Peadar O'Donnell (; 22 February 1893 – 13 May 1986) was an Irish republican, socialist and writer who is known as one of the foremost radicals of 20th-century in that country.
Early life O'Donnell was born into an Irish-speaking Catholic family in Meenmore, near Dungloe, County Donegal in 1893. He was the fifth son of James O'Donnell, a kiln worker, migrant labourer, and musician, and Brigid Rodgers. His uncle Peter was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World in Butte, Montana, whom Peadar met on trips home to Ireland.https://www.rte.ie/radio/doconone/646079-peader Peadar O'Donnell at 90, RTÉ Radio 1 Documentary on One
He attended St Patrick's College, Dublin, where he trained as a teacher. He taught on Arranmore Island off the west coast of Donegal. Here he was introduced to socialism, organizing for the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union (ITGWU) in 1918 before spending time in Scotland.
Irish War of Independence By 1919, O'Donnell was a leading organiser for the ITGWU. He attempted in Derry to organise a unit of the Irish Citizen Army (a socialist militia which had taken part in the Easter Rising). 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 County Londonderry and Donegal in this period, which mainly involved raids on Royal Irish Constabulary and British Army installations. In 1921 he became commander of the 2nd Brigade of the Northern Volunteer Division of the IRA.O'Donnell, Peadar The Knife, Irish Humanities Centre, 1980, p.6 In early 1921 several attacks on troop trains were carried out by the west Donegal IRA.O'Duibhir, Liam (2011), Donegal & the Civil War, Cork: Mercier Press, p. 25, ISBN 978 1 85635 720 3. 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. O'Donnell also attempted to subvert decisions of the Dáil Courts when he felt that the interests of large estate-holders were being upheld, and prevented Irish Republican Police in his Brigade area from enforcing such judgments, particularly those of the Land Arbitration Courts. In the spring of 1921, O'Donnell and his men evaded a sweep of County Londonderry by a British force numbering over 1,000 strong.Ó Drisceoil, Donal (2001). Peadar O'Donnell. Cork University Press. .
Irish Civil War After the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1922, the IRA was split over whether to accept this compromise, which ended their hopes of an Irish Republic in the short-term, but which meant an immediate self-governing Irish Free State. O'Donnell opposed this compromise and in April 1922, was elected, along with Joe McKelvey, as a representative for Ulster on 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, which became the first focus of the outbreak of civil war with the new Free State government. The 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 Army. O'Donnell was imprisoned in Mountjoy Gaol and the Curragh. Following the end of the Civil War, he participated in the mass republican hunger strike (1923 Irish Hunger Strikes) that was launched in protest at the continued imprisonment of anti-Treaty IRA men, remaining on hunger strike for 41 days. O'Donnell's prison experience (21 months) and eventual escape in March 1924, are described in his 1932 memoir The Gates Flew Open.O’Donnell, Peadar (1932), The Gates Flew Open, Jonathan Cape Ltd., London. Reflecting on the Civil War in a late interview, O'Donnell was to say:"I did realise that a great many of the people who said No to the Treaty had different views from me. And this is a factor that has never sufficiently been stressed in dealing with the resistance to the Treaty. I think there were many men like Michael Kilroy, Billy Pilkinton, Tom Maguire and others too, who, having taken an oath of loyalty to the Republic and having killed in defence of it, and pals of theirs having died in defence of it, I think that their vow to the Republic was a vow that they couldn't shed themselves of. They were the kind of people that were bound to say no, and would have to be fired on to come down from the high ground of the Republic to the low level of the Treaty. They were the kind of men who make martyrs, but I don't think they make revolutions."O’Donnell, Peadar, 1983 Interview in Peader O'Donnell at 90, RTÉ Radio 1, 22mins In March 1924 O'Donnell walked out of the Curragh camp dressed in Free State uniform. He hid out for several days before approaching a cottage where he said to the owner "I'm Peadar O'Donnell, IRA Executive. I want to get in touch with the organization here." The owner was able to assist O'Donnell.Thorne, Kathleen, (2014) Echoes of Their Footsteps, The Irish Civil War 1922-1924, Generation Organization, Newberg, OR, pg 260, ISBN 978-0-692-245-13-2
Socialism
Like certain other 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 leadership of the Easter Rising. The period 1919–23 had seen much social unrest in Ireland, including land occupations by the tenants in rural areas and the Occupation of factories by workers. O'Donnell, in fact, is regarded as the first Irish person to use the term "occupation" in relation to the occupation of a workplace, when he and the staff of Monaghan Asylum occupied the hospital in 1919. "The occupation was, in fact, the first action in Ireland to describe itself as a soviet, and the Red Flag was raised above it." It was also one of the first declared Soviets outside of Russia. O'Donnell became governor of the Soviet and declared a 48-hour week for the workers and sacked the matron for insubordination. Eventually, they went back to work pending a settlement.
O'Donnell believed that the IRA should have adopted the people's cause and supported land re-distribution and workers' 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, and in fact, there was a large redistribution of land from absentee landlords to tenants in the new Free State.
According to historian Tom Mahon, "There were many contradictions and weaknesses in O'Donnell's polemic. In reality, the IRA was a petit bourgeoisie conspiratorial organisation rather than a workers' and peasants' army. It was firmly rooted in the nineteenth-century concept of a nationalist revolution and its few socialists were largely peripheral to the organisation. Kevin O'Higgins, a leading Sinn Féin activist during the Anglo-Irish War, famously said, 'We were probably the most conservative-minded revolutionaries who ever put through a successful revolution.' Additionally, O'Donnell failed to justify the IRA's refusal to acknowledge the wishes of the majority of the southern Irish population who supported the Free State. Most glaring of all, he had no satisfactory explanation of what to do with the Protestant working class in Northern Ireland, who were prepared to take up arms to prevent their 'liberation' by the IRA. Despite the many flaws of his argument, he has received much serious attention from historians and biographers."Tom Mahon & James J Gillogly, Decoding the IRA, Mercier Press, 2008. Pages 80–81.
O'Donnell lost a libel case he took against the Dominican published "Irish Rosary" monthly, following articles in the magazine that claimed he was a Soviet agent and had studied at the Moscow Lenin School.Peadar O'Donnell: socialist writer who was a rebel until the end< History, RTE, November 13, 2020.
Post-Civil War politics In 1923, while still in prison, he was elected as a Sinn Féin Teachta Dála (TD) for Donegal. In 1924, on release from internment, O'Donnell became a member of the Executive and Army Council of the anti-Treaty IRA. He also took over as the editor of the republican newspaper An Phoblacht. He did not take his seat in the Dáil and did not stand at the June 1927 general election. He tried to steer it in a left-wing direction, and to this end founded organisations such as the Irish Working Farmers' Committee, which sent representatives to the Soviet Union and to the Profintern.
O'Donnell also founded the Anti-Tribute League, which opposed the repaying of annuities to the British government under the Irish Land Acts (these were set at a rate of £3,100,000 a year, a huge cost to the new state; they were ceased by Éamon de Valera on his accession to power in 1932, and in retaliation, the British government declared an Economic War; the payments were resolved in 1938 by an agreement that Ireland would pay Britain £10 million). O'Donnell also founded a short-lived socialist republican party, Saor Éire.
In February 1932, the Fianna Fáil party was elected to the Irish Free State government. On 18 March 1932, the new government suspended the Public Safety Act, lifting the ban on a number of organisations including the Irish Republican Army. Several anti-Treaty IRA political prisoners were released around the same time, including Frank Ryan, a Saor Éire colleague of O'Donnell's, who on his release declared "as long as we have fists and boots, there will be no free speech for traitors".
The newly legalized and liberated Republicans began a "campaign of unrelenting hostility" against their former enemies in the Civil War, breaking up Cumann na nGaedheal political meetings and intimidating supporters. In reaction to this, in August 1932 Ned Cronin founded the Army Comrades Association nicknamed "the Blueshirts"New Irish Army Arises, New York Times, August 12, 1932 comprising former members of the Free State army who pledged to provide security at Cumann na nGaedheal events. Following much street violence between the two sides and increasing fascist tendencies amongst the Blueshirts, both Blueshirts and IRA were banned again.
In 1933, O'Donnell wrote an introduction to Brian O'Neill’s book The War for the Land in Ireland.Brian O'Neill, The War for the Land in Ireland by Brian O'Neill; with an introduction by Peadar O'Donnell (London: Martin Lawrence, 1933)
Republican Congress
O'Donnell's attempts at persuading the remnants of the defeated anti-Treaty IRA to become a socialist organisation ended in failure. Eventually, O'Donnell and other left-wing republicans left the IRA to co-found the Republican Congress in 1934 with other socialists, communists and Cumann na mBan members.Donal Ó Drisceoil, Peadar O'Donnell (Cork, 2001), p. 83
The overriding aim of the Republican Congress was the maintenance of a united front against fascism.Donal Ó Drisceoil, Peadar O'Donnell (Cork, 2001), p. 84 Despite having left the IRA, O'Donnell and others were tried in absentia by an IRA court-martial presided over by Seán Russell which dismissed them 'with ignominy'.
The high point of the Republican Congress was between May and September 1934, when it achieved remarkable success as an umbrella organisation for class agitation. It earned the wrath of the IRA leadership, which banned IRA members from joining it. This led to widespread defections to the Congress from the IRA in Dublin, and the spectacular success of the Republican Congress in organising Belfast Protestants under the Republican Congress banner.