Communist Party of Ireland

The Communist Party of Ireland (CPI; ) is an all-Ireland Marxist–Leninist communist party, founded in 1933 and re-founded in 1970. It rarely contests elections and has never had electoral success. The party is a member of the International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties. Originating as multiple Revolutionary Workers' Groups, located at Connolly House in Dublin, the most prominent early member was James Larkin Jnr (son of James Larkin). After being outlawed under the government of W. T. Cosgrave in 1931 (as part of a wider crackdown on Peadar O'Donnell's Saor Éire and the IRA), it was legalised in 1932 under Éamon de Valera's government and subsequently changed its name to the Communist Party of Ireland in 1933 under Seán Murray, who had attended the Lenin School in Moscow. A strong anti-communist public backlash in Ireland occurred around the time of the Spanish Civil War due to the perception that the Popular Front cause was anti-Catholic. The already small CPI found it very difficult to organise. Nevertheless, some CPI members fought in the conflict, alongside Republican Congress members, under the XV International Brigade. Some Irish communists opposed Ireland being brought into the Second World War and particularly opposed conscription into the British Armed Forces being applied to Northern Ireland in the conflict. Some members were held in Curragh Camp by the government during the Emergency, including the CPI's future General Secretary, Michael O'Riordan. Following the entry of the Soviet Union into World War II in 1941, the party dissolved itself and instructed members to join the Irish Labour Party.