Peadar O'Donnell (Irish: Peadar Ó Domhnaill;
22 February 1893 – 13 May
1986) was an Irish Republican socialist, Marxist activist and writer.
Early life: War of Independence and Civil War
Peadar O'Donnell was born in County Donegal, in northwestern Ireland in 1893, being a native Irish
language speaker. He attended St. Patrick's
College, Dublin, where he trained as a teacher. He taught on Arranmore Island before spending time in Scotland.
By 1919, he was a leading organiser for the Irish Transport and General Workers Union. He also attempted to organise a
unit of the Irish Citizen Army (a worker's milita who had taken part in the
Easter Rising) in Derry. When this failed to get off the
ground, O'Donnell joined the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and remained active in it
during the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921). He led IRA guerrilla activities in Derry and Donegal in this period, which mainly involved raids on Police and
Army barracks. In 1921, he became the commander of the IRA Donegal Brigade. He became known in this period as a headstrong and
sometimes insubordinate officer as he often launched operations without orders and in defiance of directives from his superiors
in the IRA. In the spring of 1921, O'Donnell and his men had to evade a sweep of the county by over
1000 British troops.
After the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1922, O'Donnell and
his IRA comrades were split over whether to accept this compromise, which ended their hopes for Irish Republic but which granted a self governing Irish Free
State. O'Donnell opposed this compromise and in March 1922, as elected, along with Joe
McKelvey as representative for Ulster onto the anti-treaty IRA's army executive. In April
he was among the anti-Treaty IRA men who took over the Four Courts building in Dublin and
helped to spark the outbreak of civil war with the new Free State government.
The Irish Civil War would rage for another nine months. O'Donnell escaped from the Four
Courts building after its bombardment and surrender, but was subsequently captured by the Free
State forces, and imprisoned in Mountjoy Gaol. At the end of the Civil War, he
participated in the mass Republican hunger strike that was launched in protest at the
continued imprisonment of Anti-Treaty IRA men, resisting in this manner for 41 days.
Unlike most Irish Republicans of this era, O'Donnell did not see the republican cause solely in Irish nationalist terms. O'Donnell also advocated a social
revolution in an independent Ireland, seeing himself as a follower of James
Connolly, the socialist Republican executed for his part in the Easter Rising. The
period 1919-1923 had seen much social unrest in Ireland, including land occupations by landless men in rural areas and the
occupation of factories by workers.
O'Donnell believed that the IRA should have adopted these people's cause and supported land
re-distribution and worker's rights. He blamed the anti-treaty Republicans lack of
support among the Irish public in the Civil War on their lack of a social programme. Some Republicans, notably Liam Mellows, did share O'Donnell's view, but they were a minority.
Post-Civil War politics
In 1923, while still in prison, he was elected Teachta Dála for Donegal as a
Sinn Féin candidate. In 1924, on release from internment,
O'Donnell became a member of the Executive and Army Council of the IRA. He tried to
steer it in left-wing direction, and to this end founded front organisations such as
the Irish Working Farmers' Committee, which sent representatives to the Soviet Union and the Profintern. O'Donnell also founded the
Anti-Tribute League, which opposed the repaying of fees to Britain owed since the
Irish Land Acts. He also founded a short lived socialist Republican party,
Saor Éire.
In addition, O'Donnell and the IRA found themselves in conflict with their enemies of the Civil War era. Éamon de Valera, who had founded Fianna Fáil from anti-Treaty
republicans, came to power in Ireland in 1932, and subsequently legalised the IRA. O'Donnell
announced that there would be "no free speech for traitors" (by which he meant
Cumann na nGaedhael, the Free State party) and his men attacked Cumann na nGaedhael
political meetings. In response, Eoin O'Duffy, a former Free State General and
Garda Síochána commissioner, founded the Blueshirts (a semi-fascist organisation, originally named the Army
Comrades Association) to resist them. There was a considerable amount of street violence between the two sides before both
the Blueshirts and then the IRA became banned organisations. O'Donnell saw the Blueshirts as a fascist movement based on the big
farmer class and that was against the full independence of Ireland.
O'Donnell's attempts at persuading the remnants of the defeated anti-Treaty IRA to become a socialist organization ended in
failure. Eventually, O'Donnell and other left-wing republicans left the IRA to found the Republican Congress in 1934. However, this organisation made little impact in Irish politics.
Spanish Civil War
O'Donnell happened to be in Barcelona, attending the People's Olympics on the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War
in 1936 and joined Spanish Republican
militia that supported the Popular Front
government against Francisco Franco's military insurgents. When he returned to Ireland,
he encouraged other Irish Republicans to fight
for the Spanish Republic - accordingly, IRA men, led by Frank Ryan and
some Communist Party of Ireland members joined the International Brigades, where they were known as the Connolly Column (after James Connolly). This was a very
unpopular stance in Ireland, as the Roman Catholic Church publicly supported the
Spanish Nationalists under Franco, and portrayed the war as an anti-Communist
crusade.
Attitudes to the Spanish Civil War also mirrored the divisions of Ireland's civil war. O'Donnell remarked that the
Bishops had condemned the anti-Treaty side in the latter for opposing a democratic government, but were now advocating the same thing themselves. Eoin O'Duffy led Blueshirt
sympathisers to fight on Franco's side.
Writings
After the 1940s, O'Donnell devoted more of his time to writing and culture and less to politics, from which he withdrew more
or less completely. He published his first novel, Storm, in 1925. This was followed by Islanders (1928),
Adrigool (1929), The Knife (1930) and On the Edge of the Stream (1934). O'Donnell also went to Spain and
later published Salud! An Irishman in Spain (1937).
After World War II, he edited the Irish literary journal, The Bell (1946-54).
Other books by O'Donnell include The Big Window (1955) and Proud Island (1975). He also published two volumes of
autobiography, The Gates Flew Open (1932) and There Will be
Another Day (1963).
Islanders and Adrigool were translated into Irish (Donegal dialect) by Seosamh Mac Grianna as Muintir an Oileáin and Eadarbhaile, respectively.
External links
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