COMMUNISTS, RUSSIA, AND THE IRA, 1920–1923

Abstract

After the foundation of the Communist International in 1919, leftists within the Socialist Party of Ireland won Comintern backing for an Irish communist party. Encouraged by Moscow, the communists hoped to offset their marginality through the republican movement. The Communist Party of Ireland denounced the Anglo-Irish treaty, welcomed the Irish Civil War, and pledged total support to the IRA. As the war turned against them, some republicans favoured an alliance with the communists. In August 1922 Comintern agents and two IRA leaders signed a draft agreement providing for secret military aid to the IRA in return for the development of a new republican party with a radical social programme. The deal was not ratified on either side, and in 1923 the Communist Party of Ireland followed Comintern instructions to ‘turn to class politics’. The party encountered increasing difficulties and was liquidated in January 1924. The communist intervention in the Civil War highlights the contrast between Comintern and Russian state policy on Ireland, and was seminal in the evolution of Irish socialist republicanism.