential
revolutionaries, struggling hand in hand with the communists against fascism
and for the interests of the toiling masses. To this end, the Comintern
universally encouraged the formation of peoples fronts. It also resolved to
proceed, in deciding any question, from the concrete situation and specific
conditions obtaining in each particular country, and as a rule to avoid direct
intervention in internal organisational matters of the communist parties. For
Murray, this was a victory for national specificity. The ECCI acknowledged that
the mechanical application of stereotyped methods on the basis of the Soviet
experience was no substitute for concrete Marxist analysis.38 Many peripheral
and West European parties, the French and Spanish parties in particular,
joined the CPI in breathing a collective sigh of relief. And while this major policy
shift did not stand for a clean break with Moscow, it removed some of the
external caveats that had previously hindered the CPIs work with the Labour
parties and the wider republican movement.
In the aftermath of the 1935 congress, the CPI moved to spell out and ratify
the terms of the peoples front approach. The Irish delegation submitted a
series of proposals with the objective of a Workers and Farmers Republic at
their core, to which it is assumed they received a positive response. This
document highlighted a pressing need to overcome sectionalism within trade
37

Irish Workers Voice, 10 August 1935

Jane Degras (ed.), The Communist International, 1919-1943: Documents, Vol. 3, 1929-1943
(London, 1971), pp. 350-355
38

153

unionism, arguing that a revived WUI would somehow contribute to the process
and that class-based campaigns under the ITUCs direction would lead to united
labour politics. The CPI intended to approach the Labour Party and farmers
representatives, and encourage the Republican Congress to repair its broken
relationship with the IRA and lead it out of its political stupor. Finally, the CPI
delegation provided details of what its peoples front would involve: combating
the growing threat of fascism; opposing Fianna Fil complicity in British war
plans; repeal of repressive legislation and a restoration of civil liberties; and an
intensification of agitation on the national question.39
At a CPI conference in October, the party membership officially endorsed
these new policies. In reality, the conference only served to update campaigns
that were ongoing. Pat Devine presented a critique of European fascism,
explaining the importance of the working class demanding sanctions on Italy.
Murray focused on domestic issues and placed the emphasis on anti-imperialism
as a means of securing social and national freedoms at home.40 In attendance
was Roddy Connolly, who made an interesting contribution. He explained that
the CPI had damaged relations with the Labour Party during its heavily
ideological class against class period and was now in danger of replacing it with
blatant opportunism. Murray accepted Connollys conclusions in full, admitting
that the communists had regrettably displayed both traits. He urged the party
membership to consider the benefits of a labour movement working in unison
and to take steps towards that objective.41
The anti-fascist strand of the CPIs multifaceted peoples front strategy
arguably gave the party its greatest chance of success in the interim. The
Labour League Against Fascism and War (as the umbrella organisation was
now called) carried out its work with great vigour, taking up the plight of
Abyssinia (Ethiopia), invaded by Mussolinis Italy and on the precipice of all-out
war with the nascent and hungry fascist power. Anti-fascist and anti-war
articles began to appear regularly on the front page of Irish Workers Voice and
Murrays participation in the anti-war campaign confirmed that his concerns

39

RGASPI, 495/14/335/84-86, Proposals for the application of the united front in Ireland, 26 August
1935
40
NAI, DJ, JUS8/386, CPI Conference Material, 12-13 October 1935; Garda Special Branch Report of
CPI meeting, 13 October 1935; Irish Workers Voice, 26 October, 2 November 1935
41
McGuire, Roddy Connolly, p. 161

154

extended beyond narrow nationalist interests. Yet he rarely missed an

opportunity to weave criticisms of imperialism into an analysis of fascist
objectives. At an anti-war meeting in December, for instance, he singled out
Italian fascism as the worst form possible, while taking issue with the HoareLaval Pact which looked like bringing an end to Italo-Abyssinian hostilities. He
noted correctly that the proposals allowed the French and British to divide a
section of Abyssinia between them. This, Murray said, was tantamount to
imperialist manipulation of Abyssinias misfortune and desperate need for
international assistance. Here he articulated a critique of fascist and imperialist
forces that had invested in the same issue.42
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century scramble for Africa,
Abyssinia managed to escape the clutches of the British Empire. Murray
identified the emergence of similar trends in the mid-1930s. He compared the
situation to 1914, when the people were deceived by their rulers and duped into
supporting an imperialist war. With the emergence of a strong Prussian
militarist presence and the invasion of weaker countries, Murray believed that
there was a danger of history repeating itself. Fascism represented a new
threat, but often manifested itself in imperialist aggression. He feared that the
League of Nations weakness and the dismantling of international treaties
pointed to the inevitability of world war, which socialists globally would have to
resist with greater tenacity than in 1914.43
Communist-organised meetings in the last few months of 1935 and first half
of 1936 allowed anti-fascist, anti-imperialist and class-struggling campaigns to
run concurrently, explaining Murrays presence at only one explicitly antiimperialist rally during the same period.44 All three struggles, in Murrays view,
would necessarily involve the republican and labour movements working
together. Glimpses of the IRAs politicisation gave him encouragement that a
republican-labour front was on the horizon. In August, an IRA Army convention
approved the formation of an abstentionist republican party, succumbing to
Sen MacBrides sheer persistence on the contentious subject.45 Murray

42

NAI, DJ, JUS8/388, Garda Special Branch Report on Anti-War meeting, 22 December 1935
Sen Murray, The Irish Revolt: 1916 and After (London, 1936), p. 1
44
NAI, DJ, JUS8/388, Garda Special Branch Report on Anti-Imperialist Demonstration, 11 November
1935
45
Bowyer Bell, The Secret Army, p. 125
43

155

welcomed in private the announcement when it eventually came in late

September.46 Ostensibly, MacBrides support for the striking bus and tramway
workers in March was enough for Murray to forgive the IRA leaders underhand
tactics at Bodenstown, though he was still bitterly disliked by Congress
supporters such as George Gilmore.47 Although the IRAs commitment to
abstentionism precluded any meaningful cooperation, Murray showed his hand
immediately, suggesting that a united republican-labour body contest the 1936
Dublin Corporation elections.48 MacBrides party, Cumann Poblachta na
hireann, failed to capture the publics imagination with its vague regurgitation
of Fianna Fils oppositional programme of the early Thirties. Moreover, the
IRAs impetuous campaign of violence, which prompted de Valera to proscribe
the organisation in June, continued to render cooperation with sections of
republicanism distinctly uninviting.49 In the event, Murray and Larkin Jnr
withdrew from the election and the communists lent ambiguous support to the
Congress candidates, Frank Ryan and George Gilmore. In the event, Ryan and
Gilmores impression on the electorate was negligible.50
A number of economic indicators suggested that conditions were conducive
to the class-struggle strand of the CPIs peoples front strategy. In spite of de
Valeras substantial achievements in power, 1935 was a difficult year for the
economy and marked the beginning of the end of Fianna Fils protectionist
experiment. Native-based industrialisation proceeded at a snails pace and thus
failed to absorb rural workers migrating to the east in search of gainful
employment.

By

January

Furthermore,

consumers

1936,

endured

unemployment
a

much

had

higher

reached

cost

of

145,000.

living

and

comparatively lower wages than their counterparts across the Irish Sea.51
Economic recovery in Britain precipitated an influx of Irish immigrants 75,150
between 1935 and 1937 alone.52 Evidence of fiscal conservatism and financial
46

CPI Sen Nolan/Geoffrey Palmer Collection, BOX 6/015, Dublin District Committee Minute Books,
24 September 1935
47
Hanley, The IRA, p. 194
48
Irish Press, 24 September 1935
49
Richard English, Radicals and the Republic, Socialist Republicanism in the Irish Free State (Oxford,
1994), pp. 237-245
50
OConnor, Reds and the Green, p. 212; Sen Cronin, Frank Ryan: The Search for the Republic
(Dublin, 1980), p. 68
51
Patterson, Ireland Since 1939, pp. 22-23
52
Richard Dunphy, The Making of Fianna Fil Power in Ireland, 1923-1948 (Oxford, 1995), pp. 163164

156

clientelism also added weight to the perception in leftist circles that the
government was not implementing systematic changes, but cosmetic ones. The
second Banking Commission (1934-1938) was a case in point. Appointed by
Minister for Finance and notorious deficit hawk, Sen MacEntee, it followed
that the Commissions majority report would recommend a regression to
Cumann na nGaedheals minimalism. The report criticised the increase in the
national debt incurred from social spending and advocated a retreat from
Fianna Fils most equitable polices. For example, it demanded a policy of debt
redemption that would have required the abandonment of the housing
programme.53 It also suggested impassively that the banking system in place
was more than adequate to deal with economic and political exigencies. One
author has argued that, after sixteen years of political independence, two
banking commissions and a financial crisis, the fact that the Free State
government enjoyed only limited scope to implement social and economic policy
changes merely testifies to the power of financiers. Indeed, de Valera managed
to prevaricate on the establishment of a central bank, a key recommendation of
the second Banking Commission, until 1943, depriving the nation-state control
of monetary policy for a further five years.54
Although the Labour Partys rejection of CPI overtures left the parties
relationship in a precarious position, a number of factors indicated that a shift
to the left by Labour on economic if not social issues would complement the
CPIs shift to the right.55 As a sign of this convergence, Murray began to identify
areas of mutual concern. At a communist meeting in October 1935, he
castigated the government for stalling on the Widows and Orphans Bill, which
sat at the heart of a Labour-Fianna Fil agreement in September 1933. Murray
also addressed the issue of low wages and the power relations that enabled
bankers to influence government policy. He was alive to the development of
finance capital and the powerful position it now occupied in national economies
and international relations.56 In The Irish Revolt: 1916 and After, he tackled
economic developments since the creation of the Free State. He argued in
Connollyist language that it was a national duty to stop the annuity payments
53

J.J. Lee, Ireland, 1912-1985: Politics and Society (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 199-200
Conor McCabe, Sins of the Father: Tracing the Decisions that Shaped the Irish Economy (Dublin,
2011), pp. 132-133
55
Puirsil, The Irish Labour Party, pp. 54-57
56
NAI, DJ, JUS8/386, Garda Special Branch Report on Communist meeting, 21 October 1935
54

157

to Britain as it dealt a blow to the basis of the Conquest. Yet while de Valera
had delivered a number of socio-economic and political changes, tilting the
balance of Anglo-Irish relations in Irelands favour, his government had largely
procrastinated for fear of a full-blown social revolution.57 On the land issue,
which Murray foolishly neglected in previous years, he noted that the
governments policies had not dramatically improved the lot of small farmers or
agricultural labourers.58 With the exception of the land annuities issue, the
government had failed to build on the defeat of absentee landlordism and
introduction of the land acts at the turn of the century. 59
To appeal to the Labour and trade union leaderships, Murray made
genuine, if nostalgic, references to the uprise [sic] of the modern Trade Union
movement in 1907 (the arrival of Larkin in Belfast) and the joining of the forces
of [political] Socialism and industrial labour in subsequent years. In keeping
with the objective of a workers and farmers republic, he called for moves
toward a united Labour movement joined to all that is virile in the national
cause.60 When the Irish Times attacked the Labour Partys break with Fianna
Fil, Murray came to its defence.61 Yet this failed to move the Labour
leadership, which remained wary of any formal association with communism.
When after much deliberation the CPI decided to support Labour Party
candidates in the local Dublin elections, Labour responded with a statement
denying any connection between the two parties.62 Clearly, clerical influence
and the legacy of left sectarianism still weighed heavily on the minds of Labour
leaders.
Clerical opposition to the mere existence of a communist party manifested
itself at a joint CPI/Congress meeting in January 1936, arranged for the visit of
Harry Pollitt. On this occasion, the Catholic Young Mens Society (CYMS)
attempted to disrupt Harry Pollitts address. Murray and Sen Nolan then
responded in the Irish Independent. The two communist leaders alleged that the
57

Murray, The Irish Revolt, p. 12

Irish Workers Voice, 25 January 1936. In Ireland Since 1939, p.21, Patterson notes that by 1939
the tillage acreage was a mere 2 percent above its 1930 level, and cattle raising remained the
dominant enterprise despite a severe price decline.
59
Murray, The Irish Revolt, pp. 12-13
60
Ibid., pp. 12-13, 14
61
Irish Workers Voice, 8 February 1936
62
CPI Nolan/Palmer Collection, BOX 6/015, Dublin District Committee Minute Books, 30 May 1936;
Puirsil, The Irish Labour Party, p. 58
58

158

CYMS mob brandished weapons at the meeting and asked how the attack could
be reconciled with the fundamental principles of Christianity. They also berated
John A. Costello, a prominent Fine Gael TD and future Taoiseach who had lent
public support to the Blueshirts, for his attempts to play down the attack.63
When the Church issued its Lenten pastorals, containing all the customary anticommunist denunciations, the CPI produced a witty retort in the Irish Workers
Voice. This article quoted various prominent members of the clergy to suggest
mockingly that the Churchs line was Against Everybody But Empire.64
However, attacks on the communists continued, culminating in a particularly
violent encounter on Easter Monday night. A crowd of around 5,000 gathered at
College Green to prevent William Gallacher from addressing a CPI-organised
rally. When the disturbances began, Peadar ODonnell attempted to climb a
lamppost and continue his speech from a safe height. Various socialist histories
have recounted this story, often with additional twists. The crowd pelted
ODonnell with various objects including bottles and an orange with a razor
blade inserted, before the police took him into custody for his own safety. The
police also escorted a communist and trade union group including Murray and
Gallacher to College Street Station, out of the hostile crowds reach.65
The CPIs main achievement of the period was consolidation at a low level in
Dublin, with mixed fortunes in Belfast. Minutes of the partys Dublin district
committee reveal that Murray inherited much of the spadework after Pat
Devines return to Britain. In the prevailing economic climate, leading national
communist figures struggled to fulfil their party duties. Jim Prendergast, who
went on to fight with the International Brigades in Spain, briefly severed
contact with the party as he contemplated emigration to England. The party
launched disciplinary proceedings against Sen Nolan and Jim Larkin Jnr for
missing meetings, the latter explaining that circumstances forced him to work
long and difficult hours. On the occasions that members were absent from
committee meetings, Murray invariably visited their homes to have a talk. Not
even his closest friends were exempt from the stringent disciplinary procedures
put in place to rein in the worst offenders. Murray was also charged with the
thankless task of trying to ensure the survival of weak party units such the
63

Irish Independent, 17 January 1936

Irish Workers Voice, 29 February 1936
65
OConnor, Reds and the Green, p. 212; Irish Press, 14 April 1936; Irish Times, 14 April 1936
64

159

York Street section, which had applied to the Dublin committee for permission
to

liquidate.66 Eoghan

Duinnn (Eugene

Downing),

another future

International Brigader, recalled only twenty or thirty genuine party activists in

Dublin at the time.67 In Belfast, the sectarian strife of mid-1935 affected the CPI
negatively without engulfing it. In the local elections of May and June 1936, the
labour movement ran three non-party candidates, generating some hope that a
rapprochement with the NILP was possible.68

The Spanish Civil War

On all fronts, the CPI signally failed to rouse even a section of the working class
into action. The Worker, a four-paged bulletin replacing the Irish Workers Voice
and written almost exclusively by Murray, focused the partys gaze on trade
union matters as a means of promoting broad labour unity. For instance, when
the Dublin Trades Council voted to approve the affiliation of WUI members,
Murray responded with enthusiasm and attached inflated significance to the
decision.69 The party was on the periphery of discussions initiated by the ITUC
with the aim of achieving a more cohesive, if not united, form of trade unionism.
Temporarily, the CPI leadership closed off avenues for exploring alliances with
republicans, deciding that it was imprudent to pursue a working relationship
with the then marginalised IRA. Finally, on the subject of Abyssinia, the party
could not muster much sympathy from the Irish working class. Aside from
Catholic Irelands natural affinity with Italy, Abyssinia seemed a long way from
the problems of home. Thus it failed to resonate with those on whom the CPI
counted for support. Circumstances denied the CPI a platform for leftist
cooperation until the Spanish Civil War broke out in mid-July.
Two scholars have taken Murray and the CPI to task for apparently
performing a volte-face on Spain. They contend that Murray abandoned a classbased analysis only with the Comintern shift in the direction of support for the
Spanish bourgeois-democratic government.70 That Murray initially presented a
class-based analysis of Francos coup in the Worker is indisputable. This class66

CPI Nolan/Palmer Collection, BOX 6/015, Dublin District Committee Minute Books, 16 November
1935 -13 June 1936
67
Fearghal McGarry, Irish Politics and the Spanish Civil War (Cork, 1999), p. 92
68
Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, pp. 165-166
69
Worker, 11 July 1936
70
Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, pp. 171-173; Stephen Bowler, Sen Murray, 1898-1961,
And the Pursuit of Stalinism in One Country, Saothar, 18 (1992), p. 44

160

struggling approach reflected in part Murrays desperation to tie material

concerns to the threat of fascism and awaken the labour movement to the
importance of unity on all related issues. In the CPI paper, he continued to
associate the fight for democracy in Spain with a renewed campaign against
Lombard Murphy and Irish commercial interests into the final months of 1936.
In addition, reports of the escalation of industrial disputes in areas such as
Mlaga encouraged Murrays belief that there existed room for healthy class
antagonisms on the Spanish broad left.71 However, Murray could not be accused
of underestimating the threat posed by fascism and the nationalist right.
Rather, inconsistencies in his analysis reflected the difficult task of synthesising
anti-imperialism, anti-fascism and class politics.
Murray quickly came to the realisation that at stake in Spain in the
immediate term were the gains of the French, not the Bolshevik, Revolution.
The chronology of his intervention suggests that domestic concerns shaped his
assessment as much as the shift in international communist opinion. On the
very day that ODuffy announced in the Irish Independent his intention to form
an Irish Brigade in support of Franco, Murray responded with an appeal for
financial assistance for the Spanish government. He also gave a strong
indication that he would sponsor the use of force to counter fascism at home and
abroad. Murrays speech is worth quoting at length:
I warn the workers not to be misled into believing that this a religious
issue in Spain. It is no more a religious issue than was the Irish Land
War, the struggle for Home Rule, the fight for complete independence,
but what did the aristocracy of this country say the fight was about?
Religion of course!
ODuffy and Lombard Murphy and other kindred spirits are
calling for Irishmen to go and join this army of ruffians! Was there ever
such a combination of hypocrites and traitors! But the Irish people have
seen these gentlemen at work in their own country, have seen their
country partitioned by the introduction of religious issues into politics,
and seen the Republic of Ireland betrayed by these supporters of Franco
and his Riff army will not be deceived into throwing their lot against the
Spanish people.
The gallant Spanish people are not only fighting against the
traitors within Spain but against the enemies of liberty throughout all
Europe, Ireland included. This makes the Spanish question indeed a

71

C. Desmond Greaves Papers, Letter from Mary Rose, 4 May 1936

161

question for the friends of freedom in every land. Are we in Ireland to

stand aside and allow this crime against the people of Spain to be carried
out before our eyes? If we did, we would be traitors to the best traditions
of our race, to the men who gave their lives for the cause of freedom in
this country. What would Wolfe Tone, John Mitchel, or James Connolly
and Pearse say if they could speak to us to-day! They would be behind
their brother Republicans in the Spanish fight. They would be against
the Murphys, the Churchills and ODuffys. They would have nothing but
contempt for the treason to Republicanism of de Valera and his
newspaper [the Irish Press], who are also behind the criminal Fascist
gang in Spain.
I ask every Irish man and woman to answer the question. What
are you doing? Have you raised your voice on the side of the heroic
Spanish people? Have you protested against the shameful attitude of de
Valeras newspaper, against the foul campaign of Murphys bloodstained
Independent, against the criminal attempt of the Fascist ODuffy to
raise a brigade of Irishmen to attack the Spanish Republic? It is the
sacred duty of every man and woman in their trade unions and political
parties, to demand that their leaders give the people a lead in support of
justice. We must demand that a United Front of Labour and
Republicanism be formed in this country in support of the Spanish
people and that financial assistance be organised for the sufferers of this
Fascist rebellion. By doing so we will be a step forward to the social and
national emancipation of our own nation, to the smashing of coercion, the
opening of the jails and the clearing away of would-be Fascists in both
Northern and Southern Ireland.72
This pre-empted the Comintern decision to commit to the defence of the Spanish
Republic through military aid. Furthermore, it anticipated the initiative
launched by the French Communist Party (PCF), described by Robert Stradling
as the germinal action of the International Brigades.73
One must be careful to avoid overstating the significance of this speech. Yet
it is possible to identify a few interrelated threads running through Murrays
thinking: the sense of patriotic duty espoused by generations of republicans; the
ongoing struggle against the representatives of Irish capitalism, large
landowners and social conservatism, a legacy of the 1913-1923 period; and the
notion of international solidarity in opposition to fascism, with the aim of

72

Quoted in Michael ORiordan, Connolly Column: The Story of the Irishmen who fought in the Ranks
of the International Brigades in the National-Revolutionary War of the Spanish People, 1936-1939
(Dublin, 1979), pp. 32-33
73
Robert Stradling, The Irish in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39: Crusades in Conflict (Manchester,
1999), p. 133

162

safeguarding the bourgeois-democratic stage of historical development. Murray

thus combined Marxist analysis with a consideration of the same dynamics
weighed up by his Republican Congress comrades. This dispenses with the
argument that there was a standard Irish communist response to the onset of
the Spanish Civil War.74
Over the summer months, events in Spain increasingly shaped the nature of
relations between the Irish left and right. In August, the Fine Gael TD Paddy
Belton founded the Irish Christian Front (ICF) to drum up support for Franco,
while the Irish Independent reprised its role as a leading purveyor of hyperbolic
anti-communism. Cardinal Joseph MacRory liaised with a Spanish aristocrat in
preparing the ground for the arrival of ODuffys Irish Brigade, and the clergy
encouraged an ICF fundraising effort that collected over 43,000 for suffering
Catholics in Spain.75 Murrays early statement of intent once again earned him
the unwelcome attention of right wing elements. Irish Independent readers
wrote to question Murrays republican credentials and his absence from the
Spanish trenches; highlight his political apprenticeship in Moscow and
association with Peadar ODonnell; and suggest that his northern upbringing
and presumed atheism placed him in the ranks of the Orange bogeyman.76 The
Catholic hierarchy put immense pressure on the mainstream press to adopt a
more compliant anti-communist line. Senior members of the clergy criticised the
Irish Times for daring to recognise the legitimacy of the Spanish government
and for finding itself in strange company of Murray and ODonnell.77 It followed
that this focus on Murrays activities would only gain intensity. At an ICF
meeting on 30 August, one speaker identified Murray by name as an enemy of
Catholicism and urged the 15,000 people in attendance to be vigilant about his
movements.78
The first group of eighty volunteers for the International Brigades left
Ireland on 11 December under the command of Frank Ryan. Caught up in the
action whilst holidaying in Spain, Peadar ODonnell agreed with Ryan that the
CPI/Republican Congress milieu ought to commit no more than 145

74

McGarry, Irish Politics and the Spanish Civil War, pp. 51-52
Irish Independent, 31 August 1936
76
Ibid., 18, 20 August 1936
77
Irish Times, 21 August 1936
78
Irish Independent, 31 August 1936
75

163

volunteers.79 Bill Scott, a CPI member, had already joined the Thlmann
battalion of the XII International Brigade. He wrote a passionate letter to
Murray in November, outlining the importance of Irish support for the Spanish
government: Victory is certain if Irishmen will follow the lesson of their
Spanish brothers and sisters who are standing solid in the trenches beating
back the might of the fascist states of Europe.80 According to the most recent
estimate, the Connolly Column was comprised of 243 volunteers of Irish
descent, with many travelling to Spain of their own accord and from different
parts of the globe. The vast majority of the first batch to leave Ireland had a
republican affiliation, while the CPI and labour contingent made their way to
Spain intermittently over the course of the war.81 Although the Irish Brigade,
which set sail for Spain on 13 December, vastly outnumbered volunteers on the
Republican side, the majority of ODuffys men returned to Ireland in June 1937
in disgrace, plagued by reports of indiscipline and internal divisions.82 By
contrast, the International Brigaders returned to Ireland only when they had
done a reasonable tour of duty.83 Yet the Irish left inherited a mixed legacy
from the Spanish conflict. By the time the remaining volunteers left Spain in
late 1938, and with the caveat of unavoidable political tensions in the
trenches,84 it was apparent that they had performed credibly in battle. However,
almost one-third of Irish combatants died in Spain. The Irish left the CPI in
particular lost some of its most talented members, such as Jack Nalty, Kit
Conway, Charlie Donnelly and, eventually, Frank Ryan.85
The knowledge that he was ultimately sending some of his closest comrades
to their deaths must have posed an acute dilemma for Murray, one that his
critics inadvertently raised in Irish Independent. Why, with his military
training and experience of leading armed units during the Irish revolutionary
period, did he not offer to enlist in the XV International Brigade? And how did
he reconcile the demands of the Spanish Civil War on the CPI with efforts to
safeguard the partys existence? The answers to these questions are not
79

Donal Drisceoil, Peadar ODonnell (Cork, 2001), p. 94; OConnor, Reds and the Green, p. 218
C. Desmond Greaves Papers, Letter from Bill Scott to Murray, 26 November 1936
81
Peter OConnor, Identity and Self-Representation in Irish Communism: The Connolly Column and
the Spanish Civil War, Socialist History, 34 (2006), pp. 39, 41
82
McGarry, Irish Politics and the Spanish Civil War, pp. 29, 42-47
83
OConnor, Identity and Self-Representation in Irish Communism, p. 42
84
Adrian Hoar, In Green and Red: The Lives of Frank Ryan (Dingle, 2004), pp. 164-167
85
McGarry, Irish Politics and the Spanish Civil War, pp. 65-81
80

164

straightforward. It is important to note that the Irish communists had a

disproportionate influence on the composition of the Connolly Column, a
position of authority borne out by their international ties. Indeed Jack
MacGougan, the NISP leader, recalled that the CPI had a monopoly on the
vetting process for volunteers.86 By all accounts, Murray shouldered much of
this responsibility along with his brother-in-law, Bill Gannon, who joined the
CPI after a long and controversial career with the IRA.87 At the outset, Murrays
assessment of a potential volunteers suitability for war took into account age,
physical and mental health, political awareness, and their importance to the
communist movement. He rejected a twenty-one year old Bob Doyle because of
his age. Doyle later persuaded the CPGB to approve his request, while other
CPI activists simply lied about their ages, so strong was their determination to
make it to Spain.88 Of the first four to volunteer for service in September, all of
whom were involved with the liberal socialist New Theatre Group, Murray
approved only two. Alec Digges and the poet Thomas OBrien travelled to Spain,
while Murray explained to Bill Clare and the playwright Sen O hEidirsceoil
that they would serve the campaign and the party better in Dublin.89
Murrays initial reluctance to commit what few members the CPI had to the
Spanish conflict mirrored the concerns of ODonnell, Ryan and Gilmore about
the future of the Republican Congress.90 However, as the war intensified and
volunteers steadily made their way to Spain in contravention to the
international Non-Intervention Agreement, an enthusiastic commitment to
defend the Spanish Republican government superseded these reservations.
Eoghan Duinnn (Eugene Downing) recalled being worried that Murray might
refuse him the opportunity to fight in March 1938, but discovered that his fears
were unfounded when the CPI leader performed the most rudimentary eye test
before sending him on his way.91 Neither did a nineteen year old Michael
ORiordan find anything excessive or detailed about the screening and briefing
he received before setting sail for Spain.92 This relaxation of the vetting process
86

Francis Devine, Letting Labour Lead: Jack MacGougan and the Pursuit of Unity, 1913-1958,
Saothar, 14 (1989), p. 122
87
ORiordan, Connolly Column, p. 55
88
McGarry, Irish Politics and the Spanish Civil War, p. 54
89
Klaus (ed.), Strong Words, Brave Deeds, pp. 19-20
90
Hoar, In Green and Red, pp. 151-152
91
OConnor, Reds and the Green, p. 219
92
Uinseann MacEoin (ed.), The IRA in the Twilight Years, 1923-1948 (Dublin, 1997), p. 756

165

suggests that Murray made a conscious decision to take more seriously his
obligation to those party members who had accepted the prospect of dying in
Spain. He also recognised that linking the Spanish conflict to domestic issues
could contribute to a reversal of the CPIs poor fortunes. That the Spanish
conflict brought many dormant communist activists back from the dead
politically gave Murray added encouragement that his domestic project was still
worth pursuing.93 Therefore, Murray remained in Ireland to organise the
volunteers and ensure that an anti-fascist front was brought to fruition.
A number of volunteers have recounted how Murray made a positive
impression on them. Bob Doyle was part of the first mob that laid siege to
Connolly House in March 1933. But upon discovering to his horror that the CPI
headquarters had been set alight, he paid a soul-searching visit to Murray at
the partys makeshift offices. The communist leader assured Doyle there was no
contradiction in a committed socialist and anti-fascist retaining his Catholic
faith, citing Fr Michael OFlanagan, a devoted anti-fascist campaigner and
former Sinn Fin vice-president, as a case in point.94 Peter OConnor, an
International Brigader from Waterford, remembered Murray as a family friend
and the person who taught him to distinguish when reading the capitalist press
or listening to the radio, the distorted views they project on trade union or
working-class activities.95 Michael ORiordan praised Murray as a prolific
journalist, editor and pamphleteer, arguing that the CPI general secretary
deserves special credit for countering Irish support for Franco and, in along with
Sen Nolan, for providing a clear analysis of events in Spain.96 His efforts also
won the admiration of Jim Prendergast, who grew closer to Murray on his
return to Dublin and continued to correspond after moving to London to take up
a position on the NUR executive.97 As a political educator, organiser and
agitator, Murray made as valuable a contribution at home as he could have on
the front line.

93

Eoghan Duinnn, quoted in OConnor, Reds and the Green, p. 219

Bob Doyle (with Harry Owens), Brigadista: An Irishmans Fight Against Fascism (Blackrock, Dublin,
2006), p. 33; PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/M/5/32, A postcard from Doyle during one of his
many trips back to Spain, dated 18 September 1960, shows that Murray was never far from his
thoughts
95
Peter OConnor, Soldier of Liberty: Recollections of a Socialist and Anti-Fascist Fighter (Dublin,
1996), p. 8
96
ORiordan, Connolly Column, p. 44fn
97
Ibid., p. 139
94

166

It would be wrong to argue that Murrays contribution was wholly

constructive. For instance, he did not cover himself in glory when scrambling to
justify the farcical Moscow Show Trials. Here Zinoviev, Kamenev and several
other leading Bolshevik luminaries were charged with subversion and sentenced
to death, with many other Comintern functionaries imprisoned in a paranoiafuelled wave of Stalinist terror.98 At a local communist meeting in early
February 1937, Murray condemned Trotsky, in exile, as a man without
principle who betrayed the proletariat with his theory of permanent revolution.
Legitimate ideological differences were one thing. It was something else
altogether to argue that Lenin had allowed Trotsky to continue his antirevolutionary activities when it would have served the interests of the working
class of the world to put him to death. Proceeding in the same vein, Murray
went to great lengths to explain that Zinoviev, Kamenev and Radek were part of
a Trotsky-led group which had entered into an indirect alliance with fascism.
This clearly implied that the punishments meted out were justified.99 It was
remiss of Murray to think that this nonsense would help to instil a sense of
discipline in the party membership, or have any effect other than to put greater
distance between the CPI and the broader labour movement. In the face of all
logic, Murray repeated this polemicism in the Worker, which certainly sat
uncomfortably with the partys attempts to court the quasi-Trotskyist NISP into
an anti-fascist coalition.100
In spite of these left sectarian relapses, it seems that Murray informed Bill
Scott with optimism that the tide had begun to change in favour of an antifascist front at home.101 Something resembling a popular front did transpire in
late 1936, formalised on 27 March 1937 with the launch of the Irish Democrat,
an inclusive, pro-Spanish Republican newspaper sponsored by the CPI,
Republican Congress, NISP, an NILP cross-section, and an eclectic mix of
bourgeois-liberal and socialist activists and intellectuals. Frank Ryan, Murray
and Sen Nolan shared editorial duties of the paper, with Ryan continuing to
scrutinise the editorial line from Spain.102 An inherent weakness was that the
98

Kevin McDermott and Jeremy Agnew, The Comintern: A History of International Communism from
Lenin to Stalin (Basingstoke, 1996), pp. 142-157
99
NAI, DJ, 2008/117/926, Communist Activities General File (1937)
100
Worker, 29 August 1936, 30 January, 6 February 1937
101
C. Desmond Greaves Papers, Letter from Bill Scott to Murray, 7 February 1937
102
Cronin, Frank Ryan, pp. 123, 130

167

alliance lacked expression as a movement in the European sense of Popular

Frontism. Nevertheless, to reflect the diverse backgrounds of its supporters and
readership, the Democrat covered a range of social, cultural and economic
issues, inheriting from the Worker a strong focus on events in Spain. The paper
published excerpts from letters (some heavily redacted) that Murray received
from International Brigaders such as Bill Scott, Jack Nalty, Alec Digges, Tom
OBrien, Jim Prendergast and, of course, Ryan, who wrote regularly until his
capture by Italian forces in March 1938. The Spanish Civil War proved the main
rallying point for those involved and translated into anti-fascist cooperation on
the ground.
Although contact between Dublin and Moscow had slackened somewhat, the
Comintern kept a close eye on how the CPI was interpreting the Popular Front
in the context of domestic events. In a policy document sent to Ireland in May,
the ECCI endorsed, retrospectively, the measures taken by the Irish party to
extend cooperation to known and proved types.103 It was, in essence, a response
to the emergence of various broad left groups throughout 1936, in which one
could trace the genesis of the Irish Democrat coalition. These groups included a
Dublin offshoot of the London-based Left Book Club, founded by Owen Sheehy
Skeffington; the New Theatre Group and its Belfast equivalent, the Theatre
Guild; the Irish Friends of the Spanish Republic; and Hanna Sheehy
Skeffingtons Womens Aid Committee. Murray played a pivotal role in bringing
these elements together under the one banner.104
There existed slight differences between the CPI and Republican Congress
on matters such as religion. Despite this, the shared experience of the Irish Civil
War and clashes with the Blueshirts in subsequent years inspired in the two
groups an identical loathing of ODuffy and united them in the belief that it was
fundamentally wrong for religion to be exploited in attempts to overthrow a
democratic government.105 This was a constant in Murrays thinking, which
enabled him to build up a friendship with Fr OFlanagan and help George
Gilmore arrange the visit of Fr Ramn Laborda, a Basque priest and Spanish
103

RGASPI, 495/89/102/1-4, Proposals in connection with the Communist Party of Ireland, 8 May
1937
104
OConnor, Reds and the Green, pp. 216-217; Andre Sheehy Skeffington, Skeff: A Life of Owen
Sheehy Skeffington, 1909-1970 (Dublin, 1991), pp. 83-84; John P. Swift, John Swift: An Irish Dissident
(Dublin, 1991), p. 102; NAI, DJ, 2008/117/926, Communist Activities General File (1937)
105
Stradling, The Irish in the Spanish Civil War, pp. 131-132

168

Republican supporter. Laborda assisted the Irish Democrat coalition in

dispelling some of the myths perpetuated by the conservative media and boosted
the Irish movements efforts to challenge perceptions of the Spanish conflict as a
religious one.106
The Irish Democrat initiative found in the NILP more sympathetic ears
than the Irish Labour Party, certainly in terms of their respective leaderships.
Murray managed to put his differences with Nora Connolly OBrien and Michael
Price aside for the greater good, while Roddy Connolly lent his customary
support.107 However, under William Nortons direction, the Labour Party
appeared to listen deferentially to its sizeable Catholic constituency,
particularly in rural areas. Spain did not figure prominently on the agenda of
the partys annual conference in February. Worse still, the presence of Labour
TD Michael Keyes at ICF rallies raised no eyebrows. Norton preferred to
concentrate on drawing parallels between fascism and communism, thus
missing the point of the Popular Front. He also reprimanded the Catholic press
for linking his party to the CPI.108 In contrast, Harry Midgley made a distinction
between communism and fascism, arguing that the former was essentially good
in its aims, if not its methods, and the latter essentially evil because it
represented an extreme manifestation of capitalism. The intricacies of northern
politics complicated Midgleys position, as did his discernible hostility to antipartitionism, close proximity to members of the Orange Order and Unionist
Party, and volatile relationship with the CPI. Notwithstanding these
difficulties, there is little doubt that he took a heroic stand in the face of Irish
News propaganda, associating his support for the Spanish government with the
Irish Democrat group and working intermittently with CPI leaders such as Billy
McCullough in Belfast. The two Sens, Nolan and Murray, reciprocated by
toning down criticisms of, and electing to heap praise on, the NILP leader in
CPI publications.109

106

Ibid., p. 87; NAUK, Security Service, KV2/1185, Sen Murray; NAI, DJ, 2008/117/926, Communist
Activities General File (1937)
107
Ibid.
108
Puirsil, The Irish Labour Party, pp. 57-61; Vincent Geoghegan, Cemeteries of Liberty: William
Norton on Communism and Fascism (document study), Saothar, 18 (1993), pp. 106-109
109
Graham Walker, The Politics of Frustration: Harry Midgley and the Failure of Labour in Northern
Ireland (Manchester, 1985), Chapter 6; Malachy Gray, Reminiscence: A Shop Steward Remembers,

169

Murray discerned the growing polarisation of Irish politics in terms of left

and right wings embracing all organisations.110 Yet the remarkable compromise
reached in support of the Spanish government failed to suppress existing
political tensions on issues of domestic and international importance. On 28
March, only a day after the launch of the Irish Democrat, a special meeting
convened at Peadar ODonnells house to deal with its content. Tommy Watters
of the CPIs Belfast group joined the three NISP representatives in objecting to
the amount of space devoted to republicanism. The group reached a collective
decision that in future the paper would orientate around workers interests,
focusing on the dual anti-fascist and class struggles. However, on 27 May, the
Belfast communists returned to Dublin to express their dissatisfaction with the
CPI and Republican Congress leaderships.111
The Democrat did appear to drop its explicit focus on Irish republican
history, which gave way to front-page stories on trade union issues such as the
builders strikes in Dublin and Cork and the grievances of transport workers in
Belfast. Murray and Nolan gave considerable column space to northern
communists and NISP representatives. Moreover, Murray responded to de
Valeras constitution with heavy criticisms in the Democrat and Inprecor,
arguing that it safeguarded an inequitable economic system and simultaneously
failed to reassure workers in the north-east of their position in a democratic
united Ireland.112 Frank Ryan complained that so much energy had been
devoted to placating Victor Halley and the Socialist Party, who had yet to
demonstrate similar levels of flexibility.113 Echoing Ryans frustration, Murray
advised the Comintern that the alliance had begun to wither, partly because of
the incremental costs associated with publishing the paper, but also due to the
NISPs growing estrangement from remaining affiliates. He argued that the
NISP delegates were irrational in their belief that the Irish Democrat leans too
much to Republicanism and complained further that they want it to cater for
the Protestant workers exclusively.114 Another specially convened conference
took place in July, from which the NISP was conspicuously absent. It confirmed
Saothar, 11 (1986), p. 112; Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, pp. 179-180; Irish Democrat, 6
November 1937
110
NAI, DJ, 2008/117/926, Garda Special Branch Report on Communism, 23 February 1937
111
Ibid., 6 April, 1 June 1937
112
Irish Democrat, 8 May 1937; Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, p. 175
113
Cronin, Frank Ryan , pp. 105-113
114
Quoted in OConnor, Reds and the Green, p. 223

170

disappointing newspaper sales and a far from satisfactory financial

situation.115 Although the Democrat appeared regularly until December, it
gradually lost the active support of its original affiliates. For the last few
months of 1937, the coalition around the newspaper survived only nominally.
Different interpretations of what was possible in Spain also contributed to
the collapse of the Democrat group. This marked another NISP point of
departure from the CPI and Republican Congress. Indeed, the social context of
the May Days upheaval in Catalonia, and particularly the communists
response to it, may help to explain the NISPs absence from the July meeting of
the Democrat alliance. On the one hand, the NISP supported the anarchistlinked POUM (Workers Party of Marxist Unification) in its efforts to trigger a
social revolution away from the trenches. In sharp contrast, the CPI position
sketched out by Murray was that the actions of Trotskyite agent provocateurs
such as the POUM and CNT (National Confederation of Labour) threatened to
contribute to the democratic Spanish governments defeat.116 Frank Ryan wrote
potentially divisive articles describing the POUM as a fascist force in the rear
and took to referring disparagingly to Peadars friends (the Anarchists) in a
September 1937 letter to Murray.117 ODonnell had worked closely with the
POUM and anarchists during his time in Spain, yet ultimately fell in step with
the communist-orchestrated Popular Front. With the Spanish Civil War
delicately balanced, the Irish Democrat quite sensibly expressed no enthusiasm
for an immediate revolution. However, Murray and Ryans dismissal of the
POUMs socialist politics exposed a level of immaturity on their part. However
abstract it may have seemed, the CPI was needlessly party to what one author
with communist sympathies has described as the savage victimisation of
POUM by Popular Front affiliates.118
The Comintern eventually arrived at the conclusion that, given the
exceptional weakness of the Communist Party in membership, activity, and
leadership, the Irish party should extend cooperation to Fianna Fil to prevent

115

NAI, DJ, 2008/117/926, Garda Special Branch Report on Communism, 20 July 1937
Ibid., 25 May 1937
117
Drisceoil, Peadar ODonnell, pp. 94-100
118
E.H. Carr, The Comintern and the Spanish Civil War (Basingstoke, 1984), p. 44
116

171

the ICF (read Fine Gael) from making further electoral inroads.119 Accordingly,
the Irish Democrat announced that the CPI planned to contest the July election
and challenge Fianna Fil to address the promises on which it had reneged.120 A
May Day meeting in Moscow between Frank Mooney, the new Dublin CPI
chairman, and Andr Marty, the Cominterns representative on Irish affairs,
paved the way for this opening up of the Popular Front. Mooney helped to
clarify the ECCIs policy position on Ireland, namely on the reactionary nature
of Fine Gael. This chimed with Murrays belief that the party should act as a
critical friend of de Valera, cooperating at crucial junctures in this instance, to
ensure the defeat of fascism. However, the ECCI also subjected Mooney to
extensive questioning on the CPI leadership, speculating that the partys lack of
success was a clear reflection of Murrays lethargic performance. One major
failing was that Murray had again ceased to forward reports to the ECCI, while
contact from Dublin had hitherto been very unsatisfactory. Marty continued in
this vein, informing Mooney that he took seriously reports from Pat Devine and
Harry Pollitt that it would be a waste to invest financially in the CPI as long as
Murray remained general secretary. Historically, the CPGB leaderships
understanding of the various challenges facing the CPI was deficient. In spite of
this, and with no appreciation for the energy-sapping work carried out by
Murray to ensure the survival of the Dublin branch alone, Marty accepted the
CPGBs conclusion that Ireland was not such a difficult proposition as Murray
would have them believe. The Comintern sanctioned a commission of inquiry to
investigate the CPIs progress under Murray, which suggests that Mooney did
not see fit to correct the ECCIs one-eyed approach. The ECCI arranged for
Murray and Mooney to face Pollitt, Devine and Harry Shiels in London on 10
June, and for all five men to report to Moscow in August with the findings. All
these factors strongly suggest that Murrays working relationship with the
Comintern had effectively run its course and a Pollitt-orchestrated leadership
coup was in the offing.121
Preparations

for

the

general

election

exacerbated

underlying

CPI/Republican Congress tensions and undermined Murrays position further.

119

RGASPI, 495/89/102/1-4, Proposals in connection with the Communist Party of Ireland, 8 May
1937
120
Irish Democrat, 31 July 1937
121
OConnor, Reds and the Green, p. 220; NAI, DJ, 2008/117/926, Garda Special Branch Report on
CPI Unsatisfactory Working, 9 June 1937

172

Following the CPIs nomination of Bill Scott as a Left Wing candidate, which
Murray heartily endorsed, the Irish Democrat came out in favour of running
Frank Ryan in an effort to win the support of republicans and anti-fascist
labourists. The CPI withdrew Scott in order that the whole forces of the
workers movement may be concentrated on the dual objectives of defeating
fascism and imperialism.122 Privately, Murray explained to party members that
Harry Pollitt had refused to advance 100 for Scotts election deposit, forcing
him to lend Ryan the partys support. It was true that Pollitt had refused to
grant Murrays request when they met on 21-22 June, principally because the
latter had failed to attend the inquiry into his leadership on 10 June. Murray
took this as an affront and informed the CPGB that neither would he be
attending the rescheduled inquiry on 24 June. This undoubtedly damaged his
already fractured relationship with Pollitt, the CPGB and Comintern.123
It later emerged that several CPI members were aware of a meeting
between Murray and ODonnell the night prior to Ryans selection. Frank
Mooney boycotted one meeting in protest at Murrays handling of the affair,
though he attended a special CPI gathering on 23 June to hear his general
secretarys defence. Murray explained that he had agreed a contingency plan
with ODonnell in the event that the party failed to raise the necessary funds for
Scotts election campaign. One suspects that he foresaw the British party
denying his request for financial assistance and therefore intentionally avoided
the initial CPGB inquiry into his leadership. Murray successfully rallied the
majority of

party members,

including Mooney,

around

Frank Ryans

candidature, though he failed to convince everyone in attendance. A number of

members interrupted Murrays address with scornful comments about
ODonnells overbearing influence, one enquiring sarcastically whether Murrays
friend in fact dictated CPI policy.124 With Murray carrying CPI grassroots
support, it certainly seems that CPGB cynicism had briefly percolated down to a
small number of impressionable party members.
Frank Ryan, who knew little about his nomination and was actually back in
Spain at the time of the election, eventually received only 875 votes, losing his
122

NAI, DJ, 2008/117/926, Garda Special Branch Report on Communism, 21 June 1937; Irish
Democrat, 26 June 1937
123
NAI, DJ, 2008/117/926, Garda Special Branch Report on Communism, 21, 28 June 1937
124
Ibid.

173

deposit in the process.125 The IRAs decision to boycott the election had a
significant impact on this result, though it also revealed the full extent of
disharmony within the Irish Democrat camp. Just prior to his capture by the
Italians, Ryan expressed to Murray his dissatisfaction at being left so much out
in the cold concerning the collapse of the Democrat coalition.126 The Spanish
Civil War provided the Irish left with a policy lifeline and helped to keep the
remnants of the CPI together in support of their comrades on the front line.
Although the Democrat group continued to mobilise under the auspices of the
Frank Ryan Release Committee from 1938 onwards, there was little doubt that,
as the pro-Republican campaign wilted and de Valera dealt swiftly with the
Blueshirts, the Irish left resumed its decline.
Murray remained cautious about the spread of fascism internationally,
responding promptly and critically to Nazi Germanys invasion of Austria in
March 1938.127 Yet, to a certain extent, he retreated into a socialist republican
sanctuary. His regular attendance at anti-imperialist demonstrations and
republican commemorations resumed;128 he wrote a critical pamphlet focusing
on Craigavons reaction to the Irish Constitution and on the Unionist
governments economic policies;129 and with the end of Irish involvement in
Spain, he turned his attention to Anglo-Irish relations and partition.130
Circumstances dictated that in the absence of a shortcut to left unity it was time
to return to the intricacies of domestic politics.

Confusion in the Ranks: The Onset of the

Emergency/Second World War
In the first issue of the Workers Republic, a short-lived monthly journal of leftwing opinion introduced in May 1938 by Murray, he set about analysing two
key developments. The first was the cross-party selection of Douglas Hyde, a
Protestant Gaelic Leaguer, as Irelands first President, which Murray described
as a Sham in which the electorate havent the slightest say. Hyde, in Murrays
125

Cronin, Frank Ryan, p. 116

C. Desmond Greaves Papers, Letter from Frank Ryan to Murray, 22 March 1938
127
NAI, DJ, JUS8/464, Garda Special Branch Report on CPI and Unemployed Workers Rights
Association meeting, 26 March 1938
128
Irish Democrat, 20 November 1937; NAI, DJ, JUS8/459, Garda Special Branch Report on Liam
Mellows Commemoration, 9 December 1937
129
Sen Murray, Craigavon in the Dock (Belfast, 1938)
130
Irish Democrat, 17 July 1937; NAI, DJ, 2008/117/928, Garda Special Branch Report on
Communism, 23 March 1938
126

174

estimation, was a smokescreen, a representative of vested interests in land,

policy and trade dressed in the Sunday clothes of the old Gaelic antiquarian.131
On this, his friend Rosamond Jacob took him to task, arguing that he was too
harsh on the Gaelic League. Jacob identified an insinuation in Murrays article
that the League was reactionary and not overly important in the history of
republicanism. Murray responded that he had in fact been a Gaelic League
member and thus appreciated its important role within the national movement.
Douglas Hyde, however, had been exposed as an opponent of national
independence at the time of the Easter Rising. In addition, the creation of the
office of President was merely a superficial move, designed to distract workingclass attention away from the lack of social and economic progress.132
The second event, the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement between de
Valera and Neville Chamberlain on 25 April, Murray considered of greater
political magnitude than the formality of the presidential election. The
Agreements three sections finance, trade, and defence resolved the land
annuities dispute, liberalised the flow of trade in both directions and returned to
ire the remaining ports under British control.133 Implicit in the Agreement was
the Irish governments acceptance that its economic nationalist project had
limped to an end, though de Valera secured a compensatory pledge from Britain
to respect the Irish states political sovereignty. These favourable terms made
Irish neutrality a feasible proposition in the impending war, and de Valera
capitalised on the retention of sovereign powers when he called a snap election
in June. Fianna Fil increased its share of the vote from 45.2 percent to 51.9
percent, becoming the first party to achieve an overall majority since the
formation of the state.134 Labour saw its transfers from Fianna Fil supporters
fall to 27.5 percent, down from 42 percent at the last election, and lost five seats
in the process.135 A testament to de Valeras tactical prowess, the margin of
Fianna Fils victory indicated that a more cautious nationalist approach paid
dividends in certain circumstances.

131

Workers Republic, May 1938

Ibid., June 1938
133
Dunphy, The Making of Fianna Fil Power in Ireland, pp. 170-172
134
Patterson, Ireland Since 1939, p. 26
135
Puirsil, The Irish Labour Party, p. 70
132

175

Although de Valera managed to sell the Agreement to the electorate,

Murray only saw the government abandoning the re-conquest and all
pretentions to anti-fascism. He accused Fianna Fil ministers of allowing the
British to set the agenda and take the issue of partition off the negotiating
table. The Agreement also effectively tied Ireland to Chamberlains policy of
appeasement: This surrender is made to a British Government stained by the
breach of every undertaking it has given to weaker nations, the aider and
abettor of Fascism in Europe, the betrayer of Spain, Abyssinia and China.136
Yet it is important to note that Murray continued to see the CPI as a critical
friend of Fianna Fil. He made a distinction between the popular masses within
and supporting the Fianna Fil Party and the forces of the ranchers, bankers
and monopolies, the sponsors of Blueshirt Fascism. According to Murray, the
Labour Party had blurred this distinction and allowed complacency to creep in
after its relative electoral success in 1937. He urged the Labour leadership to
stop cowering before the Fascist Red scare propaganda of the Murphy Press
and redirect its attention to the threat of war, to securing democratic liberties
and to serving the interests of the working class. The CPI did not wish to help
overthrow the Fianna Fil government in favour of Cosgrave. Rather, Murray
advocated a strong labour-republican left flank that would in collaboration with
the Fianna Fil backbenchers, clubs and supporters compel the Government to
fulfil its radical economic and political promises.137
Murray pitched this in the midst of a debate between the CPGBs left wing,
which did not see the Popular Front extending beyond the broad left, and its
right wing, which advocated a more inclusive application of the policy. On the
left was Rajani Palme Dutt, who had attended the Wolfe Tone Commemoration
at Bodenstown as part of the CPI contingent.138 His interest in Britains
involvement in India largely informed his sympathetic, anti-colonial assessment
of the Irish national question.139 His proposals for a mass movement working
against Fianna Fil were not quite what Murray had in mind. Yet he found
agreement with the CPI leader on two issues: that de Valera had sacrificed
national unity for the sake of twenty-six county sovereignty; and that it was

136

Workers Republic, May 1938

Ibid., July 1938
138
NAI, DJ, 2008/117/928, Garda Special Branch Report on Communism, 28 June 1938
139
Interview with Anthony Coughlan, 10 September 2010
137

176

necessary for the CPI to work more closely with the Labour Party and trade
unions to combat Catholic anti-communism. The CPGB gave Dutts thesis short
thrift, countering it with J.R. Campbells more reformist arguments. Campbell
presented a reading of Fianna Fil as a progressive, national reformist party in
its entirety. He observed, with some justification, that the CPI had often been
opportunist in its criticisms of the government, failing to give Valera credit for
dismantling specific aspects of the Treaty. This intransigence, he argued,
contributed to the isolation of the Irish Democrat alliance from the dominant
trend in Irish politics.140 On the issue of partition, he encouraged the Belfast
branch to support the most progressive candidates in elections, whether
nationalist or progressive unionist, and seek to bring about reunification by
winning a majority of people in the six counties for this purpose.141 For Murray,
Campbells approach was partitionist, too woolly in connection with Fianna
Fils social and economic failings, and generally lacking in ambition. However,
Murray could count his blessings that less sympathetic figures Pollitt and,
apparently, William Gallacher did not see their call for the CPIs liquidation
realised. Murrays pleas secured a temporary reprieve for the party into which
he had invested over five years full-time work.142
At a CPI conference on 17 July, the party adopted measures reflective of a
combination of internal deliberations and the CPGBs suggestions. The party
membership approved: an inspection of all membership cards with a view to
weeding out of useless and half-hearted members; the launch of a recruitment
campaign, with the goal of attracting 500 new members to the party within six
months; the formation of a womens group; and the decision to make it
obligatory for all members to carry a trade union or Labour Party membership
card, signalling an exploration of entryism. This conference also endorsed a
report by Murray which placed the emphasis on exposing the limitations of
Fianna Fils project, thus dampening any enthusiasm for Campbells approach.
Murray highlighted the high rate of unemployment and rapid migration from
rural areas to the city and to Britain. Poverty in the countryside put undue
pressure on the towns, a problem that could only be resolved by a labour

140

OConnor, Reds and the Green, p. 224

CPI Nolan/Palmer Collection, BOX 4/016, Letter from J.R. Campbell to Belfast branch CPI, 18
October 1938
142
OConnor, Reds and the Green, p. 224
141

177

movement working to improve lot of the industrial workers and peasants

equally. This was one of the occasions on which he treated the numerically
significant small farmers and agricultural labourers as a potentially powerful
ally. Secondly, Murray addressed the high death rate in ire relative to
England and Wales, with infant mortality rates worsening on a quarterly and
yearly basis an indictment of capitalist society. To remedy this in the short
term, Murray called for immediate improvements in the provision of health and
social services. Thirdly, the rationalisation of industry, rising cost of living, and
the measures used by employers to pass the costs of the Conditions of
Employment Act (1936) onto their workers, all combined to offset working-class
gains from Fianna Fil policies. Finally, Murray claimed that the government
had rigged its revenue-generating instruments to the detriment of low-paid
workers and the unemployed while banks and firms such as Guinness, J.G.
Mooney and Hammond Lane continued to pay out dividends of between 15 and
29 percent. These facts, he remarked, were a damning refutation of de Valeras
claim that the struggle is now over (except partition) and that we can look
forward to a period of harmony between all classes.143
While engaging in an analysis of social and economic conditions and the
subject of partition, Murray was keen to remind his political associates of the
escalating threat of world war and necessity of opposition to it. On 24
September, he wrote to Hanna Sheehy Skeffington on an upcoming Anti-War
Committee meeting: Then there is no knowing, by the time we may be in the
cauldron of war or on the very edge of the precipice, if we can be nearer than we
are at the present.144 He continued to criticise Chamberlains policy of
appeasement, which sacrificed Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, to Nazi Germany
and allowed for the imprisonment of thousands of German workers in
concentration camps. Consistent also was his denigration of de Valeras
ambivalent foreign policy, to which he attributed Irelands implicit support for
the

same

scoundrel

Czechoslovakia,

[Chamberlain]

Abyssinia,

Austria,

at

Geneva

Spain

and

in

his

China

betrayals
to

of

fascism.145

Furthermore, he warned that the people who stood to gain the most from a

143

NAI, DJ, 2008/117/928, Garda Special Branch Report on Communism, 28 July 1938
Quoted in Margaret Ward, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington: A Life (Cork, 1997), p. 334
145
NAI, DJ, 2008/117/928, Garda Special Branch Report on Communism, 27 September, 20 October
1938
144

178

global conflagration were profiteers in the arms and munitions industries, as

during the 1914-1918 period.146 Not only did he view the war situation as
imperialist in terms of territorial annexations, but also in terms of the
inevitable accumulation of capital by industrialists and, increasingly, by
transnational financial interests. In contrast, for the working class, the war
promised to bring deaths on the front line and higher costs of living at home.
On these points, the northern communists arrived at a similar conclusion.
Betty Sinclair and Billy McCullough called for the international labour
movement to boycott goods from such fascist countries as Japan and take action
domestically to prevent a blood bath occurring across Europe.147 The CPI found
broad consensus among its members that fascism could be contained through a
joint mobilisation of the working class and bourgeois democrats within specific
national borders. The party suggested at the same time that the Irish
government ought to work internationally to isolate fascist countries through
diplomatic and economic measures. This misguided prescription was highly
problematic since Nazi Germany had made significant incursions into
neighbouring countries. However, as with other peripheral parties, there was an
air of confusion in the absence of a clear international communist response. It
was not yet clear whether the CPI would support a war effort against Hitler if
his expansionist assault continued. Like Schrodingers cat, the CPI was at that
moment both anti-fascist and pro-peace.
The position Murray developed for the Irish party, independent of
international pressure, encouraged the withdrawal of the six counties from
Chamberlains appeasement policy and a move towards a united, all-island antiwar effort. Ireland had not yet entered a state of emergency or declared
neutrality, but Murray felt that this option offered a route to anti-fascist unity.
He called for an alliance of the Irish government, Old IRA, contemporary
republican and anti-imperialist organisations to put pressure on the British to
cease supporting the northern state as a separate entity, whilst encouraging the
northern workers and small farmers to cut loose from the Craigavon junta.148
Craigavons strong appeals for the extension of conscription to Northern Ireland

146

NAI, DJ, JUS8/743, Garda Special Branch Report on Communist meeting, 25 November 1939
PRONI, HA/32/1/556, RUC Special Branch Report on CPI Belfast local meeting, 15 August 1938
148
NAI, DJ, 2008/117/928, Garda Special Branch Report on Communism, 20 October 1938
147

179

vindicated Murrays approach in theory, though it was hardly a realistic

prospect in practice.
In a move suggesting that Murray believed more was at stake than the
defeat of fascism, he argued that both J.R. Campbell and de Valera were
misguided in their belief that it was possible to coax Unionists into a united
Ireland. This was especially true under Craigavons government, which played
on Protestant fears of the South in the aftermath of the introduction of
Bunreacht na hireann. With Jim Prendergasts support, Murray suggested
foolishly that one means of applying pressure for Irish reunification was for all
anti-imperialist parties to march into Northern Ireland and subdue Unionist
voices.149 This dangerous rhetoric clearly reflected Murrays dissatisfaction with
the lack of progress on national unity, on anti-fascism and labour unity, and in
constitutional terms. Additionally, the speech was a response to the 1938
Stormont election, which Craigavon fought on the issue of partition,
overshadowing the attempts of progressive candidates to draw attention to the
Unionist governments mismanagement of the economy.150 Murrays statement
could also be described simply as senseless irresponsibility, ill-timed in the
context of an IRA split which saw militarists assume control of the
organisations Army Council. Sen Russell was named Chief of Staff and the
organisation lost the support of several politically inclined figures. Abandoning
all pretentions to politics, the IRA started planning its war against Britain,
despite public opinion putting some clear distance between Russells narrow
conception of republicanism and the more popular one articulated by de
Valera.151 The expression of Murrays frustration, however impetuous, brought
him temporarily closer to the former version of republicanism than the latter.
In early 1939, Murray survived yet another attempt to wrest from him the
position of general secretary. J.R. Campbell was at the forefront of these efforts,
putting forward Billy McCullough as a possible replacement. Murray retained
his position, although the Comintern removed him from its payroll while the
search for a replacement got underway. Interestingly, voices within the CPGB

149

Ibid., 31 July 1938

Robert Fisk, In Time of War: Ireland, Ulster, and the Price of Neutrality, 1939-45 (Dublin, 1996),
pp. 56-57
151
Bowyer Bell, The IRA, pp. 145-163; English, Radicals and the Republic, p. 260; Eoin Broin, Sinn
Fin and the Politics of Left Republicanism (London, 2009), p. 196
150

180

deemed McCullough unsuitable because he paid too little attention to the

national question and, more importantly, because his proposed move to Dublin
had the potential of weakening the British partys influence on the NUR in
Belfast.152 Murray reminded members that the power to bring about a change in
leadership resided with them. In fact, he embraced the challenge to his
authority as an opportunity to seek a mandate through changes in party
organisation and policy.
Organisationally, the Dublin-oriented central committee, which had been
the source of some of the Belfast groups past grievances, formally gave way to
the more representative national committee. Behind this change was the
belated recognition by the Dublin leadership that the northern cadres had not
received enough credence in previous years and that the partys survival
depended on the creation of a strong network of party representatives across the
island.153 In terms of policy, Murray brought to the Dublin committee a vote on
the official party position towards Fianna Fil. With several caveats, Murray
argued that de Valera had shown more consideration for the working class than
was imaginable under a Fine Gael government. In addition, he repeated the
view that Fianna Fil contained a much stronger anti-fascist base than the
party built on the remnants of the Blueshirts. Accordingly, he hoped the CPI
membership would lend critical support to Fianna Fil and encourage Labour
Party members to do the same, with the objective of forging a left alliance
involving the CPI, Labour, republican/labour groups and other Left Wing
elements. A number of influential members challenged this interpretation.
Brian ONeill, example, one of the CPIs more dogmatic figures, could see no
difference between Fianna Fil and Fine Gael, while Tommy Watters described
the move as just another blunder added to the long list of many to the [partys]
credit.154
Campbell was correct in his report on Ireland that leading comrades had
sharply criticised Murray. However, whether through duplicity or poor
intelligence, Campbells report contained one major inaccuracy. It stated that

152

OConnor, Reds and the Green, p. 225

NAI, DJ, 2008/117/928, Garda Special Branch Report on CPI National Conference, 1 December
1938
154
Ibid., 17 December 1938
153

181

there was no defence, or a half-hearted defence of Murray by other comrades.155

To the contrary, Bill Scott, Sen Nolan and Frank Mooney lent vocal support to
a policy change in Murrays favour. The party membership ratified this by sixty
votes to twenty-three, a convincing majority. Added to this was Murrays
uncomplicated election to the national committee, along with Watters and
Nolan. If these developments are taken as a referendum on Murrays leadership,
one can state with confidence that he carried the popular support of the allimportant Dublin group.156
Murray and the CPI thus came to endorse Fianna Fils domestic policies
more gradually and cautiously than has been suggested in one history of Irish
communism.157 As late as April, months prior to the introduction of the
Emergency Powers Act and Offences Against the State Act, the party combined
anti-imperialist sentiments with a firm stand against the IRAs bombing
campaign in England. The communists stated that, though separatists, they
considered themselves democrats and republicans in the traditional sense,
capable of distinguishing between British imperialism and democracy.158 On the
impending war, however, the CPI found it very difficult almost impossible to
sustain a consistent analysis of developments that were simply too
unpredictable to follow. The CPIs increasingly tenuous yet enduring link to the
Soviet Union exacerbated this problem.
Murray launched the first issue of the Irish Workers Weekly on 29 April
1939 with the declaration that we cannot be neutral against fascism, for peace
and against war. Successive issues heaped criticism on Hitler whilst
maintaining staunch opposition to conscription.159 On 5 August, the paper
argued that Nazis Can Never Be Our Allies and that only the most reactionary
forces, namely Chamberlain and Craigavon, would entertain the idea of a pact
with Hitler.160 The subsequent Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact came as a great shock
to the CPI membership, particularly those who were just coming round to the

155

Quoted in OConnor, Reds and the Green, p. 225

NAI, DJ, 2008/117/928, Garda Special Branch Report on Communism, 17 December 1938; CPI
Nolan/Palmer Collection, BOX 6/019, Dublin District Committee Minute Books, Minutes of Special
Dublin Branch Meetings, 1-6 December 1938
157
Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, pp. 177-178, 187
158
Workers Bulletin, 1, 15 April 1939
159
Irish Workers Weekly, 29 April, 6, 27 May 1939
160
Ibid., 5 August 1939
156

182

idea, in the aftermath of further incursions by Germany into Czechoslovakia in

March, of a more proactive response to Nazism. The Workers Weekly duly
revised its line, arguing now that the Soviet Unions Policy Strengthens Peace,
providing extracts from Stalins speech on the Pact for the benefit of those who
may have doubted its correctness.161
As the CPIs official history has conceded, the pace of developments
generated some confusion among Party members in the North and it took much
discussion to convince members of the correctness of the Partys position.162 The
publication of a somewhat contradictory manifesto failed to alleviate this
confusion in the party ranks. Signed by Murray and Billy McCullough, the
manifesto criticised the non-interventionists on the one hand and encouraged
the working class to support the Irish governments policy of military nonparticipation on the other. This brought the party back to the naive position of
advocating a peoples victory over fascism in Europe.163 Alas, this did not last
long. Stalin laid out instructions to the Comintern for affiliated parties to
interpret the war singularly as a territorial carve-up between capitalist
countries and not in terms of a distinction between bourgeois democracy and
fascism: the division of capitalist countries into fascist and democratic has lost
its former sense.164 This shift in Comintern policy afforded the CPI the relative
stability to deliver a consistent, if not universally appropriate, critique of British
foreign policy as imperialism. Gone for the moment was the distinction between
British imperialism and democracy as the Workers Weekly called for action to
Withdraw the Six Counties Out of the Imperialist War. It also suggestively
provided more room in its pages for articles on Tone, Connolly and the freedom
of small nations. When Churchill came to power in Britain in May 1940 and
Vichy France yielded to Hitler in June, this anti-imperialist focus gained greater
credence than it might have otherwise. The party reworked one of Connollys
slogans to utter We Serve Neither Churchill Nor Hitler, But Ireland! and
references to Lenin and the 1914-1918 imperialist war were aplenty. However,
it reached a point where the papers anti-fascist coverage became secondary to

161

Ibid., 26 August 1939

Nolan (ed.), CPI Outline History, p. 38
163
Irish Workers Voice, 16 September 1939
164
Quoted in McDermott and Agnew, The Comintern, p. 193
162

183

the perceived need to criticise the British and French at every opportunity. The
CPI appeared to be in danger of losing sight of what it stood for.
Murray supplemented this overtly political anti-imperialist line with some
attention to economic issues and continued support for illegal strikes,
particularly in Belfast war industries. A Resolution from North noted the
hardships inflicted by the war and a sense that the whole economic life of the
working class had been subordinated to the interests of the British war aims.165
Murray adjusted the editorial line to allow for criticism of British and Irish
capitalist interests which stood to profit from a scarcity of basic goods across
both islands. In Dublin, despite heavy censorship and the partys subjection to
emergency legislation, agit-prop members carried out their duties with great
enthusiasm. The eccentric Neil Goold, a member of the minor gentry whose
brother Brian was one of three Irish victims of the Stalinist purges, earned
himself a spell in the Curragh for his role in organising a campaign for rent
reduction and social welfare increases.166 Murrays vexation on the issue of
housing failed to subside. Specifically, he directed criticisms at the slum and
ground rent landlords who did not reside in this country, urging the
government to acquire their properties and put them to public use.167
Once again, Tommy Watters stepped forward to question Murrays
judgement. He argued that it was not wrong to advance an anti-imperialist
analysis of the war Our fight will assume the same forms as the fight in the
last war but felt that encouraging the six counties withdrawal from Britain
would not place us in a very favourable light in Protestant working-class
communities. He called for the CPI to stop functioning as a branch of the CPGB
and instead concentrate on applying the line on the ground. Watters
description of the CPI as an appendage of the British party had no basis in fact.
Yet he was correct to observe that the party had not done enough to put
pressure on Fianna Fil in the South or reach out to workers from both
communities in the North.168 The party leadership had encouraged a
165

C. Desmond Greaves Papers, Resolution from North, 27 January 1940

Donal Drisceoil, Censorship in Ireland, 1939-1945: Neutrality, Politics and Society (Cork, 1996),
p. 248
167
NAI, DJ, JUS8/745, Garda Special Branch Report on Workers Progressive Party meeting, 30 July
1940
168
CPI Nolan/Palmer Collection, BOX 6/017, Dublin District Committee Minute Books, Report of
Branch Meeting, 17 December 1939
166

184

fundamentally Irish republican variant of anti-imperialism. In early 1939,

Murray welcomed the formation of the Connolly Association, successor to the
London branch of the Republican Congress. This organisation, based on the
support of Irish migrs and sympathetic British labourists, launched the
newspaper Irish Freedom (later the Irish Democrat) and commenced a Hands
Off Ireland campaign in Britain.169 For Murray, twenty-six county neutrality
was a positive development, though insufficient. The question was: did Murrays
position really mirror that of IRA militarists?
It is important to note that while there may have been some disagreement
on republican aims, the CPI ultimately agreed on the need to tackle both
governments use of coercive legislation and suppression of political dissent.170
Yet while McCullough and Sinclair viewed the protection of civil liberties and
dismantling of the Special Powers Act as part of their remit, it was unwise to
stray into the IRAs domain. This they did by calling for the release of Peter
Barnes and James McCormick, two republicans awaiting execution for a
Coventry bombing in which five people died. This unsuccessful campaign
brought the communists and IRA together in clashes with the RUC, further
complicating the partys

relationship with northern states Protestant

majority.171 Here Tommy Watters concerns about isolating northern workers

did have some resonance. Although Murray kept his distance from these events,
he was the main point of contact for Irish-American communists seeking
information on the fate of IRA men sentenced to death in both states.172 Of
greater significance is the line Murray promoted in CPI literature. For this, he
can be held directly accountable. As one labour historian has noted, there is
little doubt that the invocation of Lenin, Connolly and the 1914-1918 imperialist
war in the pages of the Workers Weekly was designed to recreate the
atmosphere of the Easter Rising and the slogan Englands Difficulty is Irelands
Opportunity.173
Murray must shoulder much of the responsibility for the communist papers
pro-republican content and the implications stemming from it, even when we
169

World News and Views, 28 January 1939; Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, p. 185
PRONI, HA/32/1/556, RUC Special Branch Report on CPI Belfast local meeting, 15 August 1938;
NAI, DJ, 2008/117/928, Garda Special Branch Report on Communism, 20 October 1938
171
Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, p. 184; OConnor, Reds and the Green, p. 230
172
Drisceoil, Censorship in Ireland, p. 87
173
OConnor, Reds and the Green, p. 229
170

185

account for censorship regulations in the South, which had an overtly

nationalist and pro-neutrality bias and tended to constrain extreme
publications.174 We also recall his irredentist outburst in mid-1938, which sits
uneasily with his enthusiasm for upholding democracy. In spite of this, one
cannot associate such failings with support for the IRAs disastrous bombing
campaign.
One author has taken the publication of an article by IRA man Sen
MacBrdaigh (Jack Brady) out of context to suggest, quite disingenuously, that
the CPI drifted towards some sort of Russell-esque dalliance with Nazi
Germany.175 In fact, Murray only published his contribution as part of a running
debate between the CPI leader and IRA on the renewed campaign of violence,
which ended when MacBrdaigh was arrested in Belfast. To take this debate in
full, Murray dealt first with an IRA statement implying that the organisation
was prepared to accept German assistance to ensure Britains defeat. He
mocked the IRA leadership for effectively asking the Irish people to hitch their
fortunes

to

those

of

fascist

aggressors.

Subsequently

dealing

with

MacBrdaighs predictable traditionalist response, Murray scoffed at the notion

that providing the Germans with an Irish base would achieve anything other
than transforming Ireland into a battlefield for the two contending imperialist
powers. He urged IRA members to reassess their lack of faith in revolutionary
democracy and participate in ongoing protests against the war while the
conditions for revolution matured.176
Of course, the British government had demonstrated little enthusiasm for
European democracy during the Spanish Civil War, and few would seriously
argue that its intervention in the war was motivated solely by altruistic
concerns. What is more is that members of Churchills cabinet, including the
Prime Minister himself, were unashamed imperialists who showed no intention
of exporting democracy to the colonies. Yet the fact remained that Britain had
largely embraced the democratic ideals of the French Revolution; and Murray,
whilst maintaining firm opposition to imperialism, fascistic and otherwise, could
not convince himself or the Irish communist movement that comparisons with

174

Drisceoil, Censorship in Ireland, pp. 95-129

Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, p. 185
176
Irish Workers Weekly, 10-31 August 1940
175

186

the 1914-1918 period were wholly appropriate. Ultimately, he was under no

illusions about the futility of the IRAs armed struggle.
That there was no clear divergence of opinion between the northern and
southern CPI leaders was evident from the partys united response to the
Belfast Blitz, which began in April 1941 and lasted almost two months. The
Irish Workers Weekly praised the efforts of emergency services from all corners
of the island and published statements from a cross-section of communists who
argued that the Blitz served to justify the introduction of a single, all-Ireland
policy of neutrality.177 However, after the CPI took the embarrassing step of
playing down the possibility of a German attack on the Soviet Union the very
same day that Nazi Germany invaded the USSR,178 the party duly performed a
volte-face, putting its faith in Stalin and, consequently, the British war effort.
This relieved any pressure there was on the northern branches to conform to
anti-imperialism and at the same time presented the southern comrades with
an acute political dilemma. After some deliberation, and another intervention by
the CPGB, the Dublin branch voted narrowly on 10 July 1941 to suspend
independent activity and to apply the forces of the branch to working in the
Labour and trade union organisations. Barney Larkin, the least well known of
three brothers, led the opposition to this dissolution.179 Young Jim also argued
against the decision, despite his poor party record and the fact that Murray had
accepted in 1937 that his Lenin School classmate had all but left the CPI.180
In December 1940, Murray applied for a Military Service Pension for the
first time (it was introduced in 1934). The Department of Defence awarded him
28.17.9 per annum.181 This was a sure sign of his diminished financial
circumstances and indicates that he may have exhausted all favours from the
CPGB after being removed from the Cominterns payroll. On 8 March 1941, the
Workers Weekly dealt Murray a huge blow when it referred to Tommy Watters
as CPI general secretary, without a single mention of his predecessors ten years
service to the movement. Watters had challenged Murrays leadership openly
and thus stood out as the obvious alternative. Ostensibly, the CPGB rewarded
177

Ibid., 26 April 1941

Ibid., 22 June 1941
179
OConnor, Reds and the Green, p. 231
180
NAI, DJ, 2008/117/926, Garda Special Branch Report on Communism, 28 September 1937
181
C. Desmond Greaves Papers, Military Service certificate, 18 December 1940; Letter from
Department of Defence, 19 December 1940; Award of Military Service Pension, 28 December 1940
178

187

him with the unenviable position at the head of the Irish movement. As noted
above, grassroots support for ousting Murray was negligible, which makes it
highly unlikely that the impetus for the coup came from within the party.
Editorial control of CPI newspapers was in all probability passed onto Sen
Nolan, Murrays deputy. With immediate effect, the editorial line began to
reflect Watters hostility to Fianna Fil and desire for greater trade union
activity.182 Here Watters was fortunate that opposition to the Wages Standstill
Order and Trade Union Act (1941) created a heightened sense of industrial
militancy, upon which it was possible to launch an appeal for support.183
Meanwhile, Murray faced a possible future as a freelance activist or a minor
player in the communists activities on the Labour Party left.
Conclusion
This period in Murrays career saw him try to compensate for the Republican
Congress failure by placing the work of the CPI within a multifaceted
framework. The peoples front entailed the continuation of universal opposition
to fascism, enhanced with domestic class struggles. For Murray, antiimperialism, the third main strand, took on political and economic guises. Along
these lines, he attempted to tie anti-imperialism to the other two strands of his
ambitious strategy. Internationally, territorial annexations were the crudest
form of political imperialism and Murray identified this trait in fascistic
aggressors such as Germany and Italy. He viewed the partition of Ireland in the
same terms and often spoke on the issue in a vociferous republican tone. Fianna
Fil had not done enough to dismantle the economic system inherited from
Britain at the formation of the state and had also retained close links with
finance capital. He thus viewed all left-of-centre political actors as republicans
and hoped they would come together to carry the re-conquest to a successful
conclusion.
As the three strands of Murrays improvised peoples front vied for position
in the CPIs activities, the Spanish Civil War pushed anti-fascism to the
forefront of the Irish lefts thinking. For some years, Murray had developed a
more autonomous, nationally-specific position for the party. The overriding
internationalism of the Spanish conflict brought the CPI back within touch of
182
183

OConnor, Reds and the Green, p. 229; Irish Workers Weekly, 8, 15 March, 1941
Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, pp. 191-192; Irish Workers Weekly, 31 May 1941

188

the Soviet Unions foreign policy. The Irish communists temporarily abandoned
the language of class conflict in favour of protecting the democratic gains of the
Spanish Republic. Murray arrived at this conclusion earlier than Moscow,
though he ultimately maintained a stageist interpretation of the Spanish Civil
War, keeping in line with the Comintern-backed Popular Front. In addition, the
inherent left-right dimension of the Spanish conflict provided an opening for
Murray to press for a broad left alliance at home. To this end, the Irish
Democrat coalition was a notable achievement. Divisions within the camp and
the eventual dissolution of the Democrat presented a profound challenge to
Murrays peoples front strategy. The NISPs excessive demands appear to have
broken the alliance, although Murray and Frank Ryan could have perhaps
toned down their criticisms of the NISP, and of international figures of related
ideological tendencies, for the sake of unity. The Soviet Unions important role
in defending the Spanish Republic brought Murray temporarily closer to the
Stalinist stereotype. His defence of the Moscow Show Trials and gratuitous
attacks on Trotskyists weakened the prospect of keeping the NISP on board and
ultimately contributed to the collapse of Irish left unity on Spain.
Although the CPI performed credibly relative to its size, the Spanish Civil
War brought the party only marginally closer to cementing its position. Murray
kept alert to the dangers of European fascism whilst returning to an analysis of
domestic events in order to redress the balance of the peoples front strategy.
Whereas others generally advocated either wholesale opposition or support for
the government, Murray found himself in the unique position of arguing for a
compromise. In Murrays vision, the CPI had a role to play as Fianna Fils
critical friend within an ever elusive labour-republican alliance. In his attempts
to put across a clear message of republicanism as anti-imperialism, Murray
strayed dangerously close to a militarist republican interpretation with no basis
in reality. However, it is more accurate to describe his republicanism as
revolutionary-democratic, entailing a critical view of de Valeras twenty-six
county Catholic nationalism and a rejection of physical force as a virtue. His
objective was to compel Fianna Fil to return to its republican and radical socioeconomic roots, or to at least draw some of its supporters to the left and into a
movement with thirty-two county socialist republicanism at its heart.

189

Left to its own devices, the CPI may have come to adopt a more pro-active
anti-fascist stance, combined with an anti-imperialist analysis rooted in sound
economics. However, the party once again looked for external inspiration on an
event of international magnitude. The communists shambolic adherence to the
Soviet Unions position on the Second World War ended any prospect of the
party working out an independent line reflective of domestic realities.
Interpreting the war as imperialist brought a measure of consistency to the
party, though it also stood for the displacement of a concrete analysis with
occasional Anglophobia. To this, Murray proved no exception. Caught up in the
tide of anti-British sentiment and in the volatile debate on partition, he allowed
traditionalist republicanism and irredentism to creep into his vocabulary.
Subsequently, the Soviet Unions volte-face, after Nazi Germany reneged on
the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, dealt a major blow to the CPIs credibility and
accelerated its decline in the South. Murrays demotion, which came at the same
time as but not necessarily in conjunction with Moscows u-turn on the war,
seems to have been precipitated by a combination of factors. Although he carried
with him the support of the majority of Dublin CPI members, critics raised
enough doubts to add to the Cominterns intractable belief that Murrays
position was untenable. Harry Pollitt and the CPGB played no small part in
spinning out this perception. Indeed, Pollitts frequent interference appears to
have been motivated by either personal prejudice or social-imperialist
ambitions, as Murray rejected time and again unsolicited CPGB intervention in
the Irish partys affairs. Neither the British leadership nor the Comintern fully
understood the challenges facing Murray as he struggled to keep the CPIs head
above water. Murrays leadership was far from exemplary. He acted rashly on
more than one occasion, damaging the CPIs relationship with potential allies.
Yet the multifarious peoples front strategy provided the Irish party with the
best means of preserving its identity within a broader, numerically significant
and altogether more effective movement. International developments and
objective conditions simply did not work in his favour.

190

Chapter 6 Pushed Upstairs

The Soviet Unions entry into the war made northern communist cooperation
with supporters of the British war effort inevitable. Those near-hysterical
denunciations of communism, prevalent throughout the 1930s, gave way to
mere murmurs of disapproval as the Red Armys potentially decisive role in
defeating Hitler became widely recognised. Even the Irish News reported
favourably on these developments.1 Locally, Harry Midgleys surprisingly
emphatic victory over the Unionist candidate in a December 1941 by-election in
Willowfield, East Belfast, indicated that northern Protestants were not immune
to the general leftward shift of public opinion across the UK. Midgley made a
point of emphasising his position on the constitutional status of Northern
Ireland in order to prevent the Unionist camp from exploiting the issue. This in
turn exacerbated a growing rift within the NILP on the question of partition.
Yet he also won support by exposing the increasingly unpopular Stormont
administration on its inadequate war preparations and response to the Blitz; on
its mismanagement of the economy; and on its seeming reluctance to investigate
allegations of corruption in the running of a sanatorium in Whiteabbey.2
Significant also, in terms of pervading attitudes towards socialists, was the
increasing spate of IRA attacks in the North and in Britain, which, along with
obvious wartime security threats, consumed the attention of the Ministry of
Home Affairs and RUC. The authorities no longer listed communist activities
amongst their priorities. Special Branch notetakers were conspicuously absent
from meetings organised by the various labour groups in Belfast, except when
they related to strike activity.
That Murray was to be a beneficiary of these changed circumstances became
clear when he received word from Billy McCullough in October that the
exclusion order served on him in 1933 had finally been revoked. Jack Beattie
petitioned the government and convinced the long-serving Minister of Home
Affairs, Dawson Bates, that Murray posed no subversive threat to the northern
state (not that he was a significant threat eight years earlier), thus making a

Irish News, 1 October 1941

Graham Walker, The Politics of Frustration: Harry Midgley and the Failure of Labour in Northern
Ireland (Manchester, 1985), pp. 124-129; Henry Patterson, Ireland Since 1939: The Persistence of
Conflict (Dublin, 2007), pp. 39-40

191

return to Belfast possible.3 The choice was between remaining in Dublin and
joining a local Labour Party branch, and returning North, where a prominent
role with the CPNI was by no means guaranteed. 4 Murray elected to move to
Belfast in order to be closer to his ailing parents. He and his wife Margaret
initially lodged with Betty Sinclair at 46 Hooker Street. They also stayed briefly
with Jack Mulvenna (formerly of the ICA) in Andersonstown, West Belfast, and
later with Michael McInerney, who, on his return from England, had taken up a
position with the party and begun renting a house on the Limestone Road from
a comrade in the RAF. Such was the precarious financial position the Murrays
faced that by 1944 they were living on his parents farm at Ballybrack, with
Sen assuming some of his fathers farming duties in the absence of gainful
employment in the city.
Because paid offices with the party were unsustainable in the long term,
Murray was compelled to take up employment where he could find it. Cuttings
from the Belfast Telegraph and Irish News in his possession paint a picture of
desperation, with dozens of unskilled, low paid jobs highlighted in pen.5 Records
show that he spent two months working as a barman in the Empire Theatre,
Belfast, and had a similarly brief stint with a clothing company, also in the city.
Incidentally, the war industries provided the greatest hope of steady
employment for Murray, a Catholic farmer with no recent experience of
industrial work. He spent some time building air raid shelters before the party
helped to find him a more secure job as an electrical helper at the citys
Harland and Wolff shipyard.6 After both parents died in the mid-1940s, Murray
wrestled with the decision to keep or forfeit the farm he inherited. The very
notion of private property, inheritances in particular, was at variance with his
communist principles. Yet pragmatism told him that he was in dire need of a
regular income. Reluctantly, he sublet the farm to a distant relative and put the
3

PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/M/5, Letter from Bill [McCullough] to Sen Murray, 1 October
1941; Letter from Ministry of Home Affairs to Jack Beattie, 8 October 1941
4
The party refrained from using the name Communist Party of Northern Ireland officially. The
terms Communist Party, Belfast branch, Communist Party of Ireland, Irish Communist Party and
Communist Party were used interchangeably. However, the party is known colloquially as the CPNI.
It distinguishes the northern communists from those operating in the South, and the terms usage is
preferred in the partys Outline History (Dublin, 1975)
5
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/L, Newspaper cuttings
6
Emmet OConnor, John (Sen) Murray in Keith Gildart, David Howell and Neville Kirk (eds.),
Dictionary of Labour Biography, Vol. XI (London, 2003), p. 204; PRONI, Sen Murray Papers,
D2162/I/33,36,37,46, Trade Union contribution cards (1942-1948)

192

money towards buying a house in Belfast, which he and Margaret eventually

did in 1949. The farmhouse at Ballybrack lay vacant for months at a time,
although Murray allowed friends from Belfast to use it as a holiday home on a
number of occasions.7 One party veteran also recalled the house being used for
party meetings and weekend retreats Sen was still on good terms with
republicans in Cushendall, so a group of us used to go up there when we wanted
to get out of Belfast8 although Murray would ask comrades not to mention his
work as a labourer to relatives or neighbours.9
Politically, the early 1940s were the least active years of Murrays long
career. Elevated to the position of CPNI general secretary, Billy McCullough
came to dominate the Belfast movement during the war period, ably assisted by
Betty Sinclair, who assumed the responsibilities of district organiser and
treasurer. Murray remained highly popular with communists across the island,
but could find no clearly defined role reserved for him in the new party
leadership. In light of his age, precarious financial situation, and variable yet
mentally and physically draining working pattern, it was perhaps natural for
the party to replace Murray with a younger and more dynamic group of cadres.
He would have been left with little time or energy to attend party meetings and
demonstrations, and scarce opportunities to draft Marxist tracts. It is also
rumoured that Betty Sinclair poured scorn on his drinking habits, which she
believed had begun to take precedence over political activities. These factors
combine to offer one possible explanation for the decline in Murrays influence,
eliciting the words widely attributed to Oscar Wilde: The trouble with socialism
is that it takes up too many evenings.
An alternative narrative suggests that fundamentally political reasons lay
behind Murrays demotion; that he was deliberately frozen out of the CPNIs
decision-making process, or pushed upstairs as one stalwart of the Irish left
has described it.10 Years later, Peadar ODonnell offered a detailed assessment
of the post-June 1941 upheaval:
He was crucified by the situation in Dublin but there was no excuse at all
for the wastage of Sen by the people in Belfast, who failed to recognise,
7

NAUK, Security Service, KV2/1185, Sen Murray; Information provided by Fionntn McElheran
Interview with Bill Somerset, 15 June 2010
9
OConnor, John (Sen) Murray, p. 204
10
Interview with Roy Johnston (via email), 5 June 2010
8

193

not only in his work, but his genius: in Belfast he was wasted by his own
comrades. The Communist Party of Northern Ireland has a crime to
expiate.
It is a verdict on the stature of the Movement that he was not
appreciated. I do hope it did not mean that it was the subjective
weakness caused by the Northern environment and pressures, that it
was not because he was of Catholic background from the Glens of Antrim
that influenced his comrades. But probably it was the era of the
organiser, the entrepreneur, the propaganda merchant, and age that
displayed near contempt for the man of original thinking. If only they
knew, the one man Ireland needed then, and now, was the man of
original and analytical thinking. Sen was that man but none
appreciated it. But if the reason was subjective, then we are perceiving in
the movement a version of the weakness that held back the working class
movement both North and South at all moments of crisis.
If I could recognise and appreciate his gifts, what excuse is there
for people who worked so closely with him, and in the same cause, to fail
to open the way for his fulfilment and the advance of the working class.
They should have appreciated him even though he was soft, self-effacing
like Liam Mellows or Paddy Rutledge (one of the very few really
progressive men on the Anti-Treaty side in 1922). But, perhaps, it is a
rare gift that enables one to appreciate the intelligence or even genius of
others. Perhaps Belfast was not fully aware of the treasure it ignored. I
was never a member of the Communist Party but I very nearly joined in
1942 so I could kick up murder about Sen.11
Fairly or unfairly, the circumstances of the CPIs disintegration at the
beginning of the Forties had a significant bearing on how the northern
communists received Murray upon his return to Belfast. The CPNI remained
undecided as to how to implement the pro-war position so hastily adopted in
June 1941. What is clear is that Murrays role in developing incoherent and
often contradictory war policies in the preceding two years weighed in his
disfavour. Indeed one labour historian has noted that some of Murrays
contemporaries regarded him as deadwood precisely because of his handling of
party affairs in the South.12 One Belfast activist suggested to the present author
that Murray was simply out of touch with developments in the industrial
North, and offers an anecdote to illustrate why he was not an obvious candidate
for a CPNI leadership position. On the first day of his employment in the
shipyards, this story goes, Murray was dressed in his political agitators

11
12

Michael McInerney, Peadar ODonnell: Irish Social Rebel (Dublin, 1974), pp. 97-99
OConnor, John (Sen) Murray, p. 204

194

clothing: an overcoat, soft velvet hat, and a tie. Seeing this, a friendly party
member took him aside, wishing to save him from embarrassment: For Gods
sake take that off! Somebodyll think youre a gaffer!13 There is every chance
that this story is apocryphal. Even so, it adds to the perception that Murrays
years of relative detachment from the Belfast movement and association with
recent communist failures in the South added to the political rationale for his
demotion.
ODonnells allusion to Murrays Catholic upbringing as a reason for his
isolation does not merit further consideration, principally because everyone
connected with the CPNI knew of Murrays avowed atheism and nonsectarianism. Yet there remain unanswered questions pertaining to his political
activities throughout the 1940s. Firstly, what did Murray contribute to the new
CPNI project, particularly during the period that McCullough and other pro-war
enthusiasts dominated the movement? Did he attempt to engage critically with
party policy or defer to the party leadership for direction? Secondly, to what
extent did the environment in which Murray was now active temper his
republicanism? Did this past, quite apart from his Catholic background,
determine in any way his influence on political developments, or lack thereof,
over the course of the decade? Finally, there is the question of whether the
CPNI leadership neglected Murrays accumulated experience and considerable
talents. Is there any truth in the claim that Murray was still very much the
brains of the party in 1949?14 If so, how did his political comeback play out?

Belfast Communism and the War Effort

An early indication that the CPNI intended to pursue an explicitly pro-war
discourse came with the partys first manifesto, launched in October 1941. A
victory for the Soviet Union and its allies among the enslaved nations of the
Continent, including Germany and the Anglo-American peoples, the document
read, would be a triumph for the cause of national liberty everywhere and
would advance the movement for Irelands complete freedom.15 Here the party
continued to frame the debate uncomfortably in terms of the duality of
13

Interview with Jimmy and Edwina Stewart, 18 March 2010

NAUK, Security Service, KV2/1185, Sen Murray
15
Quoted in D.R. OConnor Lysaght, The Communist Party of Ireland: A Critical History, Part 3
(1976) http://www.workersrepublic.org/Pages/Ireland/Communism/cpihistory3.html (Accessed on
7 September 2012)
14

195

imperialism and fascism, the argument being that the Soviet Unions victory
would weaken both forces. By 1942, however, Billy McCullough signalled his
intention to break free from the CPIs legacy. He declared unequivocally that
neutrality was a matter of grave concern to democratic opinion and remarked
that southern Ireland now found itself out of step with the rest of progressive
mankind.16 Initially, McCullough and Betty Sinclair tried to bring the Irish
labour movement round to the CPNI position by moving anti-fascist resolutions
at successive ITUC conferences in 1942 and 1943. The first resolution failed to
receive the necessary support, while ITUC delegates only marginally passed the
second in dubious circumstances.17
Scholars continue to query Northern Irelands overall contribution to the
war effort, particularly in comparison to Scotland and Wales. Nonetheless, it is
difficult to dispute the significant increases in output and employment during
the period.18 In the aftermath of the CPIs 1942 conference, McCullough
attempted to exploit this point. With ten southern delegates in attendance, this
gathering was distinctly national in character. Indeed a CPI national committee
continued to meet officially as late as November of the same year. However, the
conference report left little doubt that explicitly northern and British concerns
would determine the CPNIs trajectory thereafter. McCullough argued, for
example, that calls for the resignation of the inept Andrews government
represented sheer opportunism. This reluctance to criticise what was a most
sectarian and incompetent form of Unionism reflected the expectation that
Stormont would commit Northern Ireland to the war effort. It was also a nod to
the Protestant working class, upon whose support the pro-war push largely
depended. The conference report promoted the opening of a second front,
advocated by Stalin in the international arena, and preached a doctrine of
maximum production in the war industries. At the same time, the Belfast
leadership dissuaded workers in the same industries from taking steps to seek
improvements in pay or working conditions: A strike, no matter under what
circumstances it takes place, cannot be supported by our party.19 The overriding
16

Quoted in Terry Cradden, Trade Unionism, Socialism and Partition (Belfast, 1993), p. 25
Mike Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland: The Pursuit of the Workers Republic Since 1916
(Dublin, 1984), pp. 194-195
18
See Patterson, Ireland Since 1939, pp. 41-42, for exact figures
19
Billy McCullough, Irelands Way Forward, Report of the First National Congress of the CPI (Belfast,
1942)
17

196

concern was, of course, the Allies successful prosecution of the war and the
Soviet Unions survival. Yet this also served to entangle the CPNIs interests
with the Unionist Party.
The CPNIs weekly newspaper Unity, which ran from 1942 to 1946,
developed the pro-war, maximum productivity narrative with enthusiasm.
Nominally, P.J. Musgrove was the editor. However, it was McCullough, as
general secretary, who occupied the front pages regularly. The newspaper
provided ample column space for converts to McCulloughs thinking for
example, Michael McInerney, a former editor of the Connolly Clubs paper Irish
Freedom to parrot the pro-war position. In addition, sycophantic references to
the Red Army and its commander-in-chief grew apace.20 Take, for instance, the
Christmas Day 1942 issue of Unity. Salute to Stalin, the headline ran, as the
paper proceeded in reiterating the main themes of the day. It repeated the call
for the opening of a second front and emphasised cooperation between the
labour movement and Minister of Production in order to do away with
unemployment in the year 1943, increase our production 100% and give the
soldiers of the democratic nations the weapons for victory in 1943.21 The partys
association with the Soviet Union almost certainly had a hand in improving its
performance. The Red Armys historic victory at Stalingrad and the dissolution
of the Comintern ensured that Stalin became the Wests favourite authoritarian,
winning Time magazines Man of the Year award for the second time in 1943.
Ironically, the first he received in 1940 for securing the Molotov-Ribbentrop
Pact. Hostility to communism in the mainstream British press receded, allowing
communist parties on both sides of the Irish Sea to function with renewed
confidence. The year 1943 marked the height of the CPNIs influence over the
decade. It boasted 1,000 members and expanded to form four small branches in
rural areas.22
This progress came in spite of the partys questionable record in the sphere
of industrial relations, during what was an exceptional period of activism in the
Belfast metal trades.23 A number of historians have accused the communists of

20

Unity, 2, 20 January, 26 February, 6 March 1943

Ibid., 25 December 1942
22
NAUK, Security Service, KV2/1185, Sen Murray; Unity, 18 December 1943
23
Phillip Ollerenshaw, War, Industrial Mobilisation and Society in Northern Ireland, 1939-1945,
Contemporary European History, 16 (2) (2007), p. 188
21

197

going to extraordinary lengths to stifle the threat of mass action in the aircraft
and shipbuilding industries, particularly during the strike for a pay rise at
Harland and Wolff in 1944.24 Wartime legislation made union activities difficult
and strike action illegal.25 Yet even after the initial 1944 strike of 1,200
engineers spread to 20,000 men in sympathetic action, the partys response
offered little encouragement to those involved.26 McCullough announced
brazenly that the working class welcomes the opportunity to make sacrifices in
order to smash fascism27 and commissioned the reproduction of a Daily Worker
article by J.R. Campbell condemning unnecessary strikes in the Allied
countries as the work of Trotskyist Saboteurs.28
Malachy Gray, a Falls Road red who doubled as chairman of the partys
industrial committee and a shop stewards committee in the shipyards, admitted
years later that the workforce suffered dangerous and primitive working
conditions. In spite of this, he held off criticising the official party advice that
workers seek gains through such existing structures as joint production
committees.29 The CPIs official history accepts that the leaderships position
caused some consternation in the ranks of younger party members cutting their
teeth in the trade union movement.30 One such member was the late Andy Boyd,
who subtly diverged from the partys position in favour of a more militant
approach. He directed veiled criticisms at the party line, juxtaposing the pursuit
of full employment with the struggle for wage gains,31 and later remarked that
Billy McCullough doubted it was keeping with the war effort to oppose the
Unionists.32 It certainly appears that the communist leadership was keen to
avoid at all costs confrontation with the notoriously intransigent management
in the shipyards: representatives of the Unionist elite in northern industry.
A useful gauge for establishing Murrays degree of influence over 1941-1945
is the number and dispersal of his articles for Unity. Between November 1942
24

Michael Farrell, Northern Ireland: The Orange State (Second Edition) (London, 1980), pp. 173-175;
Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, pp. 204-206; Ciaran Crossey and James Monaghan, The
Origins of Trotskyism in Ireland, Revolutionary History, 6: 2/3 (Summer 1996), pp. 29-31
25
Emmet OConnor, A Labour History of Ireland, 1824-2000, (Dublin, 2011), pp. 203-204
26
Unity, 16, 30 March, 13 April 1944
27
Billy McCullough, But Victory Sooner (Belfast, 1943), p. 12
28
Unity, 20 April 1944
29
Malachy Gray, A Shop Steward Remembers, Saothar, 11 (1986), pp. 113-114
30
Sen Nolan (ed.), Communist Party of Ireland: An Outline History (Dublin, 1975), pp. 38-39
31
Unity, 16 January, 23 December 1943
32
Letter from Andy Boyd to Emmet OConnor, 17 December 2003

198

and the end of 1945, less than a dozen contributions appear with Murrays name
attached. For such a prolific writer, this figure is staggeringly low. Furthermore,
three of these articles are merely abridged versions of lectures Murray
delivered to party supporters, and all but two only appear from November 1944
onwards. This is notable because the second front opened on 6 June, D-Day, and
put the outcome of the war in Europe beyond doubt. It is possible that the
leadership permitted Murray to write vignettes under the pseudonym Red
Hand, though evidence of this is far from conclusive.33 Of greater substance is a
collection of letters in Murrays possession from his old mentor, Jack White,
which point to a pervading culture of censorship within the party. Upon his
return to Ireland in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, White turned to a
strange blend of anarchism, pacifism and mysticism for ideological inspiration.
His views on the Second World War and future role of the Soviet Union in postwar Europe, amongst other issues, were unlikely to resonate with the CPNIs
position. Still, one would expect his years of service to the Irish left to have
counted for something when engaging critically with the party. To the contrary,
the party almost universally rebuffed his overtures.34 White compared his
treatment in discussion with Sinclair and Musgrove to an experience with the
OGPU, the Soviet secret police responsible for administrating the gulags and
carrying out Stalins purges in the late 1920s and early 1930s.35 Even
accounting for this hyperbole, it can be said with some certainty that those
responsible for Unity were not prepared to countenance debate on the partys
war position. It is unclear whether Murray represented the concerns of critical
friends such as White to the leadership or was simply complicit in batting them
away. Either way, his influence on the editorial line was negligible for most of
the war period.
Murray had a greater impact on communist efforts to influence the make-up
and ideological orientation of the Irish Labour Party. Incidentally, a 1944
inquiry into communist infiltration of Labour, instigated by William OBrien as
33

Red Hand columns started to appear in CPI publications towards the end of the 1930s. They
featured most regularly in the pages of Unity, and intermittently in Connolly Clubs/Connolly
Association publications, Irish Freedom and the Irish Democrat. Murrays notebooks (PRONI, Sen
Murray Papers, D2162/E) and vast collection of newspaper cuttings (D2162/L) correlate somewhat
to the issues addressed by a number of Red Hand articles. However, the evidence is largely
circumstantial
34
The exception being an article on Intellectual Liberty, Unity, 6 July 1944
35
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/5/5/1-8, Letters from Jack White, 23 June 1943 - 7 April 1945

199

part of a personal vendetta against Jim Larkin, was well wide of the mark in
placing Murray in the Fairview branch, North Dublin. That he had been living
in Belfast for almost three years did not get in the way of a good witch-hunt.36
However, as much OBrien and his allies exaggerated reports of these activities
and, conversely, as much as the communists denied them, studies of relevant
government documents confirm that a so-called Larkinite/communist element
did have a controlling influence over Dublin branches that attracted former
members of Fianna Fil, Fine Gael and the IRA.37 These conclusions, drawn by
Niamh Puirsil, are borne out by CPI minute books that run into 1944. Minutes
of a surviving Dublin district committee indicate that the party did indeed
practice entryism up until that year at least, with the majority of CPI members
in the Dublin area rallying around Jim Larkin Jnr in the interest of pulling the
Labour Party to the left.38
In 1942/43, Murray attended a handful of leadership meetings, at which the
CPI agreed to a policy of working within the Labour Party in anticipation of a
United Nations victory. On the twenty-sixth anniversary of the Bolshevik
Revolution, Murray delivered a lecture to the same effect, criticising the policy
of neutrality and the role of Gaelic obscurantism in frustrating efforts towards
Irish labour unity. He also praised the Red Army for its victories in Africa and
Eastern Europe. The Soviet Union, he argued, occupied a higher moral ground
than the reticent US government and English reactionary forces, which had
colluded to prevent the opening of a second front until the last possible minute.39
Larkin Jnr, now a Labour TD, echoed these sentiments in a Dil speech
reproduced in Unity.40 On the two outstanding policies of Irish wartime
communism radicalising Irish Labour from within; and drumming up support
for the war against fascism in the interest of strengthening actually existing
socialism in the Soviet Union the national leadership of the former CPI
reached a broad consensus.

36

Charlie McGuire, Roddy Connolly and the Struggle for Socialism in Ireland (Cork, 2008), pp. 188189
37
Niamh Puirsil, The Irish Labour Party, 1922-73 (Dublin, 2007), pp. 95-114
38
CPI Nolan/Palmer Collection, BOX 6/013, Dublin District Committee Minute Books
39
UCDA, Sen MacEntee Papers, P67/522 (3), Revolutionary organisations in the Saorstt Record
of communist activities, January 1942 - December 1943
40
Unity, 27 November 1943

200

Plausibly, Murray would not have been comfortable with the CPNIs easy
cohabitation with the Unionist regime. The partys crude pro-war policies
entailed uncritical support for the Stormont government, which rivalled its
blinkered approach to industrial relations. In December 1942, Unity bemoaned
the loss of Harry Midgley when he resigned from the NILP in protest at the
election of Jack Beattie, an anti-partitionist, as party leader.41 When Midgley
subsequently founded the explicitly Unionist Commonwealth Labour Party
(CLP) and entered Basil Brookes cabinet as a token Labour minister, the CPNI
welcomed it as a political advance for the left.42 Billy McCulloughs apologia for
Unionism, But Victory Sooner, commended the governments commitment to the
war effort and indicated that his party would support the formation of a
Unionist-Labour coalition at Stormont.43 In this context, the communists calls
for labour unity and support for Beattie in the 1943 West Belfast by-election
seem quite opportunistic.44 McCullough also indulged in revisionism by claiming
credit for the partys opposition to fascism since 1933.45 It is recalled that the
Irish communists did not come round to Murrays anti-fascist position en masse
until mid-1934. In his determination for Northern Ireland to see out the war in
alliance with the Soviet Union, McCullough was temporarily blinded to other
realities.
The communists also gave the Unionist government a free pass on the use of
repressive legislation in the interest of the war effort. Despite helping to set up
a reprieve committee for six republicans sentenced to death for the killing of an
RUC man,46 the CPNI dropped its principled opposition to the Special Powers
Act and adopted a more robust attitude towards the IRA.47 Of course, the IRA
had abandoned all pretences to politics to launch a poorly conceived and
ineffective bombing and sabotage campaign in Britain and Northern Ireland.
Sen Morrissey spent much of the war period in prison including ten months
interned on the HMS Al Rawdah for participating in IRA attacks on
businesses and other British imperialist targets. Yet he remained unconvinced
that the republican movement was able to produce a credible social and
41

Ibid., 19 December 1942

Ibid., 8 May 1943
43
McCullough, But Victory Sooner, pp. 3, 10-11
44
See Unity, 6, 13 February, 10-23 March 1943
45
McCullough, But Victory Sooner, p. 15
46
Farrell, The Orange State, pp. 165-167
47
Unity, 13 March 1943
42

201

economic programme. After gaining an introduction to Marxism in prison,

Morrissey joined the CPNI.48 The IRA campaign generally put further distance
between republicans and communists in Belfast and jettisoned any sort of
cooperation. Nevertheless, having suffered harassment throughout the 1930s
under the liberal application of Special Powers legislation, the communists
knee-jerk support for the government on the issue was politically utilitarian and
unprincipled. McCullough clearly believed that opposition to the Special Powers
Act would prejudice its relationship with a Protestant working class suspicious
of, and hostile to, IRA activities. Murray resolved to appeal to republicans and
nationalists, asking for All constitutional issues such as Partition to be left
until the Hitler Fascist menace is destroyed.49 He did not couple this with an
endorsement of the Unionist government per se, nor would he have supported
the use of repressive legislation. Yet he resigned himself to the fact that it was
impossible to make progress on the national question while the war remained
finely balanced.
Around mid-1943, the partys analysis of the northern political environment
did show signs of acquiring greater sophistication. With some forward thinking,
the communists started working to court the NILP, which had continued to gain
popular support in Midgleys absence. The Soviet Unions efforts in defeating
Hitler brought the CPNI and NILP closer on one important level. A process of
political rapprochement began in earnest with the publication of the Beveridge
Report, which, pending the results of the 1945 Westminster elections, signalled
the introduction of welfarism to Britain. Economically, Northern Ireland fared
pretty well in the war years, yet there was an underlying feeling that the region
continued to lag behind the rest of the UK in terms of development. 50 The poor
state of Northern Irelands health service and acute shortages in housing left
the Stormont government open to criticism on matters of socio-economic
importance. The NILPs success in confronting these issues helped the
communists to overcome their inhibitions for adopting a similar approach.

48

Interview with Sen Morrissey, 12 March 2010

Unity, 6 February 1943
50
OConnor, A Labour History of Ireland, p. 186
49

202

Health, housing, and education became watchwords of CPNI publications

thereafter.51
The Unionists second by-election defeat to a NILP candidate in as many
years encouraged the belief that there existed windows of opportunity to
capitalise on working-class disenchantment with the Stormont government. The
CPNI leadership reached an understanding that parity between Britain and
Northern Ireland in the provision of social security would soften the blow dealt
to the province by the impending post-war drop in production. Billy McCullough
envisaged a Labour-led Britain after the next general election and, with his eye
on a share of the future spoils, encouraged the party membership to approve
another change in course. After the CPNIs second annual conference in
October, McCullough announced that the party was prepared to adjust its
position in order for the labour movement to become the fighting opposition to
win the legitimate demands of the people.52 This marked an orientation away
from what one author has described as the partys collaborationist approach
towards Unionism.53 McCullough called not only for an alliance with the NILP
but for the Nationalist Party to end abstentionism and instead campaign on
social issues within parliament.54 Moreover, far from demonstrating great
enthusiasm for Empire,55 McCullough criticised Britains role in India and
lambasted the Tories for their out-dated imperialist attitudes on Ireland.56
Welcoming this shift in emphasis, Murray warned that a Unionist victory in
1945 would isolate the North from other progressive European countries. With
good reason, he voiced concerns about the close links between the Stormont
cabinet and Belfasts industrialists, and the Unionist governments plans to
deregulate the economy after the election. He pledged that the CPNI would not
seek an immediate change in Northern Irelands constitutional status as long as
there was a transformation of Northern politics in a Labour-progressive
direction. McCullough gave similar assurances in the CPGBs theoretical
51

There are many instances of the party taking up a range social issues and promoting the Beveridge
proposals. See Unity, 31 July 1943, for an early example of the party addressing the inadequacies of
the health service
52
Billy McCullough, Ireland Looks to Labour (Belfast, 1943), p. 10
53
Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, p. 208
54
McCullough, Ireland Looks to Labour, p. 22
55
This is quoted by Cradden, Trade Unionism, Socialism and Partition, p. 26, when in fact the term
is used not in CPNI documents but in Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, p. 202
56
McCullough, Ireland Looks to Labour, pp. 7-9, 23

203

journal Labour Monthly, affirming the partys commitment to the provisions of

the Government of Ireland Act devolution within the Union in the short
term.57 At the same time, Murray held out some hope that circumstances would
quickly reacquaint labour and nationalism within an all-island leftist political
framework.58
As the CPNIs proposals for post-war reconstruction and reform came to
bear a striking resemblance to those of the NILP, it seemed only a matter of the
northern communists became further incorporated into British labour
structures. The goal of labour unity moved to the forefront of the communists
plans for post-war Northern Ireland. With both parties drawing most of their
support from British-based trade unions, of which Murray was a card-carrying
member, there were seemingly few obstacles to cooperation. After the CPGB
applied unsuccessfully for affiliation to the Labour Party, the CPNI made a
similar public overture to the NILP, thus pursuing less clandestine tactics than
the Dublin communists. Interestingly, McCullough made this application on
behalf of the Communist Party of Ireland as it was still constituted. This did
not discourage Jimmy Morrow of the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU),
who believed that CPNI members would bring some much needed energy to the
movement.59 However, the stigma attached to communism and the legacy of left
sectarianism ensured that NILP-affiliated trade unionists overwhelmingly
rejected the application.60 Undeterred, the CPNI highlighted instances of trade
union and working-class support for a merger at every opportunity. The party
drew regular parallels between NILP policies and its own, and in late 1944 the
Belfast membership endorsed moves towards labour unity.61 Meanwhile, Unity
published renewed calls for the creation of an informal alliance in opposition to
the Unionist Party, particularly in the lead up to the 1945 general elections. 62 It
is therefore misleading to describe the CPNI as undeviatingly pro-British in all
its deeds and words.63 Obviously, respective war positions either side of the
border reinforced opposing nationalistic identities. Yet support for Britain was

57

Unity, 30 November 1944, 22 March 1945; Labour Monthly, May 1945

Unity, 14 December 1944
59
Cradden, Trade Unionism, Socialism and Partition, pp. 36-37
60
Unity, 19 June, 31 July 1943; Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, p. 208
61
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/G/2, Belfast District Congress Draft Resolution (1944)
62
A few examples will suffice: Unity, 7 August, 6 November 1943, 31 August, 7, 28 September 1944
63
Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, p. 200
58

204

secondary to considerations of labour unity and party deference to the Soviet

Union. The CPNIs pro-Unionism was dynamic, not static.
In the 1945 Stormont election, McCullough campaigned against Lord
Glentoran in Bloomfield, East Belfast, promising to keep step with Britain and
the new world.64 He received 5,802 votes, Betty Sinclair 4,130 in Cromac, and
Sid Maitland 2,524 in West Down.65 There was some evidence of labour
cooperation in Bloomfield and Cromac, where the NILP decided not to stand
against McCullough and Sinclair, leaving a straight fight between the Unionist
and CPNI candidates. Those standing on a labour or socialist platform,
including the CLP, received a combined vote of nearly 126,000, while the
Unionist candidates mustered a total of around 178,000. The Unionists won six
fewer seats than in 1938, which seemed to represent a significant advance for
class politics in the North.66 Yet these figures only translated into five seats for
the labour movement, and no gains for the CPNI. The failure of the two most
prominent northern communists to make a greater impact in their mainly
Protestant constituencies did not bode well for the partys fortunes in less
propitious conditions.

Returning to the Fold

In 1945, just as Murray looked like fading into anonymity, circumstances
handed him another chance to make a mark on communist politics. Initially
appointed to the CPNI executive committee for the forthcoming year, the
northern communists annual conference in March elected Murray as party
chair, a position he kept until the end of the decade.67 At this stage, Murray was
one of six paid communist officials in Ireland. The others included Betty
Sinclair, Billy McCullough, Michael McInerney, Sen Nolan and probably one
other southern cadre.68 It is interesting to note that Nolan received a stipend of
between 25 and 100 per month from the CPUSA for his work as Dublin
correspondent of the American partys Daily Worker, while not necessarily

64

PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/A/5, The Communist Policy election leaflet (1945)
Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, p. 212
66
Graham Walker, A History of the Ulster Unionist Party: Protest, Pragmatism and Pessimism
(Manchester, 2004), p. 100
67
Unity, 8 March 1945
68
Emmet OConnor, Reds and the Green: Ireland, Russia and the Communist Internationals, 1919-43
(Dublin, 2004), p. 233; UCDA, Sen MacEntee Papers, P67/548, Department of Justice Report on
Communism (1947)
65

205

having to make any written contributions to the paper. In fairness, Nolan did
make regular contributions to Unity under the uninspired penname Sen and
edited the Irish Review from its inception in 1945. It is likely, as the authorities
believed, that the Daily Worker angle provided cover for the American party to
channel its tranche of money to the cadres in Dublin. Similarly, Murray was the
Belfast correspondent of the CPGB paper of the same name. It is not beyond the
realm of possibility that, in spite of substantial differences between the two
parties, CPGB funding sustained Murrays position as party chairman until the
back end of 1946. At this point, the party experienced a sharp decline in active
membership; rifts developed within the CPNI leadership; and financial
difficulties forced those in full-time positions to seek employment elsewhere.
With the party failing, Betty Sinclair moved to Bristol to manage the CPGB
bookshop for eighteen months.69 McInerney went to Dublin, joined the Irish
Labour Party, and later became political correspondent of the Irish Times.
Murray formed a partnership with McCullough in the absence of cadres with
the necessary experience to organise the partys dwindling numbers.
Had the CPNIs 1943 surge in support not proved highly ephemeral, there is
no guarantee that Murray would have been presented with a second chance to
lead the party. This consideration notwithstanding, three broadly related postSecond World War trends emerged to facilitate Murrays assertion on the
CPNIs direction of travel into the second half of the century. Firstly, the
sequence of events that contributed to the division of Europe into two competing
blocs the acquirement and use of the atomic bomb by the US; the Yalta
Agreement; renewed territorial, philosophical and economic hostilities between
East and West; and the introduction of the Marshall Plan accentuated the
partys identification with the Soviet Union. This was despite the fact that the
Cominterns dissolution rendered the relationship between Dublin and Moscow
largely irrelevant. With the exception of France, Italy and Great Britain, Stalin
was apathetic towards the activities of Western communist parties. Preoccupied
with safeguarding his buffer zone in the East, the CPSU leader left peripheral
parties such as the CPNI claiming to be alone in its capacity to defend the
national interest and stave off the American variant of imperialism.70 As
69

Hazel Morrissey, Betty Sinclair: A Womans Fight for Socialism, 1910-1981, Saothar, 9 (1983), p.
127
70
Robert Service, Comrades: Communism, A World History (Basingstoke, 2007), p. 262

206

Ireland came under pressure to accept the long-term conditions of Marshall Aid
and subsequent defence agreements, Murray had a pretext for reintroducing the
notion of imperialist aggression to the Irish communist vocabulary. The process
of decolonisation that followed the war also shaped this discourse. More subtly,
Murray could employ terms such as Anglo-American imperialism to describe
the very real attack on socialistic economic planning and simultaneously the
continuation of British rule in Ireland, without invoking the usual connotations
of Anglophobia. A return to an anti-imperialist formula was possible, as long as
it related to political and economic exigencies.
The resurgence of nationalism and anti-partitionism was another important
feature of the post-war landscape. In 1945, the ten Nationalist MPs elected to
Stormont launched an Anti-Partition League (APL). Encouraged by the
formation of a Friends of Ireland lobby group at Westminster, the APL
attempted to highlight the apparent anomalies of partition. This it did with the
goal of embarrassing Prime Minister Attlee into reopening the debate on the
Norths constitutional status. South of the border, the de Valera government
persevered with its self-imposed policy of neutrality in the interest of security
and economic sovereignty. This reinforced a particular type of nationalism in
spite of serious economic difficulties lingering from the Emergency period,
offering the communists one way of presenting Irish unity as a safe haven from
the imposition of liberal capitalist programmes and an escalation of Cold War
hostilities.
Although Fianna Fils foreign policy went largely unquestioned by political
rivals, a radical challenge to its domestic programme emerged in the form of
Clann na Poblachta. Revived in 1946 by Sen MacBride and a number of
disaffected republicans and labourists, the Clann coveted an adaptation of
Fianna Fils 1930s left-of-centre constitutional republicanism.71 Of course,
MacBride was no communist. His version of social democracy owed more to
papal encyclicals than to the tenets of Marxism, and he had no qualms about
indulging in virulent anti-communism.72 However, the new party was socially
progressive in opposition and sufficiently anti-partitionist to capture Murrays

71

Kevin Rafter, The Clann: The Story of Clann na Poblachta (Dublin, 1996)
Dermot Keogh, Twentieth Century Ireland: Nation and State (Dublin, 1994), pp. 173-184;
Patterson, Ireland Since 1939, pp. 82-86
72

207

attention, as it had done in the mid-1930s. It was also significant that Murray
had worked with Peadar Cowan, an important Clann na Poblachta recruit, in
attempts to radicalise the Labour Party in 1943.73 In this context, he hoped to
establish closer links with the republican left in the event of a realignment of
Irish politics.
Lastly, the contradictions of Ulster Unionism between 1945 and 1949
enabled opponents to pose legitimate questions about the authenticity of its
commitment to the link with Britain. Although Clement Attlee reiterated his
pledge not to impose a solution to the national question on the people of
Northern Ireland, British Labours historical sympathy for Irish nationalism
gained exaggerated importance in the context of APL and Friends of Ireland
campaigns.74 Distance between Stormont and Westminster grew, Orange
reaction gathered pace, and even anti-populist elements within the Unionist
Party became entrenched in sectarian politics. Moreover, internal divisions
gradually took hold of the Stormont government as it begrudgingly introduced
the socialistic welfare state to Northern Ireland. Conscious of its strong links
with the Ulster business community and British Toryism, the Unionist Party
was reluctant to sanction policies that gave the state a determining role in socioeconomic development, even if such measures looked to improve the overall
standard of living.75 Welfarism was also anathema to the values of many
middle-class nationalists, including leading APL figures. Therefore, Murray
often found it difficult to link anti-partitionist polemics to progressivism.
Indeed, the split down the middle of the NILP, detachment of rural nationalism
from anti-partitionism in Belfast, and the individualistic nature of the antipartitionist left all complicated the CPNIs search for allies.76 Nevertheless, the
Unionist Partys incoherence represented a significant chink in its armour.
Under pressure from cabinet colleagues, Brooke struggled to clarify Northern
Irelands relationship with the Labour government in London, leaving him open

73

CPI Nolan/Palmer Collection, BOX 6/013, Dublin District Committee Minute Books, 24 February
1943; UCDA, Sen MacEntee Papers, P67/522 (3), Revolutionary organisations in the Saorstt
Record of communist activities, January 1942 - December 1943
74
Bob Purdie, The Friends of Ireland, British Labour and Irish Nationalism in Tom Gallagher and
James OConnell (eds.), Contemporary Irish Studies (Manchester, 1983)
75
Paul Bew, Peter Gibbon and Henry Patterson, Northern Ireland, 1921-2001: Political Forces and
Social Classes (London, 2002), pp. 86-99
76
E. Rumpf and A.C. Hepburn, Nationalism and Socialism in Twentieth-Century Ireland (Liverpool,
1977), pp. 186-191

208

to the socialist criticism that he did not have the best interests of the working
class at heart. Murray and McCullough explored ways of incorporating antiimperialist and anti-partitionist ideas into the CPNIs agenda without
sacrificing any more working-class support.

Reform and Reunification

We recall that the paucity of Murrays Unity contributions was broadly
consistent with his actual influence during the war period. Similarly, then, the
papers editorial line under his stewardship in 1945 and 1946 is an accurate
indicator of his return to the fore. That Murray published the following letter
from Peadar ODonnell said as much:
Unity is growing up under your Editorship. It is good to think that the
Republican tradition, which gave the Irish struggle for independence its
place in the vanguard of all oppressed peoples struggling to be free,
should, through you, be incorporated into the fight against reaction in
the Six Counties to-day. It seems a long cry now back to those days
when, at the crossroads in the fight for the Republic, the great body of
the movement was swept leftwards by the hold of the tradition in the
mass of the Irish people; carrying you and me with it in its stormy tide.
Good luck to you in your work to give life and meaning to what Mellows
taught.77
As his private papers indicate, and as his friend ODonnell remarked above,
Murray was keen to promote republican or advanced nationalist solutions to the
problems facing Northern Ireland. In one editorial, he promoted the ownership
of Ireland by the people of Ireland and suggested that the labour movement
revisit Mellows Notes from Mountjoy Jail proposals.78 On the centenary of
Thomas Davis death, Murray argued that the labour movement in Ulster
should identify with the Young Ireland struggle against famine and evictions.
While lambasting those whose nationalism tends to be a glorification of
Celticism, or men like Harry Midgley who blather about Anglo-Saxon ancestry
and peculiarities, he drew on Davis Protestant background and proceeded with
the oft-repeated yet particularly inopportune socialist republican argument that
there was no impediment to the conception of an Irish nation that
accommodated both identities.79 Similarly, in a lengthy and positive review of

77

Unity, 23 February 1946

Ibid., 6 December 1945
79
Ibid., 20 September 1945
78

209

T.A. Jacksons Ireland Her Own, he revisited the northern, Protestant origins of
Irish republicanism.80 Finally, to offer something more palatable to Protestants
facing hardship, he commissioned Andy Boyd, a leading AEU figure, to write an
article highlighting the merits of following Michael Davitts example in creating
an island-wide struggle for housing and better living conditions.81 Boyd was
contemptuous of modern republicanism, but identified with its non-sectarian
heritage and its historical ties with agrarian radicalism.
Articles addressing the subject of imperialism accumulated in Unity, though
they generally examined the novel Yankee variant. The strongest denunciation
of British imperialism came after widespread communal riots ignited in
Calcutta on 16 August 1946. The CPNI interpreted Direct Action Day as a direct
consequence of divide and rule tactics employed by the British authorities in
India, whereby the Raj played on acute divisions between the Indian National
Congress and All-India Muslim League. Murray called for the two competing
ethnic blocs to resolve their differences without the intervention of extraneous
forces; to be given the opportunity to run their own country, completely freed
from the harmful influence and control of British imperial policy. He made no
direct comparison between India and Ireland, though the inference was there. It
is also interesting to note that although these events occurred on a Labour
governments watch, the communists did not regard imperialism as anything
other than a Tory phenomenon.82 In anticipation of an intervention by British
Labour on the issue of partition, the CPNI stood in the ambiguous position of
criticising British colonial policy without giving mention to the government of
the day.
The convergence of communism and British Labour at the end of the war
was another reason for the partys reluctance to attack the British government.
In the North, the CPNI and NILP shared a commitment to welfarism and the
strategy of separating the Protestant working class from Unionism. Accordingly,
Murray continued to sanction a deliberate focus on social progress in Britain,
and lack thereof in Northern Ireland. The Stormont government did anticipate

80

Ibid., 12 October 1946; In Irish Review, May 1948, Murray writes a similarly positive review of
Desmond Ryans (ed.) Socialism and Nationalism: A Selection from the Writings of James Connolly
(Dublin, 1948)
81
Unity, 6 April 1946
82
Ibid., 24 August 1946

210

measures such as the National Insurance Act (Northern Ireland), which

provided financial assistance for the sick, unemployed, the retired, widows and
orphans, women on maternity, and those incurring the cost of funerals.83
However, as the front pages of Unity highlighted, Unionist foot-dragging
threatened to impede the building of a welfare state in the North; Stormont
ministers and backbenchers resisted measures that increased the wages of the
lowest paid; and the Unionist Party refused to follow Westminster in repealing
the antiquated Trades Disputes and Trade Unions Act (1927).84 Neither did
Harry Midgley escape criticism for toeing the Unionist line on the Health Bill
that laid the foundations of the National Health Service.85
Murray described the intransigence of senior Unionist figures as the
ourselves alone approach, a play on words that drew unwelcome comparisons
with Sinn Fin. This often led to further, more probing criticisms of the Unionist
Partys raison dtre.86 On the unveiling of the statue of James Craig at
Stormont, Murray chipped in with a jibe at the two most celebrated Unionist
leaders achievements:
The net result of the labours of the two noble lords [Carson and Craig]
now in bronze at Stormont, was to give one part of Ireland a Republic
and the other the very Home Rule against which they had fought all
their lives.87
It is highly unlikely that Murrays writings featured high on the Unionist
Partys agenda. However, they may have had some influence in the shipyards,
where the CPNIs presence was strongest. The above remarks were incisive in
the context of the intense Unionist debate on the viability of Northern Ireland
as a Dominion within the British Empire.88 As long as the dominant section of
the Unionist political class stood in opposition to the British Labour
government, the argument continued that the northern political establishment
was fickle and self-serving.

83

Thomas Hennessey, A History of Northern Ireland, 1920-1996 (Dublin, 1997), p. 95

Unity, 30 March, 16 April 1946
85
Ibid., 6 July 1946
86
Ibid., January 1944, 29 November 1945
87
Ibid., 8 November 1945; A similar, unpublished article also sits in Murrays private papers: PRONI,
Sen Murray Papers, D2162/A/1, Untitled article on Unionism (1945)
88
Brian Barton, Relations between Westminster and Stormont during the Attlee Premiership, Irish
Political Studies, Vol. 7 (1992), pp. 1-20
84

211

Around the same time, Murray found opportunities to develop as a writer,

initially when Peadar ODonnell took over editorial control of The Bell, a Dublinbased literary journal featuring contributions from some of Irelands finest
writers, and simultaneously when his southern comrades launched the Irish
Review. In addition to two book reviews,89 and one article that will be discussed
presently, ODonnell asked Murray to contribute pieces on international affairs,
which he amended slightly and published under his own name.90 Robinson
Crusoe Politics brought Murrays criticisms of Unionism to the conclusion that,
where the Unionist Party demonstrated hostility to labour politics, it principally
aligned itself with Toryism. He gave instances of Tory support for the Unionist
Party in a recent County Down by-election, for example, and the attendance of
a former Tory minister at the Unionist Party conference and compared the
situation to the Home Rule crisis, during which the Tories used Unionist Ulster
as a battering ram against their opponents in Westminster. In place of more
crude socialist republican analyses, Murray recognised that Ulster Unionism
was not a socially homogenous bloc, with the industrialists liaising with
shopkeepers, lawyers, the professional middle class and the working-class
UULA contingent.91
Murrays goal was, therefore, to detach the working class and petit
bourgeoisie from the Unionist Party by drawing attention to the progressive
policies that their political representatives attempted to obstruct. As long as
those people far removed from the privileged circles continued to vote Tory by
proxy, they were likely to imperil the very causes they are seeking to uphold.92
To supplement these arguments, Murray worked on a Marxist critique of the
Ulster business class and its links with British capitalist interests, based on
information gathered from various newspapers. In one study, he focused on the
high levels of British financial investment in the small Northern Ireland
banking sector and in Harland and Wolff.93 In another, he looked at the
triangular relationship between British monopoly capital, Unionist MPs and the

89

The Bell, Vol. XII, No. 4 (July 1946), pp. 357, 359-360
Richard English, Radicals and the Republic: Socialist Republicanism in the Irish Free State, 19251937 (Oxford, 1994), p. 178fn. One possible example is an editorial titled Our Mythical Fascism
Again, The Bell, Vol. XV, No. 1 (October 1947), pp. 1-4
91
Sen Murray, Robinson Crusoe Politics, The Bell, Vol. XII, No. 6 (September 1946), pp. 502-508
92
Ibid.
93
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/C/5, Belfast Bullion (c. 1946)
90

212

flax and linen magnates.94 Murray was forever trying to apply the analyses
found in Lenins Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism to the Irish
economy. However, these arguments remained segmented and were never fused
together in one document. As interesting as these studies were, they were dense
works in progress and probably deemed unfit for public consumption by their
author.
Theoretically, the CPNI had a strong case against the continuation of
Unionist rule at Stormont. Its arguments resonated with those made by other
socialist protagonists, yet the party signally failed to follow its strong tradition
of mobilisation on single-issue campaigns. In 1947, a three-week strike by
around 5,000 workers at Shorts aircraft factory secured the reinstatement of
Andy Barr, a communist shop steward in the Sheetmetal Workers Union, and
Andy Holmes, a NILP member who sat in council with Barr in the works
committee. As Farrell has noted, the CPNI retained a dominant position on the
shop-floor and in some of the unions.95 Betty Sinclair returned to the North take
up the post of Belfast Trades Council secretary, which she held until her death
in 1975,96 and Malachy Gray kept office in the Amalgamated Transport and
General Workers Union (ATGWU) until 1949, when the union introduced a ban
on communists holding official positions.97 However, apart from these areas of
undoubted influence, the party did not have the numbers to replicate the
successes of the 1930s. Nor did it put its numbers to good use. In short, the
CPNI leadership was either unable or unwilling to lead the party out of
economism. This reduced the CPNIs role to that of an insignificant observer,
providing running commentary on bread and butter politics. Even this function
became gradually obsolescent as Brooke pushed through social reforms in line
with Britain.
Reassured by financial guarantees from the Treasury to underwrite high
levels of public spending, the Northern Ireland Prime Minister resisted
opposition from within and without his party to bring welfarism and post-war
planning to the province. This process was not without controversy, involving

94

PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/C/6, The Flax and Linen Industry of Northern Ireland, 21 June
1946
95
Farrell, The Orange State, p. 191
96
Morrissey, Betty Sinclair, p. 127
97
Cradden, Trade Unionism, Socialism and Partition, p. 157

213

local adjustments and tactical concessions to the governments critics. Brooke

diluted measures that were perceived to be anti-business in content. Other
legislation, such as the Safeguarding of Employment Act (1947), the government
introduced to fend off irean infiltration of the labour market. Moreover,
trenchant Orange opposition to education reforms occasioned the resignation of
Samuel Hall-Thompson, the Minister for Education. Despite this, progress
occurred at a steady pace. Hall-Thompsons successor, Harry Midgley, now
formally a Unionist MP (which did not go unnoticed by Murray98), failed to
make a compelling case for clawing back some of the 15 percent increase in
grants to the voluntary (mainly Catholic) school sector under the Education Act
(1947), thus leaving it intact. This not only provided more direct funding for
Catholic schools but obliged education boards to provide a range of free services,
such as medical treatment, school meals, and milk, books and stationery. The
extension of welfarism continued as Stormont passed a series of bills that
brought the British version of the NHS another step closer to Northern Ireland.
Finally, while there were obvious caveats to the Unionist administrations
approach to housing, namely the provision of public subsidies to private
builders, Brooke achieved great improvements over the next decade or so. In
1943, the government estimated that the North urgently required almost
100,000 new houses to deal with overcrowding and replace those in disrepair.
By 1961, 95,326 houses had been built, compared with 50,000 in the inter-war
period. Winning the economic argument, Brooke succeeded in widening the gulf
between the two Irish states and undermining those colleagues pushing for
Dominion status.99 Alleged and real discrimination in employment and housing
allocation, gerrymandering of election constituencies, and the Special Powers
Act, all remained bones of contention. However, the economic case for ending
partition was substantially weakened.
The CPGB archives for this period reveal a party largely disinterested in
Irish affairs. As far as colonialism was concerned, the CPGB focused its energy
on countries such as India, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Malaya, Palestine, Nigeria, and
even French Indochina, with Ireland coming much further down the list. Even
so, the CPNI leadership continued to promote friendly, if not entirely fruitful
relations with British communists during these years. The British party
98
99

Irish Review, December 1947

Patterson, Ireland Since 1939, pp. 118-124; Hennessey, A History of Northern Ireland, pp. 94-96

214

frequently invited Belfast comrades to its events. In October 1947, probably at

the invitation of William Gallacher, Murray made an appearance at a Scottish
communist conference, and in November 1949 attended the CPGBs annual
conference. February 1947 brought the British Empire Communist Parties
conference, at which Murray was accompanied by Billy McCullough and Andy
Barr.100 A CPNI statement issued in November 1946 offered a preview of what
the remaining UK parties could expect to hear in McCulloughs address. It
emphasised the point that partition was imposed on the people of Ireland by the
representatives of British Capitalism, highlighted areas where the existence of
the border handicapped the island economy, and argued that the bourgeoisie
had historically exploited the constitutional question to the detriment of labour
unity in the North. Though affirming its opposition to partition in principle, the
party pledged not to take any action that would further contribute to the
division of the working class or play into the hands of reaction. According to
this statement, and subsequently alluded to in McCulloughs Empire conference
speech, partition would resolve itself under specific conditions: the election of
progressive governments in Britain and both parts of Ireland; greater crossborder cooperation on trade, agriculture and industry; and the development of a
strong all-island economy to weaken the material link with Britain.101
From 1945 onwards, the Irish communists connection with Britain found
fullest expression in the work of the Connolly Association. Although it had
emerged from the remnants of the Republican Congress, the Connolly
Association in its infancy occasionally found itself at odds with the CPNI. In a
letter with Murrays thumbprints, sent privately to the Connolly Associations
executive committee and Irish Democrat editorial board, the Belfast leadership
laid out a series of concerns regarding the Democrats editorial line. Specifically,
the letter chastised the paper for faulting de Valera too often and ignoring the
role of British imperialism in the maintenance of partition. It further argued
that the Connolly Association should view Irish neutrality in a positive light a
factor favouring our fight against the Anglo-American bloc and not the opposite
and that the Fianna Fil government was susceptible to pressure on social
issues. Most interestingly, it noted that
100

NAUK, Security Service, KV2/1185, Sen Murray

CPI Nolan/Palmer Collection, Communist Party Special Conference Statement: The Border, 17
November 1946; Irish Democrat, March 1947

101

215

Despite repeated protests from us, our Comrades in London do not

appear to appreciate that there are other sections in Society besides the
working class that are interested in the ending of partition.
Recognising that British Labour in office was unsympathetic to the Irish cause,
the CPNI requested that the Connolly Association move beyond clichd socialist
slogans and view the anti-partition movement in Britain as a progressive factor
in tactical terms.102 Jim Prendergast, who was on the Democrats editorial
board, added his support to the CPNI position and criticised Greaves in
particular for suggesting that the Irish Labour Party work independently from
anti-partitionists on social, economic and foreign policy issues.103 Tommy
Watters, now leading the APLs Manchester branch, delivered a typically
measured response. Yet he too wrote to the effect that there was some naivety in
assuming that a British Labour victory would automatically open the prison
gates and bring an early end to partition. His preference was for all
progressives to place greater scrutiny on Labour imperialism, with which the
British government was heavily tainted.104
Following this discussion, and in light of the advances made by the Brooke
administration towards welfarism, the CPNI thought it necessary to withdraw
from its reactive statements on anti-partitionism. Thus while Murray and
McCullough hoped that the Connolly Association would adopt a more robust
approach towards the British government, they were not about to follow such
APL figures as Eddie McAteer in supporting anti-Unionist campaigns designed
to counteract the integrative effects of the welfare state.105 Rather, they
followed the NILPs balancing act, giving tacit approval to Brookes reforms
whilst underscoring the progressive aspects of anti-partitionist campaigns, to
which labourists not ideologically committed to Irish reunification could lend
support.106 One obvious starting point was the principle of one man, one vote,
which had not been extended to Northern Ireland in line with the rest of the
UK. The CPNI identified the persistence of a number of anomalies in the
electoral system. A party statement suggested that it would be sensible to

102

CPI Nolan/Palmer Collection, BOX 4/039, Letter to Connolly Association and Irish Democrat
Editorial Board, 15 March 1946
103
Irish Democrat, March 1947
104
Ibid., October 1947
105
Patterson, Ireland Since 1939, p. 132
106
Cradden, Trade Unionism, Socialism and Partition, p. 170

216

campaign for a return to the Government of Ireland Act i.e. proportional

representation which, along with an end to gerrymandering, would give
northern Catholics a political voice. Repeal of the Special Powers Act, the
statement continued, provided another rallying point.107 Murray recounted how
the authorities had used the Act to curb the activities of socialists throughout
the 1920s and 1930s, and thus urged the labour movement to claim its stake in
having the legislation repealed.108 To effect change on these issues, the Connolly
Association would have to build a broad movement of the working class and
Irish emigrants around the Irish Democrat, and ratchet up the pressure on
British Labour to introduce substantial reforms in the North as a bare
minimum. At the same time, the Belfast communists promised to use their
positions in the unions to lessen the oppression in the Six Counties, and open
the way to a fuller democracy.109
Externalising the problem of partition, and projecting responsibility for it
onto their comrades in London, enabled the CPNI to match the NILPs
something-for-everyone approach to domestic politics, albeit on a more abstract
level. This reflected, to a certain extent, a lack of originality on the CPNI
leaderships part. Murray and McCullough might have also anticipated a leftist
formation coming to power in the South, adjusting the partys position
accordingly. Although Northern Irelands path out of the war was not without
its problems, historians of the immediate post-war period in ire have generally
described it as one of stagnation or malaise. As the party of government in
hard times, struggling to breathe life into the economy and keep up with the
pace of welfare legislation in Britain, Fianna Fil came under intense pressure
in 1947 with the loss of a number of local council seats, mostly to Clann na
Poblachta. The new party followed these successes with two by-election
victories, with Sen MacBride defeating the Fianna Fil candidate to enter the
Dil for the first time. De Valera responded with his tried and trusted tactic of
calling a snap election for February 1948, as a means of stifling Clann na
Poblachtas momentum. However, on this occasion, the move backfired. The
government lost its overall majority while MacBrides party increased its tally of
107

PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/F/9, Party statement on Ireland and Anti-Partition campaign,
November 1947
108
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/M/8, Letter from Murray to the Manchester Guardian (1947)
109
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/F/9, Party statement on Ireland and Anti-Partition campaign,
November 1947

217

Dil seats to ten. Yet, for reasons expounded by J.J. Lee, the Clann failed to
make the breakthrough anticipated by MacBride, and was some way short of
forming a government with the handful of independents, the two Labour parties
and the small farmer Clann na Talmhan.110
All opposition parties fought the election on a broad anti-Fianna Fil basis.
Policy debates therefore barely penetrated the surface. De Valera hoped that the
five deputies from National Labour, the political wing of the ITGWU-dominated
Congress of Irish Unions (CIU), would come to his rescue and prop up a Fianna
Fil government. To his and the CIU executives disbelief, National Labour
agreed to enter into coalition with Fine Gael. The remaining anti-Fianna Fil
deputies, including those from its Irish Labour rival, followed National Labour
into government. Fine Gaels John A. Costello became Taoiseach. The election
did not usher in the leftist political paradigm that pre-election trends may have
promised to some. Nevertheless, enthused by the progress of the Attlee
administration, Labour finally grasped its opportunity for political power, while
six of the thirteen incumbent cabinet ministers were of a left-of-centre
disposition.111 If the northern communists intended on pursuing a more gradual
reformist strategy, they would support a strong Labour presence in the British
and Irish governments.
With the CPNI at a crossroads in terms of policy development, two main
pressures told on the party leadership. First, the influence of Clann na
Poblachta in the inter-party government and de Valeras response to electoral
defeat made partition an ever more prominent issue. Following the general
election, de Valera went on an anti-partition tour of Britain, North America,
Australia and New Zealand in a patent attempt to shore up support at home.
Hugh Delargy, the Antrim-born Labour Party MP for Manchester Platting and
leading APL figure, likened the British legs of de Valeras tour to tribal rallies.
According to Delargy, nostalgic references to 1916 and the ceremonial presence
of IRA veterans left sympathetic Englishmen in attendance bewildered.112 In
terms of tapping into diasporic support, the inter-party government was
prepared to trade blows with Dev. For example, as Minister for External
110

J.J. Lee, Ireland: Politics and Society, 1912-1985 (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 295-299
Puirsil, The Irish Labour Party, pp. 130-135
112
Brendan Lynn, The Irish Anti-Partition League and the Political Realities of Partition, 1945-9, Irish
Historical Studies, Vol. 34, No. 135 (May 2005), pp. 328-329
111

218

Affairs, Sen MacBride used Irish reunification as a bargaining chip with

British and American negotiators hoping to secure Irelands signature to a
Western defence agreement. At the very least, the government hoped to use the
islands perceived strategic importance to garner support for a formal
international inquiry on the legitimacy of partition.113
This leads us to a second gestating factor: Irelands integration into a West
European economic and political framework through the post-war European
Recovery Programme, for which MacBrides department assumed responsibility.
MacBride advocated increased state investment in areas such as land
reclamation, afforestation, housing and health, but recognised that this not to
mention the extension of the welfare system could not take place at any great
rate without external funding. In spite of his efforts to secure concessions on
partition, MacBrides commitment to Marshall Aid was such that he expelled
Peadar Cowan for expressing opposition to it.114 MacBrides radicalism was also
deceptive in that he was as intimately tied to the Catholic Churchs renewed
anti-communist campaign as his Fine Gael colleagues, enjoying a close
relationship with Archbishop John McQuaid in particular. During the Italian
general election of 1948, Archbishop McQuaid encouraged Catholics to donate to
the anti-communist cause. In the space of a month, this church gate collection
raised 20,000 for the Italian Christian Democrats. Even the Connolly
Association came under attack from bishops in the west of Ireland.115
Meanwhile, Professor Alfred ORahilly, a key figure in the 1944 Labour split,
introduced courses in Catholic social teaching for trade unionists at University
College Cork.116 Murray and the CPNI had much to be concerned about as their
southern comrades gave birth to the numerically insignificant Irish Workers
League in 1948.
Though existing organisational connections were few, the Irish communists
remained wedded to the Soviet myth that had frequently prevented them from
sustaining an articulate class analysis of local events. References to Stalin were
comparatively few during the last years of the 1940s, probably due the new
113

Graham Walker, Northern Ireland, British-Irish Relations and American Concerns, 1942-1956,
Twentieth Century British History, 18 (2) (2007), pp. 205-209; Patterson, Ireland Since 1939, pp. 9597
114
Ibid., pp. 88-89, 97
115
Standard, 12 November 1948
116
OConnor, A Labour History of Ireland, pp. 174-175

219

phase of Red Scare propaganda. However, as the apparent antithesis of AngloAmerican imperialism and champion of colonial countries, Irish communists
viewed the Soviet Union a useful notional ally to have. Little changed in
Murrays assessment of the Unionist elite as pro-big business and anti-labour
Tories, though he speculated on the negative effects of the Marshall Plan on
industrial employment in the North and added to his exploration of the Unionist
Partys connection to British monopoly capital.117 Neither did the CPNIs
programme for Northern Ireland diverge from the reformist ideas promoted just
a few months earlier. In fact, the party adopted them as its own and dispensed
with all congratulatory references to the APL.118 In essence, the party
leadership moved haphazardly closer to the Connolly Associations view of the
social, economic and national struggles as mutually reinforcing, whilst
reiterating a quite paradoxical commitment to reform within the six counties. A
major problem was that the CPNI leadership and rank-and-file were
characterised by inaction. Beyond what were often hypothetical prescriptions,
there was no evidence of concrete political steps to advance the goals of labour
unity and Irish reunification.
Murrays frustration with existing debates on partition was evident from his
response to the Republic of Ireland Act (1948). Costello hurriedly announced
this piece of legislation whilst on a speaking tour of Canada in September, to
the surprise and displeasure of his governmental colleagues. It proposed to
repeal the External Relations Act of 1936, withdraw ire from the
Commonwealth and declare a republic. Here Costello cunningly stole a march
on MacBride and Independent TDs such as Peadar Cowan, who may have been
inclined to present a similar motion to the Dil.119 Murrays fears about greater
defence cooperation and the establishment of US bases in the South were
ultimately unfounded, though not patently so at the time the government only
refused outright to join NATO one year later. In the context of a preceding
Trade Agreement (1948) with Britain, which further increased Irelands
dependence on the British market, Murray argued that it was possible for the
ruling class to use repeal of the External Relations Act as cover for sacrificing

117

PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/A/8, Statement on Northern Ireland (1948); British Monopoly
Capital Swallows North (1948)
118
Irish Democrat, May 1948
119
Lee, Ireland, p. 300

220

economic sovereignty to a US-led Western bloc.120 His assessment was most

perceptive on two counts, both relating to the national question. Firstly, he
recognised that while the move has the advantage of outflanking de Valeras
party on the national independence issue in the short term, it would have the
unintended effect of leaving future Irish governments impotent on partition.
Secondly, he observed correctly that it consolidated Northern Irelands position
within the Union and made it more straightforward for Attlees government to
fall in behind Brooke.121 Under pressure from the Northern Ireland Prime
Minister, and wary of a Conservative intervention on the matter, British Labour
responded sympathetically to Unionist concerns, culminating in the publication
of the Ireland Bill on 3 May 1949.122 The resulting Ireland Act, passed in June,
affirmed that in no event will Northern Ireland or any part thereof cease to be
part...of the United Kingdom without the consent of the Parliament of Northern
Ireland.123 Murrays statement, well known in Irish socialist circles You can
ignore the national question, but the national question will never ignore you124
had come back to haunt him.
As noted in earlier chapters, Murrays view on the national question
oscillated from a stageist conception, in which Irish unification and
independence preceded the struggle for socialism, to a theory which intertwined
the social and national struggles. Under his and McCulloughs direction, the
CPNI settled on a moderate, unambitious version of the latter. Murray was
keen to ensure that the British government did not shirk its responsibility for
the borders existence, arguing that London ultimately administered partition.
But once again, he sought to complement this with a materialist analysis,
addressing the economic problems associated with partition. The crux of his
argument was that industries such as linen had started into decline because of
increased competition from cotton producers in Britain, Russia and the Baltic
region; cheap produce from abroad was bound to negatively affect Irish
agriculture, as it had during the inter-war period; and the Irish economy would
be unable to cope with a rapid transition to free trade. The predominantly
120

PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/A/12a, Sen Murray, External Relations Act (1948);
Patterson, Ireland Since 1939, pp. 80-81
121
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/A/12a, Sen Murray, External Relations Act (1948)
122
Russell Rees, Labour and the Northern Problem, 1945-1951 (Dublin, 2009), pp. 124-137
123
Quoted in Lee, Ireland, p. 300
124
Interview with Eoin Murch, 17 May 2010

221

industrial northern and mainly agricultural southern economies, he argued,

would complement each other if merged and nurtured behind the 1930s
protectionist barriers. The domestic agricultural market provided the basis for
the development of industry across the island.125 Murray alluded to the
problems associated with leaving the precarious Irish economy to the mercies of
free markets. What he did not deal with was Irelands dependence on
international financial assistance, the natural decline of archaic industries in
light of global adjustments, or the substantial North-South disparities that
reinforced the attachment of northern workers to the British state.
Murray sought to convince the CPNI membership that, in retrospect, Irish
neutrality was a sensible policy because it kept the twenty-six counties out of
future Anglo-American war plans, whereas British troops in the North
automatically committed the region to war or peace with other foreign powers.
He conjured up images of a Western bloc in direct conflict with the Soviet Union
and reminded party members of the Soviet Unions role in freeing the countries
of Central and Eastern Europe (and France) from the grip of fascism.
Continuing with this line of reasoning, he asserted that the interests of the Irish
workers lay with those in the Soviet Union and with the colonial countries now
on the march to independence from their long servitude. Ireland, in his view,
fitted loosely into this analytical framework. Murray envisaged Irish workers
associating themselves with the genuine voice of Republican Ireland that had
begun to recover from the gun disasters spoken of by Mellows and the
disgusting orgy of constitutional idiocy and corrupt political jugglery ushered in
by the lawyers of Clann na Poblachta. In essence, he harboured two main
hopes. Firstly, that a broad anti-partition movement, led by constitutional
republicanism and supported by the labour movement, would emerge out of the
crises in domestic politics and launch a democratic campaign for Irish
reunification. Secondly, that a unified and neutral Ireland would resist British
and American intervention in its affairs and avoid confrontation with nations
with whom the Irish people have no quarrel or can ever have any quarrel, such
as Greece, the socialist countries of Eastern Europe and, of course, the Soviet
Union. As an alternative to adopting the role of a petty appendage and pawn of
English-Wall St. Imperialism tied to British economy more securely than under

125

PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/A/8, Removing Internal Causes of Partition (c. 1949)

222

the Act of Union, Murrays Ireland would pursue peace, friendship and trade
relations on the basis of sovereignty and equality. Such a policy would
genuinely serve the interests of the Irish people and nation and would be in line
with the countrys traditions from Tone to Pearse, Connolly and Mellows.126
The analysis of partition presented by Desmond Greaves, editor of the Irish
Democrat and guiding voice of the Connolly Association, was less sympathetic
towards de Valera. Yet it delivered broadly the same anti-imperialist message,
which established a common denominator for collaboration between the two
groups thereafter.127 Indeed, these years marked the start of a dialogue between
the Connolly Association and Irish communists. In this new spirit of
comradeship, Greaves felt obliged to point out the CPNIs fundamental flaw:
in place of the clear line of solving the border question on the basis of the
unity of the working people against American and British imperialism
and their war plans, [the party] has virtually two lines, one for the
Catholics, one for the Protestants i.e. is against the border but doesnt
raise it now.128
It was clear from the outset that the February 1949 chapel-gates election so
called because APL collections were held at chapel gates in the South would be
fought as a referendum on the border. The Unionist press put sustained
pressure on the NILP to adopt a clear position on the national question, one way
or another. The prospect of attempting to challenge Unionist hegemony on
Brookes terms sent pro-Union and agnostic NILPers scrambling to cement
closer links with the British labour movement. When the NILP finally endorsed
the constitutional status quo, this was at the expense of party unity. Simmering
internal tensions dating back to the Midgley-Beattie rivalry of the late 1930s
and early 1940s came to a boil. Individual members drifted away and the
leadership expelled the West Belfast branch for convening a conference in
opposition to the partys pro-Union declaration.129 Most of the dissenters,
including the whole West Belfast branch, gravitated towards the remaining
anti-partitionists in Stormont Frank Hanna, who had just resigned from the

126

PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/A/8, Unnamed article (c. 1949)

C. Desmond Greaves, How to End Partition (London, 1949)
128
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/A/11, C. Desmond Greaves, ires decision to Repeal the
External Relations Act, November 1948
129
Aaron Edwards, A History of the Northern Ireland Labour Party: Democratic Socialism and
Sectarianism (Manchester, 2009), pp. 36-43
127

223

NILP, and Harry Diamond of the Socialist Republican Party and Jack Beattie.
They soon coalesced around the Irish Labour Party, which sanctioned the
establishment of northern branches in response to the Ireland Act and NILP
split.130
In the 1949 Stormont election, Billy McCullough stood once again against
Lord Glentoran in Bloomfield. McCullough campaigned on matters of economic
reform; against the deindustrialisation of Belfast; for heavier taxation of big
business and increased state investment; and for trade agreements between
Northern Ireland and the Soviet Union.131 On the fraught issue of partition, we
cannot find him guilty of refusing to confront it as such.132 It is more accurate
to describe his message as contradictory. On the one hand, McCulloughs
election statement, which appeared in the Irish Democrat, conveyed Murrays
social and economic arguments in favour of Irish reunification.133 On the other,
he instructed canvassers to downplay the issue on the doorsteps and
concentrate on emphasising the link with social democratic Britain.134 The party
leadership had backed itself into an ideological corner. To focus on material
conditions was uncontroversial, yet highly unlikely to compete with the Unionist
Partys resources and vitriolic propaganda or resonate with anyone beyond the
small numbers of traditional anti-Unionist voters in the constituency. APL
campaigns, the repeal of the External Relations Act, and the Unionist and
British Labour responses that these developments provoked, all served to
further entrench sectarian politics in the North. As Bew et al. have noted, these
events enabled the Unionist elite to
merge welfarism with populism with greater ease. Welfare benefits were
presented as the fruit of the British connection and Catholics stigmatised
as two-faced intransigents for accepting the benefits while continuing to
reject the legitimacy of the state.135
As expected, the election was bitterly fought and Unionist Party supporters did
not grant labourist candidates any mercy. For example, after suffering a loyalist
attack at one election meeting, Jack Beattie took to wearing a steel helmet for
130

OConnor, A Labour History of Ireland, pp. 214-215

Irish Democrat, February 1949
132
Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, p. 122
133
Irish Democrat, February 1949
134
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/A/16, Facts for speakers and canvassers (1949)
135
Bew et al., Northern Ireland, p. 98
131

224

the duration of the campaign.136 Unsurprisingly, in light of events in the

intervening years, the spirit of labour cooperation did not survive 1945. The
NILP was not inclined to step aside and allow the communists the opportunity
to slog it out with the Unionist Party. It fielded only nine candidates, one
against McCullough in Bloomfield. Although the NILPs electoral vote all but
collapsed in 1949, its Bloomfield candidate, Tom Boyd, a future party leader,
still mustered enough support to beat McCullough into third place. The CPNI
general secretarys paltry 623 votes were 5,000 fewer than in 1945, and he lost
his deposit in the process. This revealed a remarkable decline for a party that
showed signs of flourishing just four years previous.
Conclusion
A combination of factors made Murrays return to Belfast an especially daunting
proposition. Financial considerations obviously played a major part in
hampering his reintegration into the northern communist movement. He was
also entering an environment in which a number of younger and enthusiastic
personalities had emerged in his absence. McCullough and Sinclair in particular
had become established figures in the CPIs Belfast branch, whereas Murray
had not been quite as visible in the North since his exclusion in 1933. This
disengagement was also political in that Murray generally came to view
republicans as the communists most dependable allies. This was patently not
going to work in wartime Belfast. Moreover, he had overseen the CPIs u-turn
on the war, which, if he had stepped straight into a leadership position on his
return, would have reflected badly on remaining leadership candidates. In this
sense, his initial isolation was political.
The party leaderships eagerness to align itself with the Soviet Union
resulted in the CPNI being initially submerged in a one-dimensional pro-war,
pro-Union position. In response to the growth of the NILP and publication of the
Beveridge Report, McCullough saw to it that the CPNI redirected its focus
closer to home and added layers of sophistication to its analysis. Murray had no
discernible influence on this policy adjustment, but welcomed it as a step in the
right direction and put ambitions for national reunification on hold. It would
have been foolish to advocate anything other than the full implementation of the
Beveridge proposals in Northern Ireland. Combined with Red Army victories in
136

Cradden, Trade Unionism, Socialism and Partition, p. 178

225

1942 and 1943, the communists newfound ability to confront the Stormont
government on welfarist issues enabled the movement to reach a zenith in
terms of support in the North.
The difficulties encountered by the CPNI after the war paved the way for
Murrays return to a position of power. Arguably more Connollyist than
McCullough,

and

less

indebted

to

the

politics

of

industrial

Belfast,

republicanism continued to run through Murrays writings. He was more

conversant in the politics of partition and thus in a better position to respond as
debates around it shaped the political landscape both sides of the border. He
was also more au fait with the economic and political details of imperialism in
its different guises. Accordingly, he tried to develop an analysis of local events
which took account of Irelands place in post-war Europe. Under his direction,
the CPNI moved closer to the Connolly Association in some respects, a
development that would have far-reaching implications in years to come. It is
impossible to know what kind of resistance or indeed support Murrays analysis
encountered when presented to the communist rump in Belfast. It was possible
to surmount the subtle differences between Murray and McCullough, though
the latter adopted a reticent tone for fear of losing the deceptively high levels of
support in his Bloomfield constituency. Post-war developments made it
increasingly difficult to impress upon party members the need to carve out a
clear and consistent set of policies. But it was also the case that neither Murray
nor McCullough were sufficiently headstrong to push through their ideas with
conviction.
Taking into account the almost unworkable circumstances, one can be
forgiven for assuming that there were no viable alternatives for the CPNI to
pursue between 1945 and 1949. Consolidation of its Protestant support base,
this argument runs, took precedence over risky attempts to diversify. However,
this is only partly true and must be qualified. As noted above, the CPNIs
fortunes took a turn for the worst almost as soon as the war ended. By the close
of 1946, the party was in dire financial straits, with the executive committee
unable to scrape together wages for one full-time official or the money to resume
publication of Unity.137 In June 1948, the party reported that only thirty-one of
the sixty members in East Belfast, home of the CPNIs most active branch, were
137

PRONI, HA/31/1/922, RUC report on the publication of Unity, 2 July 1948

226

paying their dues. Even fewer attended meetings regularly.138 Furthermore, the
party consistently haemorrhaged support during the period in question. The
point is that the CPNIs decline occurred in spite of its ambiguous position on
partition. Attempts to placate the same workers that were deserting the party
in their droves proved futile in a political environment shaped and subsequently
dominated by the Unionist Party.
It is therefore useful to hypothesise about the paths that were open to the
party leadership in 1945. There was a brief window of opportunity for one half of
the CPNI split personality to integrate into the NILPs broad church up until
the 1949 schism, that is. The NILP had consistently rejected the CPNIs
overtures during the war, thus ruling out an official merger. But while a 1944
Labour Party purge pronounced the practice of entryism dead in the South,
eventually leading to the formation of the IWL, the northern communists had
not considered pursuing the tactic. Based on their policies, grassroots
communists could have quite easily crept into the NILP without major
objections. After all, CPNI members tended to work alongside their NILP
counterparts in the same unions, and the peoples war created a sense that
impending post-war reforms were gained by left-wing grassroots acting in
relative unity. It was also significant that the two parties leaderships came
close to convergence on bread and butter issues. Murray, McCullough and
Sinclair were in a position to carry the majority of CPNI members into the
NILP, assuming they could have convinced those communists in influential
trade union positions of their intentions.
To play out the consequences of the NILP split, it may have been an option
for the communists to cultivate better relationships with the anti-partitionist
left. Those communist anti-partitionists in the trade unions, of which there was
an influential minority,139 would have again played an important role in this
scenario by testing the waters for greater cooperation with like-minded
elements on the shop floor. More directly, Milotte has suggested that the Irish
Labour Party (IrLP) branch in West Belfast was clearly amenable to such
cooperation.140 Indeed Jack Beattie, politically and personally very close to the

138

Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, p. 122

Cradden, Trade Unionism, Socialism and Partition, p. 172
140
Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, p. 122
139

227

CPNI leadership, gained re-election to Stormont in 1951 on an IrLP ticket and

provided the most obvious point of contact for the communists. In the 1949 local
elections, the IrLP took all seven seats in the Falls and Smithfield wards of
West Belfast, at the expense of the NILP and Nationalists; won control of Newry
and Warrenpoint councils; and took further seats in Armagh and Dungannon.141
It may have been a risky move, much more so than the safe approach of
remaining close to the pro-Union NILP, but the CPNIs support base had been
eviscerated. It was therefore a no lose situation, an opportunity to branch out
from East Belfast and provide the new Irish labour formation with a firm
footing upon which to make thirty-two county socialist politics a reality in the
trade unions and political arena. Beattie would have certainly given Murray a
home in the IrLP.
It is perhaps unfair to compare Murrays political fortunes to those of Jim
Larkin Jnr. The former did not enjoy the same familial and trade union links as
the latter, while external forces and luck were also significant in marking out
their respective careers. However, they had comparable intelligence and
political talent. Moreover, they had begun their careers from precisely the same
point at the Lenin School in the late 1920s. Their contrasting political
trajectories are, therefore, a graphic illustration of the effects of specific
circumstances and the choices made by two individuals from around 1937.
Larkin abandoned what he viewed as a sinking ship and decided to carve out a
career as a radical Labour Party politician, whereas Murray remained loyal to
the notion of an independent Irish communist party in one form or another. By
1949, young Jim was a highly popular TD for Dublin South-Central, general
secretary of the WUI and ITUC president. One historian has noted that Larkin
Jnr is widely regarded as the best leader Labour never had.142 Murray was the
brains of the CPNI, yet had only just recaptured his status as a big fish in a
very small pond.

141
142

OConnor, A Labour History of Ireland, p. 215

Ibid., p. 130fn

228

Chapter 7 Irish Communism in Flux

The first inter-party government achieved much during its three years in power,
particularly in areas of social policy. In housing, the National Labour Minister
for Local Government, T.J. Murphy, committed substantial funds to a slum
clearance project. By 1950, the rate of local authority housebuilding reached
8,000 per annum. Further investments were made in land reclamation and
improving the standard of public services, while the most dramatic changes
were introduced by the Clann na Poblachta Minister for Health, Dr Noel
Browne, who launched a highly successful campaign to combat tuberculosis.1
Yet in spite of these achievements, Irelands economic performance in the 1950s
was amongst the worst in Europe. Beyond the Public Capital Programme, which
relied heavily on Marshall Aid assistance and national loans, the inter-party
government failed to invest in job creation or present a credible plan for
establishing a sound industrial base. Its Fianna Fil successor took some
modest steps to redress this longstanding structural weakness, mainly at the
behest of Sen Lemass, who returned as Minister for Industry and Commerce in
the 1951-1954 minority government. In 1952, for example, Lemass gave the
Industrial Development Authority (IDA), which had been set up by the interparty government in 1950, more scope to attract foreign investment. Meanwhile,
another state-sponsored body, An Foras Tionascail (the Underdeveloped Area
Board), was created to promote industrialisation in the west and south-west of
the country.2
However, record levels of imports led to a balance of payments crisis and the
governments of the day faced large budget deficits. In response, deflationary
budgets were introduced in 1951 and 1955, exacerbating a worsening economic
situation and undoing the positive effects of what few expansionist policies had
been implemented.3 Employment in agriculture fell from 504,000 in 1951 to
376,000 in 1961, which corresponded with a fall in demand for Irish exports
across the water and once again exposed the sectors overreliance on a weak
British market. The construction industry lost 25,000 jobs over the same period.
The 15,000 opportunities created in manufacturing were unable to compensate
1

Henry Patterson, Ireland Since 1939: The Persistence of Conflict (Dublin, 2007), pp. 89-90
Kieran A. Kennedy, Thomas Giblin and Deirdre McHugh, The Economic Development of Ireland in
the Twentieth Century (London, 1988), pp. 55-64
3
J.J. Lee, Ireland, 1912-1985: Politics and Society (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 321-328
2

229

for the sharp decline in other sectors and emigration occurred at a rate not seen
since the late nineteenth century.4 For the unemployed and underemployed who
remained behind, many of whom did not have the option to emigrate, conditions
were almost Dickensian: Unemployment benefit in the mid-1950s for a family
was 50 shillings (even for a family of up to ten), which obliged those on welfare
to live on a diet of bread and margarine, milk and tea, with many pensioners
unable to afford fuel. What is more is that as many as 6,000 people lived in
Dublin slums. The southern population was desperate for a change in fortunes.5
The Unionist regimes concessions in the direction of welfarism produced
significant gains for the population of Northern Ireland. In addition, the war
economy helped to boost income per capita in the North from 55-57 percent of
the UK level in 1937-38 to 69 percent in 1950. Yet the post-war slump in
production and a lack of diversification and global competitiveness in
manufacturing were problems for which subventions from Westminster were
not a sufficient remedy. Over the course of the Fifties, employment in textiles
fell by 28 percent and, in shipbuilding, repair and marine engineering, by 16
percent. The economic situation deteriorated further as the decade progressed.
One out of three linen factories were forced to shut down between 1958 and
1964, resulting in the loss of 27,000 jobs, and 11,500 workers were made idle in
the shipbuilding and engineering sectors over a similar period.6 If anything, the
wartime boom had only delayed the onset of deindustrialisation and masked a
number of underlying weaknesses in the northern economy. Mechanisation of
agriculture contributed to an 80 percent increase in output between 1938 and
1960, but at the cost of 28,000 jobs between 1950 and 1960 alone. State
investment in health and education helped to generate an 18,000 increase in
service employment, but this came nowhere close to offsetting the steep decline
in staple industries or coping with the growing trend of rural-urban migration.7
And while the general standard of living in the North was far ahead of the
South, comparisons with the rest of the UK were not so favourable. In the postwar era of relative full employment, with unemployment levels in Scotland and
4

Patterson, Ireland Since 1939, pp. 104-109

Diarmaid Ferriter, The Transformation of Modern Ireland, 1900-2000 (London, 2004), pp. 491-492
6
Lee, Ireland, pp. 411-413; Emmet OConnor, A Labour History of Ireland, 1824-2000 (Dublin, 2011),
pp. 208-209
7
Paul Bew, Peter Gibbon and Henry Patterson, Northern Ireland, 1921-2001: Political Forces and
Social Classes (London, 2002), p. 109
5

230

Wales steady at around double the national average, the respective ratios in
Northern Ireland were 3.4 in 1950, 5.3 in 1955, and 3.6 in 1960.8
The debates relating to prospective models for social and economic
development in both Irish states were, as always, acutely political. In the North,
Catholics could argue with justification that they were disadvantaged in
employment, since they were restricted to unskilled industrial and low-paid
public sector jobs while Protestants occupied a disproportionate number of
managerial, supervisory and high-ranking civil service positions.9 Protestants
also massively outnumbered Catholics in the shipyard, which retained its
reputation as the bastion of Belfast sectarianism. A useful indicator of the
disadvantage suffered by Catholics was the net emigration rate, which was
more than double the figure for non-Catholics between 1951 and 1961. Hence, it
could be observed that the west of the province continued to suffer from
underinvestment and neglect.10 Where there was major investment in Derry, as
in the case of DuPont, Prime Minister Brooke demonstrated that he was not
always willing to face down Orange pressure when he insisted that the
American multinational appoint the secretary of the Derry Unionist Association
as its personnel officer. Derry was the focus of real and alleged discrimination in
housing allocation and the persistence of gerrymandering, both of which further
entrenched sectarian divisions. Stormonts refusal to follow Westminster in
abolishing the householder and business franchise in local elections had serious
implications for the participation of the Catholic population in democratic
politics. The measure was designed to disenfranchise some of the working class,
and was successful in depriving less affluent Protestants of local council
representation, but it was also visibly sectarian in that there were generally
fewer prosperous Catholics than Protestants. The Orange Order, an influential
group of reactionary MPs, and a young Ian Paisley, all regularly frustrated the
efforts of a nascent liberal and modernising wing of Unionism, to the extent that
the default position of Unionist Party actually shifted to the right as the 1950s
advanced.11 Where these factors threatened to converge, the form and indeed

John Simpson, Economic Development: Cause or Effect in the Northern Irish Conflict? in John
Darby (ed.), Northern Ireland: The Background to the Conflict (Belfast, 1983), p. 82
9
Patterson, Ireland Since 1939, pp. 118-129
10
Lee, Ireland, pp. 413-419
11
Patterson, Ireland Since 1939, pp. 118-129

231

legitimacy of the northern polity would be subject to challenges from radical and
reformist voices emanating from both sides of the border.
It was clear that the Marshall Plan and 1948 Anglo-Irish Trade Agreement
had further entangled the South with British and American economic interests.
Lemass originally promoted the Control of Manufactures Acts (1932 and 1934)
as a way of ensuring that at least 50 percent of the equity of companies
established behind protective barriers remained in Irish hands. He was a
committed Keynesian throughout this period. Yet the global trend towards
increased economic interdependence raised questions about the balance of the
Irish economy and stagnation exerted further pressure on policy-makers to
reconsider the role of foreign direct investment in bolstering economic growth.
The attempted dismantling of protectionist legislation would encounter firm
resistance from the few industries developed behind protective barriers. The
implications for the Irish communists were twofold. First, the opening up of the
economy was likely to magnify their concerns about monopoly capitalism taking
root in Ireland as legislative measures gradually rolled back the state and large
(mainly American) corporate entities sought investment opportunities for their
post-war capital surpluses. Second, the prospect of increased exposure to foreign
capital threatened to undermine the central Sinn Fin tenet of Irish ownership
of Irelands resources, which a large section of the IWL and CPNI leadership
interpreted as a keystone of national democracy.
Tied to the issue of sovereignty, and creating an added overlap in the
interests of Irish communists and republicans, was the dissolution of the old
empires, which occurred in piecemeal fashion between 1945 and around 1970.
By the close of 1945, France had lost formal control of Syria and Lebanon.
Britain withdrew from India in 1947 when it became too difficult to protect its
interests in the face of nationalist resistance, leaving the people mired in
internecine conflict. The independence of Burma, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and
Israel/Palestine followed in 1948; and, after a more protracted and complex
affair,

Malaya

gained

autonomy within the

Commonwealth in

1957.

Revolutionary nationalist sentiments spread to Africa, culminating in the 1952

success of the Free Officers Movement in Egypt and the coming to power of
Gamal Abdel Nassers anti-imperialist government. Britain and France
attempted, without success, to reassert their authority in the region and
232

destabilise Nassers Arab socialist project during the Suez Crisis. But the early
success of the Egyptian Revolution had precipitated the rapid decline of British
and French hegemony in Africa. Britain relinquished control of Sudan, faced a
popular uprising in Kenya between 1952 and 1956 in the form of the Mau-Mau
rebellion, and eventually granted independence to the Gold Coast (Ghana) in
1957 under pressure from the dynamic pan-African activist and theorist,
Kwame Nkrumah.
France, meanwhile, despite the backing of Britain and the US, suffered
defeat in Vietnam at the hands of communist and national liberation forces led
by Ho Chi Minh, withdrawing from the country in 1954. At the same time, the
National Liberation Front (FLN) launched a decolonisation campaign in
Algeria. After a brutal eight-year conflict, which escalated into a civil war and
incurred deaths on the French mainland, Algerian independence was realised in
1962. Additionally, Mao Zedong successfully mobilised the peasantry against
the occupying Japanese forces and nationalist Kuomintang rivals, culminating
in the declaration of a Chinese communist republic in 1949. Ten years later, the
Cuban Revolution overthrew Fulgencio Batistas regime and installed a radical
nationalist government. Whereas the alignment of West European socialists at
this time generally fell somewhere between nationalist neutralism and supranational European Atlanticism,12 and while the Irish government straddled
both horses, the communists in Ireland were more likely to identify with the
anti-colonial and postcolonial forces whose seemingly historic duty it was to
weaken the Western Blocs dominant players. Though not enthusiastically proSoviet or under the same degree of Stalinist influence as the East European
satellites, these movements were typically unsympathetic to the US and its
allies. They were obvious sources of inspiration for nationally-minded
communists such as Murray and therefore engendered potentialities regarding
CPNI-IWL relations and the two parties dealings with the labour and
republican movements.
One major problem for the communists was that both Irish states, the South
in particular, sat comfortably within an American-led ideological bloc that
expressed a deep-seated mistrust of the Soviet Union and a belief, theoretically
12

Donald Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism: The West European Left in the Twentieth
Century (Revised Edition) (London, 2010), p. 209

233

at least, in political pluralism. This meant in practice an Irish diplomatic policy

of non-recognition of communist countries such as East Germany, Cuba and
Vietnam until 1955, and unremitting antagonism towards countries east of the
Danube.13 The imprisonment by communist regimes of Cardinal Stepinac of
Zagreb in 1946 and Cardinal Mindzenty of Hungary in 1949 added to a
widespread fear of the Soviet Union and provided the headlines with which
hostility to communism were justified. A demonstration in Dublin against
Mindzentys imprisonment attracted around 150,000 people. John Breen, Lord
Mayor and former CPI member, led the march, while Jim Larkin Jnr and his
union felt compelled to take part.14 So strong was the Churchs influence on
these matters that a proposed visit of the Yugoslavia soccer team to play a
friendly match against the Republic of Ireland in 1955 caused a major furore.
Staff at Radio ireann refused to broadcast match commentary and the Number
One Army Band was prevented from playing the obligatory pre-match national
anthems.15 In short, the apocalyptic rhetoric so effectively employed by
American conservatives also consumed Irish society.16 Irish McCarthyism found
willing purveyors of its message in the Catholic Standard, Irish Independent,
the Anglo-Unionist Irish Times, and in the personage of Archbishop John
McQuaid, who encouraged the formation of groups to monitor and actively
combat atheistic communist influences in the Labour Party and in the Dublin
area more generally.17
Archbishop McQuaids unrivalled access to Fine Gael ministers abetted his
effectiveness and gave him an effective veto on social policy. We can find no
more striking example of this than with the Mother and Child crisis, which
accentuated class divisions in the coalition, brought about the forced resignation
of Noel Browne and led to the collapse of the first inter-party government. The
Mother and Child scheme, developed initially by Fianna Fil and advanced by
Dr Browne, proposed to introduce free maternity care for all mothers and free
healthcare for all children up the age of sixteen, irrespective of income. On the
one hand, the Irish Medical Association objected to the scheme on the grounds
13

See Paula Wylies excellent account of Irish foreign policy during the early Cold War period: Ireland
and the Cold War: Diplomacy and Recognition, 1949-63 (Dublin, 2006)
14
Niamh Puirsil, The Irish Labour Party, 1922-73 (Dublin, 2007), p. 146
15
Dermot Keogh, Twentieth Century Ireland: Nation and State (Dublin, 1994), pp. 228-229
16
Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991 (London, 1994), p. 226
17
Puirsil, The Irish Labour Party, p. 146

234

that free for all healthcare would result in a loss of earnings. Of greater
significance was the Catholic hierarchys trenchant opposition to state
intervention in the areas of social security, health and education, which the
bishops viewed as a sure route to socialism. The pressure mounted on Browne
and neither Clann na Poblachta colleagues nor Labour ministers came to his
defence. Even the Parliamentary Labour Party, which included Roddy Connolly
and Larkin Jnr, was subdued in its response, refusing to fall in behind Brownes
radical proposals.18 Privately, Sen Murray was disappointed with young Jims
careful evasion of the means test issue, on which the Labour leader and
Tnaiste William Norton had conceded much ground to Fine Gael.19 It was plain
to see that the communists had no bearing, whether directly or through the
ITUC, on Labour Party policy or Brownes future as a government minister. In
April 1951, Browne resigned from the cabinet at the request of Sen MacBride
and Clann na Poblachta expelled him shortly thereafter. This affair marked a
watershed in the history of Church-state relations, led quickly to the collapse of
the inter-party government and revealed Labours impotence as the weaker
partner in a coalition.
That it was incumbent upon the Irish communist leadership to mature
quickly in policy and practice was clear from the fact that the two parties
represented almost no one. The Dublin-based IWL, which had introduced a
radical,

enthusiastically

pro-Soviet

programme

in

1949,20

was

clearly

hamstrung by the anti-communist atmosphere in Dublin, particularly in the

context of the Korean War, 1950-1953. Roy Johnston recalls encountering
personal hostility when attempting to sell copies of the Irish Workers Voice in
public and notes that party members only achieved a fraction of their target of
6000 sales in 1950.21 In this environment, the decision to launch a peace
campaign was ill advised; for while it was ostensibly non-communist, it still
projected onto the party what Sassoon has described as an objective
identification with Soviet foreign policy.22 Party members were met with violent
opposition on the streets of Dublin and managed to collect a paltry 3,000
18

Ibid., pp. 151-158

PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/K/25, Jim Larkin Election Manifesto, annotated by Murray
(1951)
20
CPI Nolan/Palmer Collection, Box 11/012, Manifesto of the Irish Workers League, March 1949
21
Roy Johnston, Century of Endeavour: A Biographical and Autobiographical View of the Twentieth
Century in Ireland (Dublin, 2006), p. 118
22
Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism, p. 209
19

235

signatures in the twenty-six counties. In June 1951, Michael ORiordan stood as

an IWL candidate in the general election on the back of the Leagues support for
Noel Browne during the Mother and Child crisis. However, the IWL chairman
received only 295 votes,23 confirming Brownes view that even the most
committed communist activists (including Murray) were entirely ineffective in
the face of clerical opposition and harassment from the authorities.24 The
performance of the two CPNI candidates in the May 1951 Belfast Corporation
elections 715 votes for Jimmy Graham and 482 for Eddie Menzies marked
the continuation of a downward spiral which had begun in the aftermath of the
War. Anti-communism was also resurgent in the North. In 1950, for instance,
Brookeborough went on a speaking tour of the US and proceeded in waxing
lyrical

about

Ulsters

vital

role

as

bulwark

against

international

communism.25 Northern nationalism, concerned more with its Unionist

opponents and the reorganisation of Sinn Fin, maintained its relative apathy
towards

the

CPNI,

although

the

Irish

News

and

ultra-conservative

organisations such as Maria Duce did sound off sporadic warnings to the
Catholic population in West Belfast.26 Anti-communism, in its different
intensities, was therefore one obstacle to be negotiated. However, as
demonstrated earlier, a number of problems encountered by the CPNI between
1945 and 1949 were of its own making. In fact, the partys brief success and
quick decline had coincided with a lull in anti-red sentiments. Hence, the
challenges facing the Irish communist movement were many and varied.
As these factors coalesced, a conference of the Belfast district party
membership on 1-2 July 1950 confirmed Murrays return to the partys senior
leadership. Conference delegates voted to re-elect him to the executive
committee and appoint him as national party organiser, a position he held until
his death.27 Upon his accession to this post, the CPNI lacked direction in a
number of areas and had neither a discernible organisational network nor
coherent programme. One telling weakness was the absence of a propaganda
23

Mike Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland: The Pursuit of the Workers Republic Since 1916
(Dublin, 1984), p. 219
24
Noel Browne, Against the Tide (Dublin, 1986), p. 249
25
Graham Walker, A History of the Ulster Unionist Party: Protest, Pragmatism and Pessimism
(Manchester, 2004), p. 123
26
Interview with Wilson John Haire (via email), 17 March 2011
27
NAUK, Security Service, KV2/1185, Sen Murray; PRONI, D2162/G/15A Communist Party
Congress, Belfast, 1-2 July 1950

236

outlet in the form of a CPNI newspaper. For Murray, the frequency with which
a socialist paper was printed and distributed served as a gauge of a partys
success in agitation. He attempted to rectify this particular problem by setting
up the weekly Northern Worker, but financial difficulties forced it out of
circulation in November 1950 after only seven issues. In lieu of a secure CPNI
publication, the party membership was encouraged to adopt as their official
newspaper the CPGBs Daily Worker. Murray made progress in education,
recommencing weekly lectures on Marxist theory and Irish history and devising
lessons to equip up-and-coming party leaders with effective public speaking
techniques.28 He also launched himself into youth work with great enthusiasm,
encouraging the formation and development of the Young Workers League
(YWL), latterly the Socialist Youth League (SYL). Former members of the youth
branch recall Murray having an open door policy, allowing them seek the
benefits of his experience without fear of reproach.29 Indeed, it is clear that he
had a hand in virtually all aspects of cadre development. His papers indicate
that he was ubiquitous on the partys crucially important political committee for
the duration of the decade, responsible for drafting resolutions, statements and
bulletins on everything pertaining to non-industrial work. One RUC intelligence
report noted that he was the brain behind the organisation and the person from
whom the rank and file seek advice.30
We can discern a number of important dimensions to Murrays work.
Organisationally, there was a pressing need to rebuild the CPNI at grassroots
level, merge party work with the needs of the disenfranchised through singleissue campaigns and branch out across the North. The most obvious foundation
for a rebuilding exercise was the trade union movement, in which the CPNI
retained a strong presence. In this sense, the party was the envy of the IWL. By
1951, Jimmy Stewart had become treasurer of Belfast Trades Council, joining
Betty Sinclair in office, while Andy Barr, Jimmy Graham and Billy McCullough
had all been elected to its executive committee.31 This was despite the efforts of
antagonists such as Arthur Deakin, general secretary of the ATGWU, who
28

PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/C/16, Party circular entitled Public Speaking (3) (c. 1950)
Interview with Jimmy and Edwina Stewart, 18 March 2010; Interview with Wilson John Haire (via
email), 17 March 2011
30
PRONI, HA/32/1/938, Communist Party Membership, British-Soviet Friendship Society Reports
(1954-1960)
31
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/C/16, Belfast and District Trades Council A Short History:
th
70 Anniversary, October 1951
29

237

spoke of a communist conspiracy to gain control of Belfast Trades Council and

his hope that it will never be possible for a Communist to hold office in the
union.32 Sam Napier, secretary of the opportunistic NILP,33 claimed that the
communist-led Belfast Peace Council had conned many decent and sincere
people.34 In spite of this, the Belfast campaign outperformed its Dublin
equivalent by a significant margin, collecting 11,417 signatures by February
1952.35 The party still carried some weight in the Belfast area and could see a
clearer path out of its malaise than the IWL. But this success depended on
extending its influence beyond the Norths first city, reaching out to nonindustrial and rural workers and the unemployed, and achieving a healthy
balance between shop-floor agitation and diversified work in the political
sphere.
At the IWLs first conference in November 1949, the apparent tension
between political activity and economism was the focus of intense debate. Prior
to the conference, Sen Nolan wrote to Murray, primarily to consult him on the
content of the main resolution, but also to complain that the forces at the IWLs
disposal were so limited, sectarian, or immature, it will take many headaches
before any real change is effected.36 At the conference, which amounted in
essence to a meeting of the CPI leadership, those in attendance echoed Nolans
assessment of the IWL and agreed that the Dublin comrades urgently needed to
increase their activities in the trade union movement. Michael ORiordan,
chairman of the IWL, accepted that the party had suffered from growing pains
and recognised the importance of trade union work in attracting support. Ned
Stapleton argued that the IWL could learn from the CPNI by establishing
industrial and factory groups in the League. Sam Nolan added the caveat that
campaigns on economic issues ought to be instilled with political consciousness.
On behalf of the CPNI delegation, Betty Sinclair accepted that trade union work
must become political, though Billy McCullough contradicted her somewhat by
claiming that there was room for a little more economism in party work. With
ORiordan placing emphasis on Irelands anti-imperialist tradition, McCullough
32

Irish Times, 15 June 1950

Aaron Edwards, A History of the Northern Ireland Labour Party: Democratic Socialism and
Sectarianism (Manchester, 2007), p. 44
34
Irish Times, 4 August 1950
35
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/J/60, Peace Volunteer, Issue 2, February 1952
36
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/M/5/10/1, Letter from Sen Nolan, 28 October 1949
33

238

stressed that while partition had a detrimental impact on Irish labour

cooperation, it would only be possible to win northern workers over to politics
through successful economic struggles.37 Thus while the IWL conceded that it
had no trade union base to speak of, and that there was an urgent need to grow
roots in the unions, McCullough made fewer concessions on the CPNIs political
work. The necessity of taking economic struggles onto the streets and into the
political arena was incontrovertible. However, the hard fought lessons of the
1945-1949 period were some time in being digested.
Discussions on the future configuration of a divided trade union movement
permeated what McCullough described as a senseless factional struggle within
Irish communism.38 Although its members had reservations about the CIU,
which had a record of anti-communism, the IWL fell in behind Jim Larkin Jnr
to advocate the continued preservation of the All-Ireland character and unity of
the TUC, and the fullest inter-Congress unity and action at all levels.39 For the
CPNI trade union contingent, the overriding concern was not unity but gaining
collective trade union recognition from Stormont.40 Against the backdrop of the
antiquated and repressive Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act (1927), which
had not yet been repealed in Northern Ireland, and economic difficulties that
demanded prompt action by government and industry, there was a general
desire within northern trade unionism to agree upon a recognised and effective
negotiating body. In 1950 Ivan Neill, Minister for Labour, announced that he
would not have any dealings with the ITUCs Northern Ireland Committee
(NIC) owing to the fact that its head office resided in a foreign country.41 In
response, Billy McCullough hastily proffered the establishment of an Ulster or
Northern Ireland TUC as a solution.42 This may have chimed with the NILP
leadership and the few shipyard communists who were content to work solely
within a British trade union framework. However, the proposal went against
the overwhelming 90 percent of NIC members who were by 1953 in affiliation
with the two Irish Congresses and ostensibly willing to work within existing
37

CPI Nolan/Palmer Collection, Box 3/010, Irish Workers League First Annual Conference
Proceedings, 19-20 November 1949
38
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/A/18, Executive Committee letter to party members, 7 March
1950
39
CPI Nolan/Palmer Collection, Box 3/06, Trade Union Resolution (c. 1950)
40
Terry Cradden, Trade Unionism, Socialism and Partition (Belfast, 1993), pp. 200-202
41
Quoted in Charles McCarthy, Trade Unions in Ireland (Dublin, 1977), p. 334
42
Cradden, Trade Unionism, Socialism and Partition, pp. 214-219

239

structures.43 Crucially, it threatened to undermine relations with the IWL and

broader Irish labour movement and pigeonhole the CPNI as a party of Unionist
workers.
If the majority of labour activists believed in the principle of trade union
unity, then CPNI trade unionists were no exception. What is more, according to
a September 1951 political committee report, they were open to co-operation
with the Irish Workers League and militant Labour men and women in the
South and West on economic and political issues.44 The content of this report
suggests that McCulloughs support for the Ulster TUC idea was transient, or
that Murray convinced the CPNI leadership figures to recognise the benefits of
liaising with the IWL on matters of mutual interest. Naturally, Murray saw the
gradual reorganisation of the communist movement on thirty-two county lines
as a dimension of his self-styled mission to reconstitute a Marxist-Leninist party
with national features. The existence of an ad hoc national committee, based
loosely on residual CPI structures, was important, and the sincere participation
of McCullough, Sinclair, Andy Barr and others even more so. Sen Nolan shared
Murrays view of this vestigial framework as an avenue for exploring party
political unity within Irish communism. To that end, the two men were
instrumental in the creation of a joint council in 1952. Behind this was the idea
that a robust strategic accord would augment the more tentative exploration of
prospects for ideological harmony. Concomitantly, and influenced by the
publication of the CPGBs Britains Road to Socialism in 1951, Murray
reengaged with theory, which he had neglected during the 1940s. He set about
developing a potentially career-defining programme that would take account of
he and his comrades acquired knowledge and experience, reflect the domestic
and international challenges facing the movement, and provide the theoretical
fundamentals with which to inform future discussions on policy, tactics and
organisation.

Trade Unionism and Transitional Unity

As the centre of gravity shifted gradually towards greater cooperation with the
IWL and popular support for trade union unity, Murray combined forthright

43

OConnor, A Labour History of Ireland, p. 209

PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/A/22, Political Committee Letter to Branches, 4 September
1951
44

240

socialist republicanism with more measured appeals to generate labour

harmony on issues of common purpose. He had no qualms about expressing his
opposition to partition, criticising Brooke for his inflammatory statements on
the constitutional question and nationalists for being lulled to sleep by
American Congressional platitudes on Irish reunification, such as the 1951
Fogarty resolution. In the same breath, he identified an ally in Jack Beattie, to
whom he lent unconditional support during a successful October 1951 general
election campaign, in which Beattie regained his West Belfast seat from the
Unionist candidate. During this election, Murray warned against the antics of
the breakaway Harry Diamond-Victor Halley clique, which he blamed for
Beatties electoral defeat in 1950.45 The IrLP venture was falling apart at the
seams as Diamond aligned himself with the Catholic Church during the Mother
and Child crisis, while Frank Hanna, vice-chairman, also moved in a more
explicitly Catholic nationalist direction.46 Victor Halley, whose hostility towards
the communists was a hangover of the Irish Democrat split in the 1930s,
proceeded in spreading rumours of a CPNI takeover of the IrLP and denounced
a 1950 peace conference organised by Belfast Trades Council.47 Murrays riposte
came on the front page of the Northern Worker:
What about the policy of neutrality, which the Irish Labour Party is
committed to in the present situation? Apparently Mr Victor Halley will
have none of this. The war-like military spirit of Arthur Deakin has
infected him, since he became one of Deakins boys on the E.C. of the
Amalgamated Transport Union.48
As the Cold War set in, the CPNIs enemies grew in number and intensity. For
Murray, though, Jack Beattie was a progressive voice of opposition, as capable
of garnering support on the Falls as winning votes from the Unionist Party on
the Shankill. He was an anti-partitionist, prepared to take the British Labour
whip at Westminster (though his expulsion from the NILP thwarted this) and
proved a consistent thorn in the side of the Unionists at Stormont.
With the exception of Beattie, the only leftist force capable of siphoning off
Unionist support was openly in favour of the Union. Murray wrote that the
NILP had been diverted from the fight for a united working class and Socialism
45

Irish Workers Voice, November 1950

OConnor, A Labour History of Ireland, p. 215
47
Irish Times, 14 August 1951
48
Northern Worker, November 1950
46

241

by the pressure and intrigues of the upper class and its Unionist politicians. In
spite of this, he demonstrated faith in the NILP as a progressive force,
supporting all candidates standing on Labour principles in the 1950
Westminster election.49 The CPNI urged its trade unionists to oppose the
formation of production councils and win NILP rank-and-file members round to
an

anti-government

position.50

Against

the

backdrop

of

the

British

Conservatives return to power in 1951, no greater incentive existed for labour

unity in the North than to combat the imminent reversals of social democratic
planning and welfare legislation. As Brookes nine MPs formed over half of the
Tories narrow majority of seventeen at Westminster, the Unionist shift to the
right was evident. The Unionist group in the Commons voted consistently with
the government after 1951 and the two parties even exchanged conference
delegates, unbeknownst to its labourist supporters.51 Yet as the debilitating
effects of the Conservative administrations deflationary policies and public
expenditure controls spread to Northern Ireland, elements within the Unionist
Party began to question the wisdom of the Tory link.52 The electoral success of
opposition parties such as the NILP and CPNI depended on exposing divisions
within Unionism and capitalising on working-class discontent with Tory
policies.
Meanwhile, relations with the IWL continued to thaw. In early 1952,
Murray led a delegation to the Leagues annual conference and, on his return to
Belfast, reported that cooperation between the two groups was having positive
results.53 A joint council meeting followed in November, producing a draft
resolution on the unity of Ireland and setting out the direction of travel for the
communist movement. The main resolution expressed support for the ending of
partition and identified gradual steps towards national policies acceptable to
both parties supporters. In effect, the document articulated Murrays
arguments from the late 1940s, highlighting the penetration of British and
American capital as a threat to Irish economic development and the
involvement of the six counties in NATO as an affront to peace efforts. It did not
49

Northern Worker, February 1950

Irish Workers Voice, November 1951
51
Walker, A History of the Ulster Unionist Party, pp. 119-120
52
Bew et al., Northern Ireland, pp. 110-116
53
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/A/26, Political committee letter to branch secretaries and
YWL secretary, 5 February 1952
50

242

represent a panacea to divergent emphases on the constitutional question.

However, it did mark a tacit return to the CPIs anti-imperialist roots. Couched
in genuine internationalism was the assertion that labour should ally with
progressive nationalist elements and resist government attempts to deregulate
the economy in the interest of attracting foreign direct investment. The council
drew inspiration from ongoing anti-colonial struggles, which, if not led by the
working class or peasantry, typically incorporated them in large numbers. In
addition, the document brought into sharp focus the two parties strategies,
reaffirming the dual aims of ending the CPNIs relative abstention from politics
and the IWLs detachment from trade unionism. It tasked the Belfast comrades
with addressing their isolation from the northern Catholic minority,
recommencing work on the issue of democratic rights and adopting a national
presentation of all political issues, and the Dublin leadership with an
acceleration of trade union activity and a commitment to promote labour
unity.54
Away from the watchful eye of the IWL, Murray could persuade the CPNI
executive committee to endorse only the general anti-imperialist message of the
joint council resolution. But as a signal of the northern partys benign
intentions, the executive committee agreed to bring the Irish Workers Voice to
Belfast. A section in the IWL paper would thereafter be devoted to northern
politics and the CPNI leadership expected party branches to achieve an initial
sales target of 500.55 This was a significant gain for Murrays strategy. It
directly contradicts the claim that the Irish Workers Voice was not sold on the
streets or in the factories of Belfast owing to the CPNIs completely British
orientation.56 The joint councils second sitting, in early 1953, revealed that the
two groups had reached broad agreement on a number of uncontroversial issues:
peace and trade relations with the Soviet Union and communist world; workingclass resistance to the rearmament drive, which continued to contribute to a fall
in living standards; and active opposition to the Labour Party entering into
coalition with Fine Gael.57 More notable was the movement from both sides on
54

PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/C/22, Joint Council Resolution on the Unity of Ireland (Draft)
(c. 1952)
55
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/I/29, Political Letter No. 9, 10 November 1952
56
Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, p. 221
57
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/G/29, Report from Joint Council: Second Meeting, 31 January
- 1 February 1953

243

the subject of trade union unity. The IWL now came to accept Murrays
judgement that while the CIU was misguided in its support for a wage ceiling,
some of its statements did exhibit an understanding of the ailing Irish economy
and a yearning for advance.58 At Murrays prompting, the Irish Workers Voice
dropped criticisms of the CIU in favour of an appeal to the CIU-affiliated
workers to demand trade union unity.59 Internal pressure also prompted
McCullough to confirm his reversal on the Ulster TUC idea, which the rightwing NILP leader David Bleakley had taken up and never looked like being
realised. In sum, there had developed within the communist movement an
appetite for the regular coming together of the progressive forces in the TUC
Unions and those of the CIU...to press forward the struggle for a united Trade
Union Movement.60 What made this particularly opportune was that the
pragmatists were winning the battle on both sides of the border for the broadest
possible trade union unity.
Against this, R. Palme Dutt revealed that it was taking longer to close the
gulf in political aspirations. Dutt, who attended the second joint council meeting
as an observer, made a few points to that effect. He remarked that there was a
reluctance to tackle the policies of the Stormont administration and the
outright denial of democracy and civil rights in the North, while the CPNIs
pamphlet North Ireland for Peace and Socialism, written by Andy Barr, had
much to liken it to what might be issued by a British Party District. Put simply,
the CPNI had not quite fulfilled its obligations. A British labourist mentality
resided within the party, which prevented it from broaching the subject of
partition or contemplating the proposition that Ireland had taken on a semicolonial status under reactionary governments.61 Murray broadly agreed with
Dutts anti-colonial sentiment and regretted too that the CPNI had been
apprehensive about cultivating a relationship with northern nationalists.
However, his report of proceedings added a number of nuances and indicated
that Murray took Dutts opinions on Ireland not too seriously. For instance, he
observed that the CPNI had begun to develop an anti-Tory basis in the factories
58

PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/G/26, Letter to Sen Nolan, 27 June 1952; D2162/I/29,
Political Letter No. 9, 10 November 1952
59
Irish Workers Voice, May 1953
60
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/G/29, Report from Joint Council: Second Meeting, 31 January1 February 1953
61
Ibid.

244

in preparation for instigating social agitation in the localities. He also noted

that both parties agreed on the urgent need for labour to fend off the threat of
American imperialism so that Ireland did not go the way of many other West
European countries in being engulfed by a world built on the dollar.62 He drew
upon Stalins speech at the nineteenth congress of the CPSU and outlined the
form of the Irish struggle in the following terms:
A/ Fight for independence of these Islands from American Imperialism;
B/ The defence of the Republic against the squeeze of Anglo-American
Imperialism to take away its independence and use it as a tool of the war
bloc; C/ Struggle for unity of the workers of both areas as basis for the
fight for a united Ireland and the development of the country towards
Socialism.63
In the circumstances, Murray could be reasonably satisfied that his analysis
now made it onto the agenda, proving comparatively uncontroversial. The joint
council had the desired effect as a forum for dialogue and seemed to promise
incremental progress towards a single, unified line.
With the Tories in power, and accusations regarding the nepotistic link
between the government, the Unionist Parliamentary Party and local
industrialists gaining traction,64 the CPNI made a fairly straightforward
transition to an adversarial stance. In the context of inflationary pressure
stemming from the rearmament drive, high unemployment, a credit squeeze
that caused untold damage to the regional economies, and continued Unionist
deference to Conservative policies, the CPNI stood Andy Barr against Lord
Glentoran (Daniel Dixon) in the 1953 Stormont election to gauge support for the
partys manifesto in its Bloomfield stomping ground. Incidentally, Glentoran
had business interests in the linen industry and was among the predominant
group of Unionist MPs that saw no reason to alter Northern Irelands
relationship with Britain or, for that matter, with Dublin.
In the lead up to the election, the communists delivered fierce criticisms of
the N. Ireland-British upper class and its Tory Governments for subordinating
62

Gnther Steins The World the Dollar Built (London, 1952) was a favourite in northern communist
circles and helped to inform discussions on the nature of post-war reconstruction. I am obliged to
Sen Morrissey for this information
63
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/G/30, Joint Council: Questions arising from the Report of the
party to the JC, 1 February 1953
64
Patterson, Ireland Since 1939, pp. 141-142

245

citizens living standards to the interests of the Billionaire Atomic War Lords'.
The party coupled the usual enthusiasm for peace and trade with socialist
countries with pragmatic calls for a reduction in the bank lending rate in order
to foster small business borrowing, and state investment to compensate for the
downturn in production. Interestingly, the policy document included a section
that presented a relatively coherent strategy on partition. It underlined the
economic benefits of North-South cooperation on trade, industry and culture,
slammed Brookeborough for dismissing such opportunities in the language of a
conqueror, and presented the mobilisation of British and Irish labour towards
greater all-Ireland integration as an imperative in the economic situation.65
This echoed what Cradden has described as the NICs post-war democratic
socialist alternative to lassez-faire Toryism. Billy McCullough also saw 1930s
economic nationalism as containing some lessons for state-led development in
precarious economic circumstances.66
A break with Unionism was now central to the CPNIs political agenda, as
was its rediscovered concern for civil rights and gerrymandering. As election
day approached, the party censured loyalist NILP leaders such as Billy Hull for
defending the record of the Unionist government and denying there is any lack
of democracy when Derry and the border counties provided glaring examples of
undemocratic practices by Unionists. The CPNI instructed its canvassers to
explain that the NILPs acquiescence went against all that socialists proclaimed
to represent and did serious harm to prospects for labour unity in the North.67
In the event, the NILP chose not contest the Bloomfield constituency in an
election characterised by general apathy, a poor turnout and several unopposed
Unionist victories. With 1,207 votes, Andy Barr doubled Billy McCulloughs
1949 tally. Tommy Watters wrote from Manchester to congratulate the party on
a good job and a surprising vote.68 In reality, the election told the CPNI very
little, especially in the absence of an NILP candidate by which to measure the
partys progress. It would have made more sense for the communists to test
their policies in a constituency with a larger working-class Catholic population,
or to line up against the NILP as a bare minimum. Then again, the party
65

PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/A/31, Communist Party policy in the coming general election,
February 1953
66
Cradden, Trade Unionism, Socialism and Partition, pp. 197-198
67
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/A/37, Political Letter No. 46, 5 October 1953
68
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/M/5/19/1, Letter from Tom [Watters], 18 December 1953

246

probably lacked the wherewithal to make it out of East Belfast, and the utterly
confused and congested state of anti-partitionist labourism in West Belfast
severely restricted its options.69
In one sense, Barrs electoral showing confirmed that challenging
reactionary Unionism openly did not necessarily result in political reversals.
Consequently, the CPNI proceeded decisively in the same direction. By
February 1954, and with a party conference looming, the leadership prepared a
draft statement addressing Stormonts handling of inter-communal tensions. It
referred to a standoff in the predominantly Catholic town of Dungiven, County
Derry, which centred on a parade by local Protestants in celebration of the
Queens coronation. The RUCs decision to prevent an Orange flute band from
accompanying the march sparked loyalist outrage and provided Independent
Unionists with ammunition for attacking so-called appeasers of nationalism in
Brookes cabinet, such as Brian Maginess, the Minister for Home Affairs. The
CPNI feared that events such as these enabled the Unionist Partys erstwhile
supporters to force it back on to a more pronounced sectarian basis and
predicted that the police would soon be compelled to act as a partisan force. For
evidence of Stormonts capitulation, one only needed to look as far as the Flags
and Emblems Act (1954), which represented an attack on nationalist rights and
a victory for the most extreme wing of the anti-Nationalist forces within
Unionism.70
It is important to note that the CPNIs pronouncements, while critical of
reactionary Unionism, showed no enthusiasm for mainstream nationalist
politics. Relations with republicans were more complex, though generally there
was no question of serious engagement with a movement that was numerically
insignificant, narrowly focused on reuniting the national territory by force of
arms and largely disinterested in social and economic issues. The IWL did count
among its ranks former Curragh internees such as Michael ORiordan, Denis
Walshe and Ned Stapleton, and a small communist group continued to make its
presence known at the annual Bodenstown commemorations. Toms MacGiolla,

69

Cradden, Trade Unionism, Socialism and Partition, p. 204

PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/G/34, Draft statement on the situation, 14 February 1954; For
an explication of surrounding developments, see Henry Patterson, Party versus Order: Ulster
Unionism and the Flags and Emblems Act, Contemporary British History, 13: 4 (Winter 1999), pp.
105-129
70

247

future president of Sinn Fin, claimed that he was among a number of young
republicans who supported the work of the short-lived Dublin Unemployed
Association (DUA) in 1953 by handing out leaflets at rallies on OConnell
Street.71 However, the IRA and Sinn Fin in the South were not only
disconnected from socialism but actively hostile to it.72
As far as northern republicanism was concerned, the CPNI took up the case
of Liam Kelly, leader of the breakaway militarist group Saor Uladh, who was
elected to Stormont in 1953 on an abstentionist ticket but arrested shortly after
and sentenced to twelve months imprisonment for sedition. The communists
argued that while the Stormont government had dismantled parts of the Special
Powers Act, it had been maintained as part of the permanent law of the state.
They took aim at the use of repressive legislation and defended, as the Irish
communist movement had done with relative consistency over the years, the
right to undertake political activity against the state.73 The global momentum of
decolonisation worked in favour of national independence movements,
particularly in the so-called Third World, and the undoing of the British
Empire inveighed against Britains involvement in the North. But while the
CPNI was prepared to condemn Tory foreign policy and Labour complicity
regarding the present butcheries in Kenya and Malaya,74 its position on Irish
republicanism was neither overly sympathetic nor critical. The communist
movements stance on nationalist and republican activity was undefined, subject
to a North-South process of dialogue between the CPNI and IWL, responsive to
international and domestic conditions as they developed, and contingent upon
the type of nationalism or republicanism to emerge.
The CPNI was more forthcoming, and reasonably convincing, on the allIreland dimensions of economics and trade unionism. Cross-border agreements
on schemes such as the Erne hydroelectric project, the Great Northern Railway
Board, and the Foyle Fisheries Commission,75 all convinced Murray that the

71

Henry Patterson, The Politics of Illusion: A Political History of the IRA (London, 1997), p. 89
Eoin Broin, Sinn Fin and the Politics of Left Republicanism (London, 2009), pp. 197-198; Brian
Hanley and Scott Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers Party
(Dublin, 2009), pp. 3-8
73
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/A/41, Northern Ireland (1954)
74
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/G/34, Draft statement on the situation, 14 February 1954
75
Michael Kennedy, Division and Consensus: The Politics of Cross-Border Relations in Ireland, 19251969 (Dublin, 2000), pp. 92-156
72

248

ideas of local development which has [sic] been scorned in the past now formed
part of a feasible response to unworkable Tory policies.76 A problem, of course,
was that the communists did not have a political platform upon which to
disseminate its ideas. On a positive note, party members continued to play an
integral part in the trade unions, using their positions to put CPNI policies on
the agenda. In December 1954, Murray wrote to Peter Kerrigan, CPGB
industrial organiser, to inform him that the CPNI planned to take action in
various

unions,

including

the

AEU,

Electrical

Trades

Union

(ETU),

Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers, Sheetmetal Workers Union and the

ATGWU. This action consisted of the proposal of resolutions at a number of
annual conferences, with the aim of achieving a coordinated and effective
response. These resolutions focused on:
1. Repeal of the Trades Disputes Act.
2. Stormont recognition of the NIC.
3. Calling for Irish Conferences in the AEU, ETU, and perhaps others.
4. Adult suffrage in local government elections and abolition of the
vote for business interests.
5. Repeal of the Flags and Emblems Act.
6. Drawing attention to the continued use of the Special Powers Act.77
Murray asked Kerrigan to ensure that the CPGB understood what is called for
and to encourage a strong attitude especially on the TU situation from our
[CPGB] Comrades on the ECs of some of the Unions.78
The dearth of papers relating to the internal workings of the aforementioned
unions makes it difficult to appraise the contribution of CPNI members with
any confidence. However, it is clear that the communists enjoyed a degree of
influence disproportionate to their numbers. RUC intelligence reported that the
CPNI trade unionists exhibited unrivalled levels of discipline, working hard to
attend meetings and register their vote when important issues were at stake

76

PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/G/34, Draft statement on the situation, 14 February 1954
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/G/38, Letter to Peter Kerrigan, 11 December 1954
78
Ibid.
77

249

and while other affiliates adopted an indifferent attitude.79 The increase in

northern participation in the ITUC and general shift in favour of trade union
unity were broadly commensurate with the communists efforts, if not directly
attributable to them. At the close of 1955, the CPNI gave a wholehearted
welcome to the announcement that the ITUC and CIU planned to discuss unity
proposals in the new year.80 In February 1956, the Provisional United Trade
Union Organisation (PUO) briefed union officials and the NIC on its progress.
The NIC received a full-time official in 1957 and the PUO later accepted that
the proposed Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) constitution would have to
allow for an elected NIC as a counterweight to guaranteed Irish control of
Congress. After long negotiations, the merger of the two federations into the
ICTU resolved the trade union movements long-standing North-South and
British-Irish divisions. Recognition from Stormont and the Trades Disputes Act
hung over the NIC for some years to come. Nevertheless, With the formation of
the ICTU, Northern affiliates were more firmly embedded in an all-Ireland
framework, while southerners accepted Northern realities.81 Larkin Jnr and
John Conroy, who assumed the leadership of the ITGWU from William
McMullen and became the first president of the ICTU, were the two key figures
in creating the conditions for amity. But Murray played no small part in
ensuring that organisational and ideological reorientation of the communist
movement contributed to and benefited from these achievements.

De-Stalinisation and Development

The year 1953 witnessed the death of Stalin and the end of the Korean War.
The Irish communists enjoyed a relatively seamless transition from Stalinism to
the Khrushchev era of strategic flexibility, though the two parties experiences
were not exactly parallel. The IWL in particular suffered for its objective
identification with Soviet foreign policy. To its peace campaign at the height of
the Korean War the League added a picket of the US Embassy in protest at the
conviction and planned execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for passing
nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. These public displays of pro-Soviet
sympathies garnered vitriolic attention from the Catholic Standard. Under the

79

PRONI, HA/32/1/938, Communist Party Membership, British-Soviet Friendship Society Reports

(1954-1960)
80
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/A/43, Political Letter No. 127, 19 December 1955
81
OConnor, A Labour History of Ireland, p. 212

250

editorship of Peadar Ward, the paper carried profiles of IWL members, called for
them to be shunned in the workplace and suggested that the authorities ought
to clamp down on the Leagues activities. Pulpit denunciations and propaganda
alone were enough to force the closure of the Ballyfermot Cooperative, which
IWL member Joe Deasy had launched as a non-political system for pooling local
resources in the straitened financial climate.82 Similarly, the DUA collapsed
under the weight of anti-communism shortly after its formation in 1953. The
Standard rejoiced at having been primarily responsible for driving them and
their activities underground,83 and did likewise when ORiordan received only
375 votes as an IWL candidate for Dublin South-West in the 1954 general
election.84 A steep decline in party membership reflected the fact that the link
with the Soviet Union did more harm than good. Numbers fell from 102 in June
1952 to 79 in June 1953 and 59 in October 1954.85
The return of a Fine Gael-led coalition government in 1954, headed by John
A. Costello and including staunch defenders of faith and fatherland such as
Sen MacEoin and Liam Cosgrave, brought with it the guarantee of further
vilification for suspected communists. At the beginning of 1955, for example, a
cultural delegation comprising of trade unionists and literary figures associated
with The Bell, including Peadar ODonnell, visited the Soviet Union. The trip
aroused the attention of both the Department of External Affairs and
Department of Justice and was the focus of a heated debate in the Dil. The
Standard provided in-depth running commentary and even managed to goad
ODonnell into a rather pointless and one-sided exchange on the merits of such a
visit.86 At the same time, ORiordans unrepentant response to Khrushchevs
secret speech and the suppression of the Hungarian uprising, in March and
November 1956 respectively, needlessly exposed the IWL to further scrutiny.
Consequently, Labour Party and trade union hostility dented Leagues plans for
making political capital from campaigns on the domestic economy.87

82

Nolan (ed.), CPI Outline History, p. 54

Standard, 5 March 1954
84
Ibid., 28 May 1954
85
Johnston, Century of Endeavour, p. 152
86
NAI, Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), 5/305/55/2, Visit of group from Ireland to Russia,
January 1955; DJ, JUS8/919, Communism (1954-1955)
87
Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, pp. 226-227; ORiordan remarked some years later that
Not only did I not criticise the Red Army for the invasion of Hungary, but I would have been the
83

251

In Belfast, the RUC and Ministry of Home Affairs were stirred into action
by a trade union delegation to Moscow in 1954 for the May Day celebrations,
organised by the CPNI under the auspices of the British-Soviet Friendship
Society. Special Branch detectives were deployed to gather information on the
groups activities and in 1955 obtained documents relating to the formation of a
Northern Ireland-Soviet Friendship Society, including an approved constitution.
The authorities also noted with interest the visit of a party of five northern
schoolteachers, including Frank Edwards, to the Soviet Union in 1955 at the
invitation of the Soviet Ministry of Education. As the CPNI effected a minor
recovery, the exploratory investigation of the Northern Ireland-Soviet
Friendship Society extended to include the northern communists en masse. By
1960, the Ministry of Home Affairs was in possession of a door-stopping file
detailing the personal and political activities of a number of prominent Belfast
communists; membership figures for each CPNI branch; and the level of
communist influence in government departments, public institutions such as
schools and universities, and even Belfast post offices.88
Although Cold War antagonisms rapidly swept away the positive legacy of
the Second World War, the Irish communist leadership was keen to remain part
of a Western communist network loosely affiliated with the Soviet Union. In
1953, at the invitation of the Czech ambassador, Murray attended an event to
celebrate the eighth anniversary of the liberation of Czechoslovakia by the Red
Army.89 On 14 March 1956, the anniversary of Marxs death, Murray witnessed
the unveiling of a monument over the remains of the founding father at
Highgate Cemetery, London. More than 300 people attended the ceremony,
including the Soviet ambassador to Britain, diplomats from several socialist
countries and two of Marxs great grandsons.90 Murray was actively involved
with the Northern Ireland-Soviet Friendship Society, as was his wife Margaret,
and both were among those persons prominent in the audience for a concert
staged by thirteen Soviet artistes at the Husband Memorial Hall, Belfast in
first to criticise them if they hadnt. Quoted in Sen Swan, Official Irish Republicanism, 1962 to 1972
(UK, 2007), p. 93
88
PRONI, HA/32/1/938, Communist Party Membership, British-Soviet Friendship Society Reports
(1954-1960)
89
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/5/17, Invitation to celebrate the liberation of Czechoslovakia
(1953)
90
Denis Smyth, Sean Murray, A Pilgrim of Hope: The Life and Times of an Irish Communist, 18981961 (Belfast, 1998), pp. 47-48

252

October 1956.91 In 1957, Murray paid a visit to Moscow as part of the first Irish
delegation to an international communist conference since 1935. The occasion
was the fortieth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. His penultimate visit
came two years later, when he attended the CPSUs twenty-first congress.92
Murray had no reservations about defending the achievements of the Bolshevik
Revolution and Soviet Union, regardless of developments that appeared to
diminish their significance.
On balance, the northern communists association with the Soviet Union
only slightly hindered them from achieving their strategic goals. Betty Sinclair
complained that anti-communism pertained in Belfast Trades Council in the
mid-1950s. During the 1955 May Day celebrations, Sinclair was the cause of a
split in the labour movement when her presence caused part of the
demonstration to break away and hold a rival non-communist meeting. Despite
pulling off a small victory in convincing her comrades to invite a delegation from
Leningrad to Belfast, she could not prevent the Council from coming out against
the invasion of Hungary.93 Some unions also worked to prohibit CPNI members
from holding official positions. A blatant example of this was the reversal of
Sam Gardners election as AEU president in 1960. Following complaints about
irregularities, the election was declared null and void, allowing the NILP
candidate William McDowell to rally his supporters and reverse Gardners
initial victory in the re-run.94 Yet the evidence suggests that there was no
overall decline in the communists trade union strength. Furthermore, the
labour movement achieved unity on important issues such as the Housing
Miscellaneous Provisions Bill (1956), or Rents Bill, which proposed to give
landlords a free rein to raise the rent on their properties independent of
government scrutiny. Belfast Trades Council launched a Tenants Defence
Association to oppose the measure and in April 1956 the CPNI was part of a
deputation of opposition parties which met Dehra Parker, the unpopular
Minister of Health and Local Government, to demand the Bills withdrawal.95
91

PRONI, HA/32/1/938, Communist Party Membership, British-Soviet Friendship Society Reports

(1954-1960)
92
Emmet OConnor, John (Sen) Murray in Keith Gildart, David Howell and Neville Kirk (eds.),
Dictionary of Labour Biography, Vol. XI (London, 2003), p. 204
93
Hazel Morrissey, Betty Sinclair: A Womans Fight for Socialism, 1910-1981, Saothar, 9 (1983), p.
128
94
Irish Times, 7 June 1960
95
Nolan (ed.), CPI Outline History, p. 39; Irish Times, 13 April 1956

253

The Unionist Partys mishandling of the affair helped to unite the governments
critics and push suspicions of the CPNI temporarily to one side.
The Northern Ireland-Soviet Friendship Society also brought mixed
fortunes for the CPNI. As noted above, the Societys foundation rekindled the
authorities interest in the Belfast communists, particularly unwelcome at a
time of regeneration. Moreover, with the CPNI suffering from what Murray
described as a lack of adequate numerical strength and crippling financial
poverty,96 the Society proved to be a significant drain on the movements
resources. It ran at a loss, depended on financial assistance from across the
water and ostensibly failed to impress any of its Soviet guests. Conversely, the
Society won the party some respectability by association with such individuals
as the poet John Hewitt and attracted a core of sympathisers from the trade
unions, public sector and professions.97 From this venture, the CPNI broke even
in terms of support and probably lost out financially, even with the contribution
of their Scottish and English comrades. Overall, the Soviet link did not have the
same debilitating effect on the CPNI as the IWL. Still, there were almost
certainly less costly and exotic avenues to pursue in search of political capital.
Along with the Hungarian intervention in 1956, on which the party was
conspicuously silent, the real litmus test for the CPNIs transcendence of
Stalinism was its response to Khrushchevs secret speech. Indeed the CPGBs
loss of around 9,000 members in the two years after February 1956 testifies to
the epochal nature of these events for communist parties in liberal
democracies.98 For the CPNI, it had serious implications vis--vis the partys
moral authority for challenging the Unionist regime on political repression and
the northern states democratic deficit. Jimmy Stewart recalled that the
leaderships behind-closed-doors response was not unanimously in favour of
Khrushchevs repentant position, with Billy McCullough expressing his
displeasure in the most colourful language.99 Infinitely more measured was the
official CPNI executive committee statement, which aligned the party with
Palmiro Togliatti, the Italian communist leader, who had remarked that Soviet
96

PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/C/52, Main resolution for congress: The Party and The
Political Situation (1957)
97
PRONI, HA/32/1/938, Communist Party Membership, British-Soviet Friendship Society Reports
(1954-1960)
98
Robert Service, Comrades: Communism, A World History (Basingstoke, 2007), p. 315
99
Interview with Jimmy and Edwina Stewart, 18 March 2010

254

explanations for Stalins misdemeanours were inadequate. Drafted by Murray,

the CPNI statement refused to accept that the injustices resulting from this
departure from Marxism-Leninism were simply a reflection of the attributes of
one man, but welcomed the steps taken by the CPSU towards the elimination
of the evils attendant on the Stalin cult. This apparently unequivocal
denunciation of Stalinism sat uncomfortably with the vain attempt to place it in
the context of protecting the gains of Socialism in One Country from fascism and
American imperialism. It was also disingenuous of the party to suggest that its
leaders Murray and Sinclair in particular, who had spent extensive periods in
Moscow at the height of Stalins purges were unaware all along of the crimes
being committed in the name of communism. Most damning was the death of
Pat Breslin, Murrays former classmate at the International Lenin School, in a
gulag in 1942. However, the Irish communists bore no personal responsibility
for the purges and were unlikely to have been aware of the full extent of deaths
in camps, of famine and executions. What mattered in the short to medium term
was that after becoming conscious of the facts, they prepared to break with
Stalin and to continue working for the extension of democratic liberties and the
removal of restrictions on these liberties in this island.100
In some respects, the CPNI under Murrays direction fitted the mould of
West European left-wing socialism that yearned for a third way. This third
way consisted of a reformed and pluralist Soviet society, where the majority
would always willingly vote for socialism.101 The CPNI and IWL could well have
looked to Titos Yugoslavia, the only Eastern European country to sit outside the
Soviet sphere of political influence and develop a non-centrally planned socialist
economic model, for instruction on building a national form of communism. For
one reason or another, neither Irish party chose to avail itself of Yugoslavias
valuable lessons. The CPNIs shifting position on international relations often
placed it in the ambit of the non-aligned African and Asian countries.
Increasingly, party releases pointed to the examples of countries that took the
Socialist road to National independence Indonesia, China, Vietnam and

100

th

PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/G/42, The 20 Congress of the Russian Communist Party and
the Stalin Cult of the Individual: Statement by the EC (1956)
101
Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism, p. 210

255

Egypt, for example as being rich in analytical import.102 Ultimately, as in the

case of the vast majority of West European communist parties, the CPNI headed
in the direction of reform communism whilst identifying with Soviet foreign
policy as the antithesis of American aggression and guardian of anti-imperialist
resistance.
The command economy of the USSR certainly held more appeal than the
free market economics propagated by America and its allies. Yet this does not
mean that the CPNI conceived of state ownership, steel mills and smokestacks
as the sum total of socialist economic development. It is true that the
establishment of trade relations with China, the Soviet Union and the wider
socialist world featured prominently in the CPNIs proposals for solving
Irelands economic difficulties. However, Murray coupled this with a serious
engagement with the reformed, social democratic version of capitalism that had
grown up in the aftermath of the war. Against the stringent measures
introduced in 1956 and 1957 by the Fine Gael Finance Minister, Gerald
Sweetman, Murray argued that only Lemass showed some glimmering of
understanding of the true nature of the present critical situation, and therefore
endorsed his strongly Keynesian proposals to create jobs through a public
expenditure programme.103 He acknowledged at the same time that the present
serious condition of affairs presented challenges to the widely held belief in
building a capitalist economy behind tariff walls,104 but preferred cross-border
cooperation to economic liberalisation as a means of achieving efficiencies,
circumventing freight costs and harmonising agriculture with industry.
Meanwhile, with much of the world undergoing land reform in one form or
another, Murray advocated a return to tillage, which he suggested would help
reverse the loss of agricultural jobs and break the dependency on the British
market that went along with the fetishisation of grazing.105
The party presented its prescriptions for the failing northern economy in
much the same vein. Naturally, it articulated its economic preferences in the
vague socialistic terms of ownership of the factories, land, shipyards and
102

PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/G/52A, Communist Party twenty-fifth anniversary statement,
14 June 1958
103
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/A/45, A general analysis with particular reference to its
[the budgets] effects on the national economy in the 26 cos. (c. 1957)
104
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/A/65, Untitled article on Ireland (c. 1958)
105
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/G/34, Draft statement on the situation, 14 February 1954

256

Banksby society at large. It also retained the distant, demand-oriented

aspiration of trade with the East as a central feature of its remedy for high
unemployment. More pragmatically, in another tip of the cap to the NILP, it
acknowledged the significant achievements of democratic socialism in the postwar years and hinted that the communists immediate focus lay in protecting
such gains. The Rents Bill, which accentuated class divisions within the
Unionist Party, was viewed as merely one aspect of a wider attack on social
provisions that included increases in health charges and the price of welfare
foods. The CPNI advocated resistance to Tory-designated cutbacks and
proposed a house-building programme and general expansion of welfarism to
aid those on the lower rungs of society. In the staple industries, where
significant redundancies loomed large, the party preached militancy and a
concerted effort to strengthen the NICs bargaining position. It supported and
participated in the March 1957 engineering strikes in and around Belfast,
sparked by heavy job losses and stagnating wages; and, provoked by the sacking
of shop stewards at Du Pont in Derry, party members led an anti-rationalisation
(and anti-American) campaign against the companys management.106 Not being
particularly strong in supply-side economics, the communists failed to offer
clear proposals for modernising and diversifying industry. However, they were
amongst a vocal minority of critics to observe correctly that national
deflationary policies and an increase in the bank lending rate had only
exacerbated the regions problems.
Opposition to Toryism made strange and sometimes outright dangerous
bedfellows for the Belfast communists. For instance, in 1958 Andy Barr shared
a platform at a rally against shipyard redundancies with Norman Porter,
Independent MP for Belfast Clifton and uncompromising anti-Catholicist. While
an isolated incident, it indicated nonetheless that economism prevailed to some
extent and that CPNI members had some distance to travel politically. A word
should also be said about the partys decision not to contest the Stormont
election the same year, which was made in the interests of working-class unity
and in support of the socialist principles advocated by the NILP.107 This also

106

PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/C/52, Main resolution for congress: The Party and the
Political Situation (1957); Irish Times, 22, 23 March 1957, 2 December 1958
107
Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, p. 230; PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/C/52, Main
resolution for congress: The Party and the Political Situation (1957)

257

pointed to political immaturity within the northern communist movement; an

inability to develop a programme independently from the NILP. But for the first
time in more than a decade, the Unionist administrations economic
incompetence placed it under pressure from forces more palatable to labourists.
Having rediscovered some of its radical heritage, the NILP launched an attack
on Brookes track record as Prime Minister and positioned itself as the Unionist
Partys main competitor for votes in constituencies with a large Protestant
working class. The NILP was rewarded with four groundbreaking election
victories, while the CPNI remained ambivalent about who or what it
represented.

Republicanism, Reform and Irelands Path to Socialism

With social and economic pressures bearing down heavily on the two Irish
states, an opportunity presented itself for the republican movement to pursue
alternative lines of radical advance. Under the charge of a new generation of
leaders, republicanism entered into a period of political and military
reorganisation. In the May 1955 Westminster elections, Tom Mitchell and Phil
Clarke, two IRA volunteers imprisoned for a raid on Omagh Barracks, won
seats in the rural constituencies of Mid-Ulster and Fermanagh-South Tyrone
respectively. Sinn Fin won a total of 152,310 votes and with it a political
foothold for harnessing discontent with Unionism and conservative nationalism
for the purpose of social and economic change. But the partys impressive
electoral showing only encouraged the mistaken belief that there was support
within the northern nationalist population for a renewed offensive against the
state. On 12 December 1956, the IRA launched Operation Harvest, a guerrilla
venture aimed at establishing liberated areas along the border. The disastrous
Border Campaign, which finally petered out in 1962, has been pored over by
scholars of the Irish republican left, who concur that it marked a watershed in
the history of modern Irish republicanism.108 What followed was an important
reassessment

of

republican

strategy

that

effectively

separated

the

traditionalists from the modernisers, militarists from the politicos and,

broadly speaking, the adherents of Catholic social teaching from Marxist

108

Patterson, The Politics of Illusion, pp. 89-94; Swan, Official Irish Republicanism, pp. 69-104;
Broin, Sinn Fin, pp. 200-209; Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution, pp. 12-39; Matt Treacy, The
IRA, 1956-69: Rethinking the Republic (Manchester, 2011), Chapter 1

258

republicans. It also had a significant bearing on how Murray and the Irish
communist movement defined their relationship with republicanism.
The Border Campaign coincided with an increase in the activities of the
Connolly Association, which had been struggling to overcome sectarianism in
the Irish migr community, the suffocating effects of Cold War hostilities, and
the disruptive work of ultra-leftists within its London branches.109 Under the
leadership of Desmond Greaves, the Association directed its energies towards
the removal of partition. Greaves believed that it was impossible to cajole
conservative Ireland into the formation of a socialist republic and so proposed
an interdependent three-pronged attack against British imperialism. The
organisations primary focus was to harness democratic forces in Britain, where
political power resided, towards the goal of Irish reunification. It also intended
to continue training a critical eye on developments in the twenty-six counties,
where efforts to revive the economy were leading to the inexorable conclusion of
freer trade and the penetration of British and American finance capital. The
newest addition to the strategy related to the concept of civil rights and the
formation of an anti-Unionist government in the North. Greaves believed that a
campaign for civil rights reform would help to unite Protestants and Catholics,
minimise working-class sectarianism and bring about the demise of the
Unionist administration. The election of progressive governments North and
South, and a sympathetic Labour government in Britain, would thereby
generate the conditions for the creation of a united, democratic Irish republic.
This equated to the first stage in Connollys re-conquest.110 Though he was not
indifferent to the aims of Irish socialists, neither was Greaves inclined to
prescribe the system to be adopted after Irish unity and independence. He
conceived of the Connolly Associations role as promoting national unification
and adding an educational layer to the understanding of its patrons
teachings.111
For bringing to the fore the notion of mobilising on the issue of civil rights as
a means of disrupting Unionist hegemony, successive labour protagonists from

109

C. Desmond Greaves, Reminiscences of the Connolly Association (London, 1978), pp. 25-28;
Interview with Anthony Coughlan, 10 September 2010
110
Simon Prince, Northern Irelands 68: Civil Rights, Global Revolt and the Origins of the Troubles
(Dublin, 2007), pp. 88-93
111
Greaves, Reminiscences of the Connolly Association, p. 28

259

the 1920s onwards deserve at least partial credit. Space does not allow for a full
exploration of the facts, though the numerous examples of activism on civil
liberties highlighted throughout the thesis, in which the communists played no
small part, go some way towards placing the 1950s and 1960s campaigns within
a temporally longer current of ideas. But Greaves was the first to theorise about
civil rights, giving it a new meaning in relation to Northern Ireland and
articulating a strategy for the movement to adopt. The central feature of the
strategy was to raise the issue of discrimination and the rights of the Catholic
community later encapsulated by the phrase British rights for British
citizens. During the Border Campaign, this involved drawing attention to the
introduction of internment, with the Connolly Association first calling for all
internees be brought to trial or released and, subsequently, for a general
amnesty.112 It appealed to the labour movement on the basis that a number of
those interned belonged to British trade unions. The Connolly Association hoped
the British government could be persuaded to legislate for civil rights in the
North or at least reopen the debate on the legitimacy of the northern state.113
Greaves later argued rather meekly that his group was not in a position to
prevent (or condemn?) the violence. It was a fact of life. Rather, its
responsibility was for helping to remove the reasons for the IRAs existence i.e.
the cruel oppression of the northern nationalist minority and the continuation
of partition.114
In 1957, Brookeborough claimed that communist influences lay behind the
Border Campaign and had a strategic interest in its success, for it contributed to
the conditions in which Communism can thrive and had the potential of
depriving NATO access to northern ports.115 Brookeborough may have hit on a
broad parallelism of views between the CPNI and republican movement on the
issue of imperialism. The important truth, however, is that the northern
communists had no inclination to put their weight behind a campaign that had
little to no popular support in working-class communities. Sen Morrissey
recalls that while Murray was totally opposed to the IRA campaign, this was
for different reasons to other senior CPNI figures; that if they were going to

112

Ibid., pp 29-30
Interview with Anthony Coughlan, 10 September 2010
114
Greaves, Reminiscences of the Connolly Association, p. 29
115
Irish Times, 6 February 1957
113

260

persist with violence, then they should do it properly.116 Whatever Murray may
have said privately, there was no equivocation in the CPNIs public response.
Hence Murray stated that the CPNI saw no place for a policy of armed force for
the solution of the national problem in this country, nor for the attainment...of a
socialist Ireland.117
Notwithstanding its denunciation of IRA violence, the CPNIs political
response to events was somewhat convoluted. Contrary to one authors
claims,118 the party did lend public support to the Connolly Associations
agitation on prisoner releases. In November 1960, Betty Sinclair sent a message
of support on behalf of Belfast Trades Council to a demonstration organised by
the Manchester Connolly Association with the specific purpose of demanding a
general amnesty. Sen Morrissey attended a corresponding rally in North
London, recounting his own experiences as a republican prisoner in the 1940s
and urging those in attendance to support the campaign for an end to
internment and discrimination.119 According to Murray, internment and
political repression were among a raft of Unionist violations of democratic
rights, including plural voting...for the upper classes, legal restrictions directed
against the trade unions and the gerrymandering of electoral boundaries. He
remained non-committal on the form of resistance the situation required, but
subscribed the CPNI to the thesis that civil rights was one of Ulster Unionisms
foremost weaknesses. Murray also concurred with the second of Greaves
contentions: there was an onus on the British and Irish states to explore a way
forward for the solution of the problems in dispute between the peoples of these
countries.120 A statement drafted for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the CPIs
foundation chastised the British government, Unionist regime and Her
Majestys Constitutional Opposition the NILP for behaving as if all
problems between British Imperialism and Irish Nationalism have long since
been solved! Thus while the Belfast cadres endorsed the socially progressive
elements of the NILPs programme, they could not abide northern Labours
avoidance of entrenched political enmities. Under Murrays influence, the CPNI
had progressed towards a more proactive political agenda. However, its
116

Interview with Sen Morrissey, 12 March 2010

Irish Democrat, February 1957
118
Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, p. 230
119
Irish Democrat, November 1960
120
Irish Democrat, February 1957
117

261

message to Republican Ireland The division of the Irish people, including the
Partition of the country, would be solved in the course of the struggle for
Socialism121 suggested that although the party shared the Connolly
Associations main objective, the two organisations favoured slightly different
strategies.
Because Murrays attempt to develop an Irish communist manifesto was the
first in some decades, the process naturally privileged the piecemeal
accumulation of material and critical input from experienced activists.
Periodically, he tested his ideas on party grassroots through the various
bulletins, political letters and party statements circulated by the political
committee and executive committee. As early as June 1955, he had a full draft
programme prepared for some of his closest comrades. William Gallacher, a
CPGB expert on Ireland, was one of those consulted. He congratulated Murray
on having set out the main problems, adding that some steps could be taken to
simplify the language and put terms such as imperialism into context. He also
recommended that Murray strengthen the documents historical backdrop with
references to Irish rebellion against forms of imperial tyranny and exploitation
such as the Ulster Plantation and subsequent Cromwellian conquest, giving
emphasis to the examples of cross-communal republican resistance in the northeast.122 Tommy Watters, still involved with the Connolly Association, though by
his own admission not an active spirit in it, felt that parts of the programme
presupposed substantial cooperation between the two [Irish] states and the end
of partition. Overall, he was thoroughly enthused by what was a balanced and
outward-looking programme. His judgement was that by making the starting
point economic instead of political, as in Irelands Path to Freedom, Murray had
adopted an appropriate framework for analysing the two Irish states. Moreover,
its political appeal is wide enough to take in all sections of the population,
especially the nationalists, without appearing as a pure republican document
to the Prods. Finally, Watters remarked acerbically that Murrays combination
of economic and political analysis was closer to the mark than the Connolly
Associations chief ideologue: I imagine Desmond will get a surprise when he

121

PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/G/52A, Communist Party Anniversary statement, 14 June
1958
122
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/M/5/7/2, Letter from William Gallacher, 12 June 1955

262

sees the draft, as I see in this months Demo that very little can be done in
Ireland until Partition is removed.123
Sometime between 1955 and 1958, Murray decided to divide the draft
programme into two documents, one for the CPNI and one for the IWL, which
would then dovetail on general objectives and strategy. He entrusted all his
material on southern issues to Paddy Carmody, the IWLs theoretician, who
began drafting a programme for the Dublin-based organisation in tandem with
the CPNI. Party minutes reveal that the two parties extended an invitation for
Greaves to attend joint council meetings, specifically to discuss the details of the
two draft programmes. Greaves refused these invitations, pleading prior
engagement, though he also intimated to Sen Nolan that he should enter the
fray only when the confusion and theres lots of it, he believes has been
removed somewhat. And of course he thinks were off the track altogether.124 In
1957/58, the Irish Democrat published a debate between Paddy Carmody,
writing under the pseudonym A. Raferty, and Jack Bennett, formerly of the
Connolly Association and now with the CPNI. Bennett presented a variant of
the Greaves position, sympathetic to Sinn Fin and amenable to an antipartition campaign. In opposition, Carmody wrote that he was not prepared to
associate the communist movement with republicanism in its existing form and
that the armed campaign was only likely to play into the hands of Ulster
Unionism. Dismissing the importance of the national question, Carmody argued
that the two Irish states were sufficiently democratic for the people to choose
their governments. He favoured the apparent progressivism of Fianna Fil and
pointed to the adoption of a more independent foreign policy by Frank Aiken,
the Minister for External Affairs, as evidence that Ireland was not a slave to
British interests.125
Murray allowed the Bennett/Carmody debate on partition to proceed
without interruption, choosing not to muddy the waters further. But he did join
Carmody and Greaves in commenting favourably on Fianna Fils break with
Fine Gael foreign policy and rejection of NATO membership a welcome sign
that Irelands voice in international affairs will not be a ventriloquists echo of

123

PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/M/5/19/2, Letter from Tommy [Watters], 14 June 1955
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/M/5/10/3, Letter from Sean Nolan, 27 April 1959
125
Treacy, The IRA, pp. 76-77
124

263

cold war imperialism, but a policy of conforming to Irelands needs in line with
the interests of humanity.126 There was no contradiction in Murray and
Carmody aligning with de Valera, especially since the aging Taoiseach shared
their view that it was inappropriate to compare the IRA to that of the
essentially anti-colonial War of Independence. The radical internationalism of
Frank Aiken, who used his speeches at the UN to champion the rights of weaker
and colonised countries, also held some appeal.127 They did not foresee the
publication of the Economic Development White Paper in 1958, and the
resulting First Programme for Economic Expansion, which Lemass adopted as
government policy after succeeding de Valera in 1959. Along with the Industrial
Development Act (1958), which dismantled crucial parts of the Control of
Manufactures Acts, another expansion of the IDAs scope for attracting foreign
capital, and the introduction of substantial tax breaks on repatriated profits,
these two documents signalled an acceleration of the shift towards freer trade.
Added to this was Irelands unsuccessful application for membership of the
European Economic Community (EEC) in 1961, which coincided with a boom in
American investment in Europe and US dominance of NATO. The country
would be gradually Europeanised in social and cultural terms, and integrated as
quickly as possible into a global political economy. Indigenous policy-makers
were clearly intent on having a wager on the foreign direct investment model as
the basis for future economic development. These events compelled socialists
and republicans to develop a more elaborate analysis of Irelands economy,
involving an appraisal of transnational financial capital including British
financiers and a more critical assessment of the policies developed by the local
political class.
When in 1958 Murray produced the Irish Way to Socialism, the CPNIs first
official programme, the party initiated a fraternal and democratic consultation
process. Discussions at senior leadership level continued, as over the course of a
weekend in mid-September, when Murray and Carmody presented their
respective documents to a meeting of the joint council.128 Murray solicited the
views of experienced communists such as Frank Edwards, who was impressed
126

PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/A/65, Untitled article on Ireland (c. 1958)
F.S.L. Lyons, Ireland Since the Famine (London, 1973), p. 594; Wylie, Ireland and the Cold War,
Passim
128
PRONI, D2162/G/64, Letter informing party members of a Joint Council Meeting, 3 September
1958
127

264

that the CPNI leader had preserved the partys true Irish character by
producing a document that was not a chip off the CPGBs programme.129
Valued also were the opinions of CPNI members branch officers, shop
stewards, trade union officials, factory members, members from the womens
group and the SYL whom were provided a copy of the draft programme and
urged to take full part in upcoming discussions.130 Though we are not privy to
the full details of internal debates, we know that Lance Noakes, a member of
the influential Shorts branch, delivered a perfunctory critique. His one telling
point was that a programme heavily laden with references to the revolutionary
British working class put a ceiling on the CPNIs ambitions and undermined the
radical potential of the Irish labour movement as a whole.131 Jimmy Stewart,
SYL secretary, made a more important contribution. He struck out at the
suggestion that he had supported Bennetts analysis and argued instead that
the national question could potentially resolve itself under certain conditions:
Through socialism; Through a left-wing government in Britain; and/or
Through the economic interests of N.I. & Eire being brought closer together i.e.
under the crisis of Capitalism in general and British Capitalism.132
In Murrays estimation, Bennetts 25,000-word critique of the draft
programme raised the discussion to a level not common in these parts. It was
therefore with some justification that his submission formed the subject of two
full-scale debates.133 Bennetts main criticisms of Murray centred on an
apparent neglect of the national question and a compromise with imperialism.
Milotte is supportive of Bennetts position, arguing that the Irish Way to
Socialism marked a continuation of the CPNIs wartime position. For Bennett,
as for Milotte, the clear alternative was to ally with militant republicans who,
because of their largely proletarian composition, would maintain the struggle
until socialism was achieved.134 Whilst conceding that Bennett had produced
many useful and telling points of criticism, Murray added that he was not able

129

PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/5/31, Letter from Frank [Edwards], 2 June 1960
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/A/57, Executive committee letter to party members, 5
August 1958; D2162/A/63, Executive committee Irish Way to Socialism circular, October 1958
131
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/C/47, Letter from Lance Noakes to executive committee (c.
1958)
132
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/5/?, Letter from Jimmy Stewart to executive committee, 27
November 1958
133
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/G/80, Letter from Murray to Tommy [Watters], 9 July 1959
134
Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, p. 232
130

265

to sustain his thesis on the major questions. The CPNI leaders assessment of
Bennetts ahistorical nationalism was particularly scathing:
He failed to give any estimation of the ACTUAL situation and where 26
County Ireland just [sic] stands in regard to national independence. Is it
an independent state? Has nothing happened since 1916? This is in
substance the Sinn Fin position. Though even they, tactically, but not in
principle, base their activities (armed ones) on the assumption that
something has happened. Politically non-recognition is based on the
line that the situation is the same as 40 years ago.135
In other words, Murray was in no doubt as to the political independence of the
twenty-six counties. The status of the six counties was up for debate, and the
subject of imperialism, complex and contested. However, Murray dismissed
irredentism, abstentionism and republican violence as redundant and lacking in
popular support.
Murray looked to temper the communist movements Third Worldist outlook
with a more realistic assessment of where Ireland stood in relation to Britain
and the wider world. Thus despite Bennetts arguments to the contrary,
the economy of Ireland is a capitalist economy; the country is not a
colony; the national problems (partition etc) will be solved on the way to
Socialism, while every effort will be made for such partial solutions as
are possible on the basis of the present situation.136
Here was the admission that the island of Ireland had inextricable ties to West
European capitalism, even if it was lagging far behind modern Europe in terms
of social and economic development. The Irish communists reaffirmed this
analysis in late 1959 with a joint pledge to adhere to the declaration of
seventeen West European communist parties, which encouraged programmatic
flexibility to meet the challenge of working for a breakthrough in stable
capitalist democracies.137 In 1960, Murray explained to a conference of eightyone communist and workers parties in Moscow that his enthusiasm for the
unheard-of upsurge of national liberation movements had not subsided. Rather,
he believed that the classic British variant of imperialism was no longer of
singular importance in the Irish context:

135

PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/G/80, Letter from Murray to Tommy [Watters], 9 July 1959
Ibid.
137
NAI, DFA, 5/305/55/2, Irish embassy in Italy to the Department of External Affairs, 9 January 1960
136

266

Imperialism has not changed its spots, it has not become more humane;
it is no more pretty in appearance or substance than it was forty years
ago, when it was actively engaged in armed conflict with the Irish people,
fighting for their national independence...but there has been a serious
decline in its power.138
To adopt a maximalist nationalist position, as Bennett had done, was distinctly
un-Marxist and inadequate for dealing with concrete realities.
Murrays 1960 appearance in Moscow was his last political hurrah. After
suddenly falling ill in early 1961, he died on 25 May without seeing his
programme make it to print. Following his passing, Jimmy Stewart assumed
responsibility for the Irish Way to Socialism and made no significant
amendments other than to clarify its arguments for progressive governments
North and South.139 After consulting the party membership on a third draft, the
CPNI published its manifesto, entitled Irelands Path to Socialism, at a Belfast
congress in June 1962. Simultaneously, the Irish Workers Party (IWP)
published Paddy Carmodys programme, Ireland Her Own. The two documents
dealt with separate parties and separate jurisdictions, with the IWP leaning
slightly more towards a cultural nationalist outlook. Ultimately, though, the two
programmes kept with Murrays original intention that they read like two
intersecting parts of the same manifesto.
Stephen Bowler has abbreviated Irelands Path to Socialism as a 180-degree
reversal of the Stalinist two-stage position adopted by Murray during the 1934
Republican Congress negotiations, with socialism now taking precedence over
the national question.140 Milotte diverges slightly from Bowler in describing a
national road or dual carriageway to socialism, which is a more accurate
representation of Murrays position. Milotte is also right to describe the two
parties strategies as gradualistic and distinctly reformist, though it is not
appropriate to argue that these had their roots in the class-collaborationist
Popular Front.141 In essence, both authors view the CPNI and IWP programmes
as betrayals of working-class politics and, to paraphrase Murray, proceed from

138

CPI Nolan/Palmer Collection, Box8/105, Sen Murray speech at international meeting of

communist and workers parties (October-November 1960)
139
Interview with Jimmy and Edwina Stewart, 18 March 2010
140
Stephen Bowler, Sen Murray, 1898-1961, And the Pursuit of Stalinism in One Country, Saothar,
18 (1992), pp. 49-50
141
Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, p. 233

267

the fixed attitude that no political changes had been effected in Ireland between
1916 and 1962. Matt Treacy chooses to underline the anti-imperialist and prorepublican aspects of the CPNI programme. The main interpretative problem
with his account is that it is informed by a type of traditionalist republicanism.
Treacy erroneously views Bennetts polemic with Carmody as symptomatic of
differences within the Communist movement over the attitude to be adopted
towards the republican movement and Irelands Path to Socialism as a
capitulation to Bennetts arguments. Treacy does not reckon upon the reality
that Bennetts was a minority position within the Irish communist movement.
More importantly, the scope of his study does not allow for a contextual
exploration of the CPNIs progression from the late 1940s onwards, which saw
Murray lead the party away from Unionism and on which Bennett had no
influence. Consequently, Treacys main contention that Irelands Path to
Socialism was at odds with Carmodys programme relies heavily on a fragment
of the available archival material and interviews, not on the overwhelming bulk
of evidence.142
The first point to make about Irelands Path to Socialism is that it was
fundamentally an anti-Unionist programme. Murray described the Unionist
Party elite, though not its working-class supporters, as the political arm of the
industrial, commercial and financial magnates a local branch of the Tory
Party in all but name. He condemned Unionist MPs giving unqualified support
to deflationary Conservative policies in Northern Ireland and committing
themselves to a policy of private enterprise at all costs. Murrays programme
also criticised Unionism for maintaining the link with sectarian organisations
such as the Orange Order, thus serving to perpetuate religious divisions among
the people. The NILP received kinder treatment: praised for its essentially
working-class character; for seeking redistributive economic reforms and
greater state investment; and for demanding of the government the introduction
of universal suffrage, abolition of the business vote and a re-examination of
electoral boundaries. However, when stripped back, the party was in fact mildly
Unionist. Whereas grassroots members were authentically radical, socialist and
non-sectarian, its parliamentary leadership was reformist, pro-Imperialist and
anti-Irish. The leadership isolated itself from all-Ireland labourism as

142

Treacy, The IRA, pp. 77-78

268

expressed through the united trade union movement, despite the fact that the
overwhelming majority of the NILPs trade unionists chose to affiliate to the
ICTU. Finally, Murray deemed the party to have failed the acid test of the
Special Powers Act and urged it to recall that the draconian legislation had
historically been used against forces in the Labour movement when it suited
the Unionist Party.143
According to Murray, there was nothing inherently progressive about the
Nationalist Party, certainly no more than Ulster Unionism. On the contrary,
northern nationalism was dominated to a large extent by the ideas of Irish
National Conservatism and had failed to produce an all embracing political
programme in the interests of the common people. Only insofar as they opposed
religious discrimination and challenged the Unionist regime on civil liberties did
Murray consider Nationalist politicians progressive. Independent nationalists
were more class conscious, though small in number and influence. Murray
lauded

the

republican movements

consistent

struggle

against British

imperialism, and now against the imperialism underpinned by NATO and the
EEC. On this point, there is no disputing Matt Treacys reading of the
programme. Yet the same author is disinclined to mention that Murray
qualified his support for a particular type of political republicanism with a
wholesale rejection of its northern militarist form, which he saw as divorced
from other aspects of the anti-imperialist struggle, social, economic and
political. More specifically, Murray identified a cleavage between the
republican movement and progressive forces in the North and argued that the
onus was on the former to bridge the gap in order to establish a meeting point
for defeating the Unionist Party.144 These passages alone demonstrate that
while Irelands Path to Socialism was republican in tone, it is folly to
characterise it as uncritically so.
Authors spanning the full spectrum of leftist interpretative positions, from
Mike Milotte to Sen Swan and Henry Patterson, have drawn useful parallels
between the contemporaneous Irish communist and republican conceptions of
imperialism. Approaching the subject from different angles, Milotte and
Patterson reach an incongruous agreement that the communists resisted the so143
144

Sen Murray, Irelands Path to Socialism (Belfast, 1962), pp. 19-22

Ibid., pp. 23-24

269

called march toward progress in favour of retrogressive economic nationalism.

Patterson accepts Milottes suggestion that the IWP and CPNI programmes took
issue with a Fianna Fil sell-out and thus concludes that they joined 1960s
republicanism in a denial of certain massive realities upon which a Marxism
less influenced by nationalism would have paused to reflect.145 A more nuanced
reading of Ireland Her Own in particular finds that the two communist groups
were not opposed to global economic integration as such. Rather, their concerns
related to the gradual erosion of national democracy and the capacity of the
nation-state to negotiate globalisation on its own terms. Both programmes also
sought to differentiate Fianna Fil, which occasionally captured the mood of the
Irish working class and acted in its interests, from Fine Gael, which was a proimperialist party by nature. Carmodys manifesto referred to a Fianna Fil left
wing that the IWP wished to win round to the idea of a progressive government,
along with radical Sinn Fin representatives and the National Progressive
Democrats, which counted Noel Browne as one of its founding members. While
Milotte downplays the existence of such nuances, causing Patterson to ignore
them, it is clear that both communist programmes were more discriminating
towards nationalism and more sophisticated in economic analysis than their
critics suggest.
On the declining Irish economy, Ireland Her Own conceded that the 1930s
policy of self-sufficiency that is, living entirely off our own resources was
unrealistic. But while an influx of foreign capital was necessary to create
employment, it was unlikely to correct the flawed policies that had for so long
allowed the production of raw materials and development of agriculture to take
place in isolation from manufacturing and the productive economy. Another
problem was that the Irish state had surrendered its capacity for guaranteeing
some re-investment of profits in the Irish economy, which had implications for
employment creation and domestic consumer demand in the long term.146 In a
similar vein, Murray referred to the supplanting of tillage by grazing in the face
of economic logic and the northern governments discrimination against small
farmers by refusing them the same level of credit or practical support as the
large farming class. He argued that integration into the Common Market would

145
146

Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, p. 236; Patterson, The Politics of Illusion, p. 103
Paddy Carmody, Ireland Her Own (Dublin, 1962)

270

lead to a concentration of land ownership into cartels and trusts, depopulation

of the countryside and higher levels of unemployment.147
Murray also juxtaposed the high levels of Irish capital outflows with the allout efforts to attract and subsidise foreign investment, which he doubted would
put the stops on mass emigration and unemployment. Drawing on The
Economic Survey of Northern Ireland, published in 1957 by two Queens
University economists, he observed that local magnates in the North engaged in
monopolistic practices which obstructed genuine efforts towards industrial
diversification. The Unionist Party acted in the interests of British imperialism,
which in turn had become a subordinate vassal of the modern United States
Dollar variant of imperialism.148 His concern was as much with the destructive
effects of monopoly capitalism as with the penetration of the Irish economy by
foreign capital of whatever national origin. On a related note, he was concerned
by the attempts of local comprador policy-makers to create the conditions for
profitable exploitation of the Irish economy and at once feather their own
nests.149 In this regard, Swan is correct in arguing that opposition to the EEC
aligned the interests of the communist and republican movements temporarily.
The reasons for doing so were different contradictory even but not
antagonistic.150
The two communist programmes were interpretatively closer to traditional
republican thinking on the cause of partition. British imperialism, in Murrays
estimation, imposed the border in order
to rupture the life of the Irish people, bring about the present divisions in
Northern Ireland, create two antagonistic states, and disunite the
struggle that caused it to relinquish its political hold over the major part
of the country.151
Where he departed from traditional republicanism, which attributed all of
Irelands ills to British rule, was in attaching an equal portion of the blame for

147

Murray, Irelands Path to Socialism, pp. 11-12

Ibid., pp. 6-10
149
These arguments have gained currency in: the work of D.R. OConnor Lysaght, The Republic of
Ireland: An Hypothesis in Eight Chapters and Two Intermissions (Cork, 1970), pp. 183-194, who
critiques Irish bourgeois and bureaucrat economic policy-making; and Conor McCabe, Sins of the
Father: Tracing the Decisions that Shaped the Irish Economy (Dublin, 2011)
150
Swan, Official Irish Republicanism, p. 100
151
Murray, Irelands Path to Socialism, p. 28
148

271

underdevelopment to the native bourgeoisie. Moreover, regardless of the belief

that British imperialism was one root cause of Irelands problems, it did not
necessarily follow that the perpetuation of or solution to these problems lay
solely in the removal of partition. Murray reaffirmed the ideal of an Irish
socialist republic as his ultimate goal and indeed spoke of the necessity of
completing the national revolution. Yet in sharp contrast to the republican
movement, he argued that anti-partitionism on its own would bring only certain
sections of the working class into the struggle. Required in place of this strategy
was a joint fight for national liberation and social and economic justice.152
Crucially, in anticipation of the modernising republicanism of the 1960s and
1970s, he returned to the tradition of the United Irishmen and spoke of Ireland
as being the people of this land, not a geographical term.153 Murray was not
prepared to advocate the imposition of a united Ireland on the northern
Protestant population. Uniting the people was now a pre-requisite to territorial
reunification.
The CPNIs immediate concern was to assemble the working class, the
small farmers, the small businessmen and the intellectuals in a progressive
government at Stormont, which would assume full powers from Westminster
and implement localised policies in the interests of its broad constituency.154 A
foremost aim was to secure civil rights and democratic participation for all
citizens, which almost mirrored the Connolly Association approach of pursuing
genuine reforms in themselves and as a means of exposing Unionist Party
intransigence.155 Murray did not agree with Paddy Carmody that Northern
Ireland had attained the status of a fully-fledged democracy. Yet he was
optimistic that the state was reformable in the interim and susceptible to
socialistic policies under a progressive Stormont government operating
independently from Westminster. Simultaneously, a corresponding coalition of
progressive forces would consolidate the democratic gains of the protracted
bourgeois revolution in the South and build upon it socially and economically.
North-South cooperation would become the norm to the point where it would be
possible to declare a socialist republic under a de facto communist-led

152

Ibid., p. 31
Ibid., p. 38
154
Ibid., p. 14
155
Ibid., p. 25
153

272

government of Ireland. The end goal had not changed. Rather, Murray adjusted
the strategy to reflect the prevailing conditions.
The so-called path to socialism outlined in Murrays programme included a
series of measures that drew inspiration from different sources. Firstly, it
deemed nationalisation of big commercial concerns necessary for modernising
the staple industries and breaking up the monopolies. It promised medium and
small businesses the freedom to trade competitively without the threat of being
engulfed by larger enterprises. In addition, it planned for the two governments
of Ireland to impose capital controls and compel the banks to provide cheap
credit in order to generate high levels of reinvestment in the domestic economy.
Interestingly, Murray promoted the setting up of home industries based on
agriculture, such as food processing, canning, leather, fertiliser plants etc,
which, despite being associated with economic nationalism, actually obeyed the
global capitalist law of comparative advantage. Irelands Path to Socialism also
promised to encourage the voluntary organisation of farming and small
enterprises along cooperative lines, which foreshadowed the republican
cooperativism developed by Roy Johnston in the early-to-mid 1960s. Murray
conceived this primarily as a method of eliminating the usurious profits of the
middleman but also way to promote a spirit of rural-urban collaboration.
Finally, underpinning these economic reforms was an extension of social
democratic welfarism, funded by the redirection of rearmament funds. This
included a slum clearance project, the nationalisation of large property
holdings and the introduction of a rent cap tied to wages; a rise in pensions to a
sufficient

level;

universal

healthcare

and

education,

with

the

latter

administered by the working class to reflect the demands of the developing

economy; and the extension of leisure and cultural facilities, without which any
Marxist pamphlet would be incomplete.156
In spite of the conclusions that a selective reading of Irelands Path to
Socialism may produce, the CPNIs model for development was patently not
state capitalism imported from the Soviet Union. As shown above, Murray
eclectically combined elements of Soviet communism, social democratic
capitalism, cooperativism and economic nationalism. However, Milotte is right
to argue that it amounted to an ill-defined socialism in terms of content and
156

Ibid., pp. 11-18

273

tactics.157 Murray described the methods for holding onto power, such the
reorganisation of the civil service and police under new leadership and placing
the organs of propaganda under democratic control of the peoples [sic]
organisations. But beyond his hope for a socialist future based on a powerful
trade union movement and communist majorities at Westminster, Stormont
and Leinster House, he offered no clear route to power.158 Even so, it
represented a major advance on what the communist movement had produced
since the 1941 CPI split and was arguably stronger in both diagnosis and
prescription than the 1933 programme. It added to the CPNIs relative strength
within the trade union movement a number of serious political aspirations,
whilst recognising that the partys success depended on one or more of its
potential allies undergoing a change in attitude towards the communists. Above
all, it was serious about overcoming the sectarian divide in the North, detaching
progressives from the nationalist and Unionist camps, and appealing to nonconfessional labourists. Murray may have reasserted the objective of a united
socialist republic and found common cause with republicans, but he did not
subscribe to the type of republicanism on offer in the North.
Conclusion
Despite its best efforts, the CPNI was unable to achieve financial sustainability
by the end of the decade. A huge fundraising drive was launched in early 1958,
which along with donations helped to clear the partys arrears of rent (120) and
rates (50). Yet the party was still forced to vacate its premises on Church
Lane.159 When the much-frequented International Bookshop was closed in early
1959, the executive committee assured members that the ideas of Marxism can
never be crushed by the mere closing of a shop.160 However, Murray admitted to
Tommy Watters that the CPNI had gone through some hell of a period in
trying to secure an affordable base for its activities. Murrays house, 32 Lincoln
Avenue, was used as a temporary office for some four months, before the party
relocated to 13 Adelaide Street at the beginning of 1959.161 Hugh Moore made a
personal loan of 35 to the party, ostensibly for rent or a deposit, and promised
157

Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, p. 238

Murray, Irelands Path to Socialism, pp. 34-38
159
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/G/48, Executive committee letter to party members, 14
February 1958
160
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/A/69, Party circular from the executive committee, February
1959
161
PRONI, D2162/G/80, Letter from Murray to Tommy [Watters], 9 July 1959
158

274

another 10 in due course. Membership figures were disappointing, with the

party adding just over 100 new members in the ten years since 1949. Of the 280
due-paying members on paper, RUC Special Branch believed that only fortyseven were active.162
Not for the first time had Murray led what was essentially a process of
consolidation in difficult circumstances. Politically, the CPNI grew very slowly;
and records suggest that these gains were made almost entirely in Protestant
areas, which coincided with a strengthening of the partys position in the trade
union movement. Murray had success as the architect of relative unity between
the two communist parties. He and Sen Nolan first brought the IWL and CPNI
together under the joint council umbrella in 1952, preceding a decade of
dialogue and cooperation. The two leaderships converged on the idea of trade
union unity, and whereas the IWL may have had only a nominal influence on
bringing about the creation of the ICTU, the impact of CPNI trade unionists
was evident. Murray also succeeded in ensuring that the two parties produced
manifestos in 1962 that were subtly different in content and analysis, yet
aspired to the same end goal and pursued complementary strategies. Murray
would have been quite satisfied to know that he had bequeathed to the
movement the organisational and theoretical basis for the reconstitution of the
CPI in 1970.
Although the party had failed to make the desired breakthrough at the time
of Murrays death, Irelands Path to Socialism ushered in a period of
reorientation towards the Catholic community. Murray provided the rationale
for CPNI involvement in a civil rights campaign, which came to fruition in 1967
with the creation of NICRA, of which Betty Sinclair was a founding member. He
and Carmody also underpinned a future rapprochement with a specific, leftist
type of republicanism; a republicanism that was serious about engaging with
the Protestant working class; and one that saw the merits of electoral
participation in and reform of the two Irish states. It would be difficult to argue
against the proposition that, had he survived another ten years, Murray would
have pushed the CPNI into a more prominent role within the National
Liberation Front devised by Roy Johnston and left republicans in the late
162

PRONI, HA/32/1/938, Communist Party Membership, British-Soviet Friendship Society Reports

(1954-1960)

275

1960s. It was significant that Johnston later used Irelands Path to Socialism in
the context of persuading the left-republican politicisers that the CPNI was to
be cultivated as a source of left-wing experience, and as a useful contact channel
for the trade unions.163 Irelands Path to Socialism was a republican document.
But much had changed since the Republican Congress to standardise the
struggle on both sides of the border and to allow for a more inclusive alliance
which focused equally on social and political issues.

163

Interview with Roy Johnston (via email), 5 June 2010

276

Conclusions
Murrays death in 1961 came as a great surprise to his many comrades in
Ireland, Britain and internationally. Few were aware of the extent of his illness,
or the rate at which his health had deteriorated. Indeed, several wrote to him in
the week of his death to joke about his condition and discuss matters relating to
party work, fully expecting him to make a swift return to the fold. Following his
passing, Murrays wife Margaret received letters of sympathy and telegrams in
large numbers, from local Irish communists, leading CPGB and Connolly
Association figures, and others further afield.1 Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, the
former Wobbly, wrote a moving tribute to Murray in the Worker, while Michael
McInerney contributed an obituary in the Irish Times, and Sen Nolan in the
Irish Socialist.2 CPGB London district branches organised a joint memorial
event in honour of his service to the working people and socialism in Britain
and Ireland.3 On 30 May, Murray was taken for burial at Dundonald cemetery.
A cross-section of the Irish, British and international labour movements
around 300 people attended the funeral. A lone piper played Lament for the
Dead, Jimmy Graham sang Connollys Rebel Song, and Grahams wife Dolly
gave a rendition of The Blue Hills of Antrim. Naturally, the service concluded
with The Internationale.4
A great Fenian: Murrays Socialist Republicanism
In 1985, a year before his death, the CPI published Peadar ODonnells Not Yet
Emmet: A Wreath on the Grave of Sen Murray, an outline of the Irish
revolutionary period and postscript to Murrays life. Between 1916 and 1923,
the conditions briefly existed for a social and national revolution. However, as
the forces of reaction gathered, enlisting the support of the British state, the
struggle became one for worthwhile democracy; an anti-colonial struggle for the
creation of an independent bourgeois-democratic republic. Yet the Treaty failed
to yield even this gain. It deceived the people by obscuring the social forces

PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/I/47-86, Letters relating to Murrays illness and death
(May/June 1961)
2
Worker, 30 July 1961; Irish Times, 26 May 1961; Irish Socialist, June 1961
3
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/I/45, Sen Murray Memorial Meeting London District
Communist Party, June 1961
4
PRONI, Sen Murray Papers, D2162/I/49, Sen Murrays funeral service, 30 May 1961; Emmet
OConnor, John (Sen) Murray in Keith Gildart, David Howell and Neville Kirk (eds.), Dictionary of
Labour Biography, Vol. XI (London, 2003), p. 205

277

behind its design, ushered in the imposition of the rule of the upper classes in
Irish society and protected the dual interests of social conservatism and
comprador capitalism. This set back by some years the achievement of a
workers and farmers government.5
For an assessment of Murrays contribution to post-1916 Irish radicalism, it
is appropriate to call to mind the words of ODonnell, his closest confidant and,
with the exception of Connolly and Larkin, the person who most embodies the
ideals, achievements and failures of socialist republicanism in early modern
Ireland:
In my opinion Murray was the greatest achievement of the Republican
Lefta great Fenian. In some ways, he was Connolly fully matured,
fully grown up in a changing situation and therefore, was more
developed, more rounded off even than his masterhe had a wonderful
gift of convincing everyone, particularly young people, and women, that
they had something especially important to contribute to the working
class movement, and he inspired young people to make a real effort.6
That Murray was a Fenian, a Connolly republican, is not in doubt. Three factors
drew him into the republican movement at an early age: his republican
heritage; a chance encounter with Roger Casement in the Glens; and Connollys
martyrdom in 1916. Throughout his political career, Murray quoted Connolly
liberally and frequently channelled the legacies of radical republicans such as
Tone, the Young Irelanders, Davitt and Mellows in order to give his communism
a republican feel.
Murrays understanding of the Irish revolutionary period is significant and
deserving of respect because he was an active agent of revolutionary
nationalism during those years. With ODonnell, Frank Ryan, David Fitzgerald,
George Gilmore and others, he experienced the disappointment of the Treaty
settlement, which carried into the second half of his career. This and Connollys
conception of the social and national re-conquest informed the socialist
republican dimension of his politics. Cumann na nGaedheals consolidation of
Catholic social conservatism, economic dependence on Britain and limited
political autonomy formed the starting point for Murrays analysis of the Free
State. The existence of the northern polity was underpinned by a powerful
5
6

Peadar ODonnell, Not Yet Emmet: A Grave on the Wreath of Sen Murray (Dublin, 1985)
Michael McInerney, Peadar ODonnell: Irish Social Rebel (Dublin, 1974), pp. 96-98

278

Unionist elite, whose prosperity depended on the link with Britain, and by the
informal imperialist actions of British governments. Dealing critically with the
two Irish states, one colonial and the other neo-colonial, he presented a
contemporary and updated version of Connollys analyses of pre-partition
Ireland.
The Ireland to which Murray returned in 1930 had little in common with
the vision of anti-Treaty republicans, including de Valera, who promised that
his Fianna Fil party would bring the social and national re-conquest to
fruition. Although Murrays experiences in the intervening years complicated
his views on republicanism and placed limitations on his ability to seek out
communist-republican alliances, he continued to judge nationalist formations
against

Connollyist

criteria.

Hence,

The

Irish

Case

for

Communism

acknowledged Fianna Fils success in combining a (rhetorical) commitment to

national reunification and political independence with an appeal to the urban
and rural working class on the basis of substantial social and economic reforms.
Whether he wanted to draw constitutional republicanism to the left or create a
leftist alternative, Murray generally welcomed these glimpses of progressivism
and encouraged the communist, labour and republican movements to respond
positively to them.
Murrays involvement with the Republican Congress reflected socialist
republican concerns that despite his pronouncements on building an
independent and economically viable republic, de Valera would ultimately
succumb to the same class interests that lay behind the Cosgrave government.
In this event, the bourgeois-democratic revolution would remain incomplete.
Supporters of the Price-Connolly Workers Republic resolution advanced a
legitimate class solution which plausibly included workers in the industrial
North. Yet this failed to appreciate the extent of the southern states political
and economic subservience to Britain. It was only in 1938 that the British
government relinquished control of its remaining southern ports, and in 1948
that Dublin, by a stroke of the pen, broke all remaining political ties with
London. The economic relationship is more complex and cuts across
constitutional matters. The overriding effect of the 1935 Coal-Cattle Pact and
1938 Anglo-Irish Trade Agreement was to strengthen Irish agricultures
dependency on the British market and to favour graziers over plans to expand
279

tillage farming. Additionally, Fianna Fil only established an Irish Central

Bank in 1943, which allowed Dublin to control the instruments of monetary
policy for the first time since the formation of the state. These aspects of de
Valeras early years in office add weight to the view that his party was reluctant
to establish a fully functioning capitalist nation-state with healthy class
antagonisms. Murray therefore based his support for ODonnells minority
resolution, and for a stageist conception of the revolution, on a sound analysis
of the Free States composition and the prospects for socialism. This shift in
emphasis marked a key difference between The Irish Case for Communism and
Irelands Path to Freedom. The possibilities offered by the Workers and
Farmers Republic compromise is a subject of conjecture, though it does seem
that Murray missed an opportunity to bring together greater numbers of left
republicans and labourists, including Ulster Protestants and rural workers,
under a socialist republican banner.
While Prices resolution was class reductionist and narrow in scope,
ODonnells proposal was equally nave for different reasons. The bourgeois
revolution to which Murray and ODonnell aspired included the six counties
constituting the state of Northern Ireland and involved a number of misguided
assumptions regarding the allegiances of workers in the north-east. At different
stages of his career, in diverse historical contexts, Murrays socialist
republicanism approached the Unionist working class from different angles.
During the outdoor relief strike, he made an abortive attempt to encourage the
IRA to put itself at the disposal of the Belfast working class and unemployed.
Unlike ODonnell and Gilmore, he did not necessarily view the strikes as a
cross-communal expression of socialist republicanism, principally because
republicans did not become involved in an official capacity. Initially, he was
satisfied with a place for the RWG at the heart of a historic stand by organised
labour in the North, working at the same time to establish friendly relations
with left republicans in Dublin. He only put an anti-imperialist slant on the
events of 1932 when it became apparent that labour unity had faltered in the
aftermath of the strikes.
Murrays confidence in independent labours ability to realise Connollys reconquest diminished in light of his practical experience. He quickly reached the
conclusion that although widespread cooperation with the labour movement was
280

desirable, republicans were the communists most dependable allies in terms of

building an anti-imperialist alliance. His republican past, early career Dublincentric activities, and detachment from Belfast following his exclusion from the
North, all reinforced this belief. In his early writings and statements, he often
referred to the necessity of ending partition in order for labour politics to
flourish across the island. A frustrating lack of progress on this front brought
out the worst of his republicanism. Analysing the Second World War within an
imperialist framework produced some cogent arguments relating to territorial
annexations and the drive for profits in the war industries. However, CPI
publications drifted towards Anglophobia, and Murray foolishly made an
irredentist speech which brought him dangerously close to a marginal group of
IRA militarists. This almost undid the positive effects of Murray and the CPIs
genuine opposition to fascism and right-wing nationalism in Ireland and
Europe.
None of this should lead us to the view that the CPI leader shared the
solipsistic trait that Richard English has identified in IRA men such as Sen
Russell. Murray retreated from his momentary irredentism, publicly rejected
the traditional republican view that there existed an opportunity for an armed
campaign in the North and in Britain, and dismissed comparisons between the
Second World War and the 1914-1918 period. Two decades later, when
confronted with the Border Campaign, he repeated denunciations of the use of
violence on the road to reunification, independence and socialism. For Murray,
these campaigns did not compare with the anti-colonial struggle in which he
had participated. They ignored certain political and economic realities and
lacked popular support. They also set out to achieve a different type of republic
than that advocated by Murray and the republican left: a thirty-two county form
of that which existed in the twenty-six; limited political independence, divorced
from social upheaval, which safeguarded Gaelic Catholic conservatism.
The timing of Murrays return to Belfast afforded him a different
perspective and in some respects allowed his ideas to evolve. He reacquainted
himself with the industrial, predominantly Protestant politics of the Belfast
labour movement. He did not accept the logic of taking the CPNI in an explicitly
Unionist direction and, crucially, he rejected economism as a strategy.
Nevertheless, he acknowledged the material benefits of introducing British
281

welfarism to Northern Ireland and of working subsequently to protect its gains.

This came to the fore as the northern economy entered into decline and Murray
placed the link between the Unionist elite and Toryism as the centre of his
arguments against working-class support for the Unionist Party. During the
1958 election, he deferred to the democratic socialist NILP on bread and butter
issues. He incorporated this into Irelands Path to Socialism, along with a Soviet
communist approach to the organisation of society and a Gaelic cooperativist
approach to the land.
In J.J. Lees words, Connollys fatal tactical error was his reluctance to
acknowledge the existence of rural Ireland.7 Similarly, Murray failed to take
the land question seriously in the early stages of his career. Excepting positive
references to Lalor and Davitt, for example, Murrays early writings dismissed
the radical potential of sections of the peasantry and failed to comprehend social
divisions and class formations on the land. In Irelands Path to Freedom, he
argued that the peasantry would become a powerful and decisive force only
under the leadership of another revolutionary class which is in such conditions
that it can organise its forces. This attitude is surprising, since he came from
poor peasant or small farming stock. ODonnell, who came from a similar
northern background, made land the prime focus of his social agitation. He
directed the IWFC and attempted to bring the Irish rural workers under the
ambit of a European peasants movement. Most notably, he pushed the land
annuities issue to the forefront of Irish politics at a crucial juncture in Free
States history. Murray, meanwhile, prepared to launch a communist party in
the two main cities. In the 1930s, he was either unwilling or unable to extend
the CPIs work beyond Belfast and Dublin. This reflected in part the
rudimentary European Marxism that shaped his analyses. Equally, though,
Murray believed that it was possible for the CPI to access rural workers and
small farmers through the republican movement.
It is important to acknowledge that Murray eventually started treating land
as a matter of importance around the early 1940s. He began to warn against the
shock imposition of free trade on Irish agriculture, which he argued would
precipitate

its

decline.

For

Murray,

Irish

farmers

lacked

not

only

Quoted in Henry Patterson, The Politics of Illusion: A Political History of the IRA (London, 1997), p.
15

282

competitiveness but a domestic market for their produce. Agriculture and

industry sat in isolation, preventing the development of native industries such
as food processing, canning, leather, fertiliser plants etc. Furthermore, the preeminence of grazing in the agricultural policies of governments, North and
South, benefited no one but the rancher class and British importers, the
preferred buyers of Irish cattle. Separated from his political prejudices,
Murrays analysis of the island economy often took on a sophisticated form,
particularly in the latter stage of his career. The insertion of voluntary
cooperativism into the 1962 CPNI and IWL programmes may not have
represented a significant advance on Murrays early analyses of rural Ireland.
Above all, it underestimated the likely opposition to the measure from the small
and medium farming classes. Yet it did hold some moral appeal in difficult
economic circumstances and reflected his dual aim of reaching out at once to
republicans and the peasantry.
Politically, significant changes occurred in Anglo-Irish relations over the
course of a decade, beginning with the introduction of Bunreacht na hireann in
1937 and ending with Dublins repeal of the External Relations Act (1948).
These legislative measures confirmed the achievement of bourgeois national
democracy for the twenty-six counties and removed a constitutional obstacle to
the development of class politics within the southern state. The transnational,
financialised phenomenon of imperialism was increasingly significant. However,
it no longer seemed appropriate to present the relationship between Britain and
Ireland as classically colonial. Meanwhile, the Ireland Act (1949) copperfastened partition and enacted into law the Unionist claim to selfdetermination. Britain retained a level of responsibility for the composition of
the

northern

state,

given

that

several

anomalies

prevented

the

institutionalisation of democracy. Namely, differing views on the constitutional

question, the discrimination experienced by Catholics, and the sectarian
polarisation of the working class, all jettisoned the prospect of normal politics
taking root and an independent labour formation making serious inroads.
In the final years of his life, Murray reiterated his commitment to the goal
of a thirty-two county Irish socialist republic. He developed a strategy and
reorganised the Irish communist movement in accordance with that ultimate
objective. Yet he also took account of the substantial changes that had occurred
283

since last developing a political programme. He envisaged a radical alliance

coming to power in the South and implementing a loosely defined socialist
programme based on cross-border cooperation with a fully representative labour
government in the North, which, due to the absence of democratic norms, would
conceivably take longer to gestate. Most importantly, Murray based his vision of
a socialist republic on the unity of the northern working class in advance of, or
in parallel with, unity of the Irish working class as a whole. This differed from
the more traditional republican views expressed by Jack Bennett and Desmond
Greaves. Whereas they favoured coercion in order to realise the same objective
as Murray the first, conventional IRA violence to force a decision upon the
British; and the second, political coercion by the British government against the
Unionist population the CPI leader recognised the importance of Protestant
working-class consent.
Authors such as Sen Swan have made this distinction in a discussion of the
1970s republican split, placing Greaves and the Connolly Association firmly in
the traditionalist camp in terms of strategy if not overall objectives.8 It is
important to acknowledge the work that has gone before on the subject. This
notwithstanding, the present author posits the idea that aspects of Irelands
Path to Socialism anticipated Official republican thinking that germinated over
the subsequent decade. The CPNI and IWL manifestos jointly articulated a
radical, democratic and non-sectarian variant of republicanism. This did not
amount to a re-reading of Connolly. Rather, Murray and Carmody assessed the
possibilities for labour and left-wing republicans in light of radically different
political and economic circumstances than existed in Connollys time, or during
the Republican Congress period for that matter. In theory, Murrays socialist
republicanism was more realistic than the traditional republican and far left
alternatives on offer. A major problem, which Murray understood, was that the
two communist parties did not enjoy a receptive audience, particularly at the
height of the Cold War. It is plausible to argue, therefore, that Murray would
have been prepared to help individuals such as Roy Johnston facilitate closer
cooperation between the CPI and the nascent Official republican movement
from the early 1960s onwards.

Sen Swan, Official Irish Republicanism, 1962 to 1972 (UK, 2007), pp. 374-376

284

Bolshevism and Stalinism

Socialist republicanism forms one important dimension of Murrays political
make-up. And yet Murray owed international communist structures an equal if
not greater debt of gratitude for his development as a theorist and organiser.
Through his experience of British radicalism, he first became acquainted with
industrial organisation and labour politics. This gained full expression during
the era of Red Clydeside and on the occasion of the 1926 general strike. Through
his early introduction to British Marxism, first in Glasgow and later in London
with the CPGB, he found commonality with figures on the Irish republican left
such as Sen McLoughlin, Roddy Connolly and indeed James Connolly.
Additionally, involvement with the CPGB led him to the International Lenin
School in Moscow, where he and other future leaders of peripheral communist
parties became partly or fully Bolshevised.
The Lenin School experience furnished Murray with an understanding of
the practical application of Marxist-Leninist methods of organisation, agitation
and propaganda (agit-prop). It equipped him with necessary skills to establish
himself as a prolific writer, pamphleteer and propagandist. A full collection of
Murrays articles, editorials, lectures, speeches and party statements would be
voluminous. Such a collection would be a useful historical resource, containing
in magnified form the very best and worst features of socialism and
republicanism, from which the Irish left can draw valuable lessons. Leninist
party discipline and democratic centralism were important factors in securing
the CPIs survival at difficult junctures. A number of Lenin School graduates
and Comintern agents helped to instil this discipline in a rump of communist
activists, though Murray stands out as the individual who maintained it
throughout the period in question. These same levels of commitment also
ensured that the communists established a lasting and disproportionately
influential presence in the trade union movement. More generally, the
Comintern provided financial assistance and international networks, enabling
the CPI to regard oneself as part of a global vanguard. As OConnor has noted,
the Cominterns influence on the Irish communist movement in the 1930s was
fundamental, and largely positive. It is unlikely that a revolutionary party,

285

outside the republican tradition at least, would have survived for very long
without the Comintern.9
Murray entered into free association with the Comintern, which provided
him with a number of career high points and earned him recognition as a leader
on the international left. Early in the second CPIs development, Murray
committed himself to the Marxist-Leninist concept of a vanguard party.
Initially, he did this to secure Moscows backing, for there was no compromise
solution that would have satisfied the Comintern hierarchy. It is somewhat
more perplexing that he persevered with this stance for the duration of his
career. Irrespective of policy differences, the self-righteous notion that the
communist party reigns supreme placed severe limitations on what the
RWG/CPI could realistically achieve in liaison with revolutionary nationalist
enterprises such as Saor ire and the Republican Congress. It also restricted
the movements capacity to work productively with labour political formations
on its left and right flanks. Moreover, the reactionary environment fostered by
powerful interests the clergy in the South and Unionist state in the North
made it difficult for a working-class party with a communist title to organise.
Murray understood this and expressed his concerns to the CPGB in the
strongest possible terms. The evidence around this debate is scant. However, it
is not implausible that he favoured the creation of a body that performed the
same tasks as a communist party, but under a different title and with a broader
remit to form alliances with socialists and progressive republicans. A workers
and farmers party might have provided the answer.
But while Murray eventually succumbed to external pressure and launched
the CPI in 1933, it is inaccurate or misleading to suggest that his political
trajectory followed the twists and turns of Comintern policy shifts. This thesis
challenges existing interpretations of Murrays career, particularly those
presented by Mike Milotte and Stephen Bowler. Furthermore, in search of the
comprehensiveness alluded to by C. Wright Mills,10 it adds a number of
nuances to OConnors discussion of relations between the Irish communist
movement and Comintern. Firstly, it is important to recall the RWGs class

Emmet OConnor, Reds and the Green: Ireland, Russia and the Communist Internationals (Dublin,
2004), p. 236
10
C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination (New York, 1959), p. 245

286

against class experience, during which Murray and Larkin Jnr made no
assumptions about the RWGs superior status in the labour movement. Instead,
they levied criticisms at the left sectarianism of veteran communists such as
Tom Bell and expressed their preference for cooperation with the WUI and
Labour grassroots. Murray helped to create Saor ire and lent ambiguous
supported to its activities. The adoption of class against class jettisoned a
formal alliance. But in comparison to many European communist parties,
Murray ensured that the RWGs Third Periodism lasted only a few months, not
years. From his arrival in Dublin in 1930 to the CPIs inception in 1933, Murray
indicated his preference for broad united front policies and a penchant for
alliances with left republicans. Secondly, in direct contravention to Comintern
directives, Murray bypassed the united front from below, placed an emphasis
on the CPIs national character and sought out anti-imperialist allies. This
brought the wrath of the Comintern and almost cost Murray his position at the
head of the Irish movement. Crucially, however, the Comintern conceded to
Murray on a number of important points, and, rather than reversing his
nationally-specific agenda, endorsed it retrospectively.
Finally, and perhaps most significantly since it was unpopular in
international and Irish communist circles, Murray all but embraced Trotskys
intelligent analysis of fascism as an immediate threat necessitating mass and
immediate opposition from the working class. Consequently, in the second half
of 1933, he used the Irish Workers Voice to call for a united front against the
Blueshirts in Ireland and to support the creation of similar fronts across
Europe. Even after the Comintern reprimanded Murray for taking this stance,
he reiterated his position at a party meeting in early 1934. To the displeasure of
the majority of leading members in attendance, he praised the coming together
of anti-fascist forces in Austria, Spain and France, and suggested that the KPD
should have made a more resolute fight against the coming to power of Hitler.
More tentatively, we can argue that Murray advocated intervention in Spain in
advance of the French communists and anticipated the shift to Popular
Frontism in late 1934. Taken in conjunction with his overlapping socialist
republicanism, these examples suffice as evidence of a more autonomous and
organic process of decision-making and policy formulation than either Milotte or
Bowler have discerned. The thesis also goes beyond OConnors thorough study
in attaching a greater degree of independence to Murray, particularly on the
287

issues of national specificity, republicanism and the nature of the CPIs

transition from class against class to Popular Frontism.
One significant point on which one agrees with OConnor and Milotte is that
leading CPGB figures such as Harry Pollitt were wholly unsympathetic to the
plight of the Irish party. Murray remained on cordial terms with the British
party until his death in 1961. In fact, his relationship with the CPGB seemed to
improve after the dissolution of the Comintern, which coincided with his move
to Belfast and reintegration into the British labour movement. However, during
the Comintern era, the British party Pollitt in particular made successive
attempts to undermine Murrays position and stymie the CPIs development. As
early as 1933, the CPGB considered removing Murray from the CPI leadership.
Furthermore, OConnor and Grant have presented compelling evidence which
suggests that Pollitt mislead Murray as to the Cominterns position on the
Workers and Farmers Republic compromise, which contributed to the CPIs
confusion at Rathmines and the eventual collapse of the Republican Congress.
Invariably, pressure on Murrays leadership originated in the CPGBs social
imperialist ambitions or Pollits hostility, not from within the Irish party. This
was most patently the case in 1937 when Pollitt and the CPGB attempted to
orchestrate

Murrays

demotion,

despite

the

CPI

leader

enjoying

the

overwhelming support of party members. In 1940/41, Pollitt and his coconspirators ensured that Murrays all-island project encountered a significant
detour. The Dublin branch dissolved, and it took Murray the best part of a
decade to recover politically. The subject awaits a full study. As the evidence
accumulates, it appears that an influential CPGB faction regarded Irish
communists as subordinate to its interests in Britain, or its agenda in Ireland
during the Comintern years.11
To deal with Murrays Stalinism, it is instructive to divide the contested
term into three broadly distinct categories: Stalinist terror; Soviet foreign policy;
and Stalinist theory. The first is a most uncomfortable and problematic legacy
for communists internationally to confront, even to this day. The death of Pat
Breslin at the hands of the regime in Kazan raises serious questions about
Murrays view of the Soviet Union under Stalin. It would be difficult to argue
that Murray was fully aware of the gravity of Stalins crimes. But it is simply
11

OConnor, Reds and the Green, p. 237

288

inconceivable that he did not learn of Breslins fate, particularly as they were
classmates at the Lenin School and Murray was friendly with Breslins second
wife, Daisy McMackin. We also recall Murrays nonsensical outburst at the
height of the Spanish Civil War, whereby he attacked the POUMs genuine
socialism and attempted to justify the Moscow Show Trials. If the worst
example of Murrays republicanism is his 1938 irredentist speech, this is
certainly the international equivalent. It reflected poorly on the movement and
damaged relations with the NISP permanently. Thankfully, this left
sectarianism was uncommon in his repertoire. But in light of these facts, one
can understand why readers would be reluctant to accept the CPNIs penitent
response to the Khrushchev speech, which Murray drafted.
Of course, Murrays criticisms of the POUM relate directly to Soviet foreign
policy and Stalinist theory. The year 1936 marked the decline of the
Cominterns limited interest in Irish affairs. Ironically, this occurred in tandem
with the involvement of Irish communists and left republicans in the Spanish
Civil War, which magnified the importance of Popular Front politics in the
national context. As argued above, it was not simply a case of the CPI following
the Cominterns lead. Murrays bleak assessment of the CPIs options led him to
anticipate aspects of the Popular Front. The legacy of the Irish Civil War and
continuation of anti-Treaty politics also entered into his considerations.
Fundamentally, though, the CPI embraced the Popular Front as interpreted by
the Comintern and thus joined the international communist movement in
fighting to protect the gains of the first (bourgeois-democratic) stage of the
revolution.
Subsequently, the CPI became Stalinised and, under Murrays direction,
painfully and farcically attempted to keep step with Stalins u-turns on the
Second World War. Association with the Soviet Union during the war,
particularly after Stalingrad, brought some ephemeral rewards for the CPNI.
Yet this failed to disguise the partys underlying weaknesses. Thereafter, the
communist movement objectively identified with Soviet foreign policy,
supported the establishment of East-West trade relations and expressed
rhetorical enthusiasm for the introduction of specific features of Soviet
communism to Ireland. This had a negligible effect on the CPNIs fortunes and
created serious problems for the IWL. Murrays last few trips to Moscow
289

generated nothing other than a sense of belonging to an international, nonWestern and anti-imperialist network. It is possible that he held out the faint
hope of gaining practical or financial assistance from Moscow. More likely is
that he looked towards the Soviet Union as the antithesis of Anglo-American
aggression and economic liberalism.
In terms of Stalinist theory, no one could doubt that Murray and the CPI
advanced the central ideas of Socialism in One Country. But it is important to
note that although Murray employed the theoretical framework developed by
Stalin and Bukharin, and defended the Soviet Unions achievements, he upheld
not socialism in the USSR but his vision of a socialism specific to Ireland.
Viewing Ireland as a semi-colonial country, and the uneven development of
capitalism as a legacy of colonial rule, Murray intended on building a socialist
Ireland with the support of revolutionary nationalism. Of all his contributions to
theory, the first The Irish Case for Communism was the most heavily Sovietoriented. But while neither Murray nor Paddy Carmody demonstrated an
affinity for Gramscian theory, their 1962 programmes arguably pointed towards
what became known in the 1970s as Eurocommunism. Indeed, Carmody left
the CPI in 1976 to help found the Irish Marxist Society. This is not to suggest
that Murray would have necessarily taken the same path. Rather, it warns
against the wholesale use of the Stalinist label to Murray and the CPI under
his direction.
Significant also is that, in the final analysis, Murray readjusted his strategy
to allow for the possibility of building socialism in the two Irish states before
Socialism in One Country. This reflected the political changes discussed above
and an awakening in Murray of the central Leninist principle that treats the
state as the most important unit of analysis. On a related note, one must call
attention to the fact that Murray owed a greater debt to Marxist theory than
contemporary socialist republicans such as Ryan, Gilmore and ODonnell. These
individuals, as with Roddy Connolly and Jim Larkin Jnr, were well versed in
the fundamentals of Marxism and obviously familiar with Marx, Engels and
Connollys view of capitalist colonialism as a central feature of British
imperialism. As a socialist republican, Murray too subscribed to this view. One
could give a blow-by-blow account of his obscure and poorly-attended lectures on
historical materialism, dialectics or the communist organisation of society.
290

However, it is most instructive to focus on his understanding of imperialism as a

transnational and essentially economic phenomenon. This was most evident in
the latter stage of his career, as the political opportunities for resolving the
national question rapidly diminished and pressure to liberalise the domestic
economies gained intensity. He identified the displacement of British
imperialism by the American variant and, prophetically, the dominance and
exploitation of the Irish economy by monopoly finance capital. He held that the
only bulwark against this threat was for labour and/or the republican left to
wrest decision-making powers from the native bourgeois-bureaucratic class
which acted in its interests.
Epilogue
It is apparent that, despite his best efforts, Murray failed to achieve the desired
communist-republican synthesis. Whatever his shortcomings, he bequeathed to
successive Irish communists and socialist republicans a fundamentally positive
legacy. First, he fought to address the root causes of social injustice in the face
of clerical and secular reaction, putting his life in danger on more than one
occasion. Second, he voiced opposition to fascism when it was a highly
unpopular position to hold. Seeing this through, he played a key role in ensuring
that the Irish communist movement actively resisted fascism and the
nationalist right domestically and internationally. Murrays commitment to the
attainment and protection of democracy is one of the more significant aspects of
his legacy. Third, he formalised Irish communisms position on the issue of civil
rights and provided the theory with which to underpin CPI involvement in the
civil rights campaigns of the 1960s. Fourth, he helped to create conditions
through which the CPNI and IWL contributed to and benefited from the
achievement of trade union unity in 1959. In lieu of a united communist
organisation, Murray is likely to have viewed the formation of the ICTU as a
vindication of the ideas he formulated in the twilight of his career. Finally,
Irelands Path to Socialism achieved a healthy and pragmatic balance of
Murrays republicanism and Marxism. Above all, it recognised the Unionist
working-class claim to self-determination, offered a route to the CPIs
reconstitution and laid the foundations for renewed cooperation between the
communist movement and left republicans.

291

There is no outstanding contemporary Irish political figure in Irish politics

against whom it is possible to judge Murrays ideological outlook, tactical
approaches or methods of organisation. Comparisons with Connolly are obvious,
yet insufficient. We find a more suitable comparison in 1970s republicanism,
and in the personage of Sen Garland. After contributing to the planning and
execution of an IRA campaign the Border Campaign Garland underwent a
conversion to Marxism and attempted to push the republican movement in a
left-wing, political direction. His stock rose after the 1970 republican split and
he became an important figure in the Official republican movement. Elected in
1977 as general secretary of Sinn Fin: the Workers Party later the Workers
Party of Ireland he sought to transform the movement into a vanguard party
and organise along Marxist-Leninist lines. He assigned a secondary role to the
IRA, or Group B as it was known internally, with the intention that it would
only function as a workers defence force, an appendage of the party.
Furthermore, while Garland drew on the gamut of Irish revolutionary
republicanism, his vision was that of a United Irishman. And although he has
entered semi-retirement from politics, he and his party have always
demonstrated with sincerity their commitment to ending sectarianism and
attracting cross-community support in the North.
Marxism-Leninism provided Garland and Murray with inspiration for party
organisation and tactics, and acted as an ideological check on their
republicanism. Murray was a competent theoretician, lacking an audience.
Garland left the theorising to others, but was a pervasive presence and
compelling in his delivery of ideas. He was intrigued by the CPI and, according
to Hanley and Millars history of the Official republican movement, yearned for
a formal leftist alliance between the two groups. He visited Moscow on a number
of occasions and was impressed with the social advances achieved by Soviet
communism. Under Garlands leadership, the Workers Party became pro-Soviet
in orientation, made connections with international communists and sought
assistance from Moscow. It eventually transformed into a hybrid between a
revolutionary party and a left social democratic one.12 There is no evidence to
suggest that Garland and Murray crossed paths. However, it is conceivable that

12

Brian Hanley and Scott Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers
Party (Dublin, 2009), Passim

292

had their careers overlapped to a greater extent, the possibilities for achieving a
radical, democratic communist-republican alliance would have opened up.

293

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