Communist Politics in Ireland 1916–1945

Mike Milotte earned his PhD on the Irish communist movement in 1977 and published the first full-length scholarly study of the subject in 1984. He later transitioned from academia to media, where he gained recognition as an investigative journalist, author, and broadcaster, winning numerous awards for his work.

• AcknowledgementsAbbreviationsIntroductionPart 1 The Heritage of James Connolly1 The Easter Rising and its Aftermath1 Setting the scene2 The Easter Rising3 Filling the vacuum4 Fighting conscription5 Bureaucratisation and the decline of official militancy6 Sinn Féin’s triumph2 The Working Class in Ireland’s War of Independence1 ‘A ghostly army of sharpshooters’ versus mass action2 The Revolutionary Socialist Party of Ireland3 International rivalries4 Class struggle and national struggle5 The struggle for the land6 Factory seizures and workers’ sovietsPart 2 Ireland’s First Communist Party3 What Sort of Republic?1 Ireland’s young Bolsheviks2 An open or clandestine organisation?3 Conceptualising the national question4 The second Comintern congress5 Loyalism and socialism: the problem in Belfast6 Unheeded pleas4 From the Second Comintern Congress to the Formation of the CPI1 ‘Virulent Bourgeois Terror’2 Vying for Moscow’s ear3 The tide turns4 Roddy Connolly and the third Comintern congress: myth and reality5 Connolly’s secret mission6 Another failure7 Bold initiatives or daily struggles?8 Division, dissent, and the birth of the Irish Communist Party5 From Truce to Civil War1 ‘Not yet in touch with the masses’2 Rubbish disposal: quality before quantity?3 Purging old comrades4 Cross-channel animosity5 A parting of the ways6 Communists and the Treaty7 Class struggle continues as the unemployed take to the stage8 ‘20,000 members in the next six months’9 The road to civil war10 Revolutionary guns and ‘reformist’ soviets6 The Communist Party in the Civil War1 ‘Prepared to fight as well as talk’2 The Borodin-Connolly programme3 Connolly’s ‘big proposition’4 Liam Mellows and the communist programme5 Repression intensifies6 Connolly’s apologia7 Turn to the Class1 The fourth Comintern congress and its aftermath2 Connolly’s solo run3 The CPI’s first annual conference, January 19234 McLoughlin’s bid for peace5 The CPI’s second conference6 Connolly resigns7 Another round of struggle8 The CPI’s third conference9 The prisoner issue, again8 Larkin’s Return and the Demise of the CPI1 Wasps and aliens2 A losing battle3 What is to be done?4 Breaking resistance5 Last throw of the dicePart 3 Communist Politics in the Larkin Era 1924–289 The Irish Worker League 1923–241 Desperate times2 The labour movement splits3 CPGB hostility ramps up4 Larkin at the fifth Comintern congress5 Larkin at the third RILU congress6 Larkin’s return: triumph and treachery7 Bolshevising Larkin8 Agreement in Moscow10 The Failure of ‘Bolshevisation’1 Old wine in new bottles?2 Winning friends and influencing people3 Party time?4 The ‘Lansbury affair’ and its aftermath5 Bust-up in Battersea6 Larkin’s man in Moscow7 To break or not to break?11 The Workers’ Party of Ireland 1926–271 A missed opportunity?2 Fianna Fáil and the Irish left3 The WPI and the Comintern4 Larkin at the seventh plenum of the ECCI5 Defying Moscow12 Larkin’s Pyrrhic Victory1 Resisting repression2 For Fianna Fáil, against Labour3 Building a Larkin bypass4 United front – with whom?5 Unlucky Leckie13 Larkin Breaks with Moscow, Summer 19281 Larkin at the ninth plenum of the ECCI2 Back to the hustings3 Carney at the fourth RILU congress4 Yet more grievances5 The final straw6 The sixth Comintern congress7 ‘I would rather be a Trotskyite …’8 Post Mortem on LarkinConclusionsBibliographyIndex