Michael O'Riordan - Political Activism

Political Activism

In 1944 he was founding secretary of the Liam Mellows Branch of the Labour Party and in 1945 was a founding secretary of the Cork Socialist Party, whose other notable members included Derry Kelleher, Kevin Neville and Máire Keohane-Sheehan.

O'Riordan subsequently worked as a bus conductor in Cork and was active in the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU). In 1947 he stood as a Cork Socialist Party candidate in Cork and afterwards moved to Dublin where he lived in Victoria St with his wife Kay, continued to work as a bus conductor and remained active in the Irish Transport and General Workers Union.

In 1947, O'Riordan was a founding secretary of the Irish Workers' League and General Secretary thereafter, and of its successor organisation the Irish Workers' Party from 1962-1970.

In the 1960s, he was a pivotal figure in the Dublin Housing Action Committee which agitated for clearances of Dublin's slums and for the building of social housing. There, he befriended Fr Austin Flannery, leading the then Finance Minister and future Taoiseach Charles Haughey to dismiss Flannery as "a gullible cleric" while the Minister for Local Government, Kevin Boland, described him as a "so-called cleric" for sharing a platform with O'Riordan.

In all he ran for election five times, campaigning throughout for the establishment of a socialist republic in Ireland but given Ireland's Catholic conservatism and fear of communism, he did so without success. He did, however, receive playwright Sean O'Casey's endorsement in 1951.

O'Casey wrote: "Mr O'Riordan is his own message. He has nothing to sell but his soul. But he hasn't done that, though he will be told he'll lose it by holding on to it."

O'Riordan's participation in the Spanish Civil War was always an important part of his political identity. In 1966 he attended the International Brigades' Reunion in Berlin and was instrumental in having Frank Ryan's remains repatriated from Germany to Ireland in 1979.

He was a member of the Irish Chile Solidarity Committee and attended the 1st Party Congress of the Cuban Communist Party in 1984. He also campaigned on behalf of the Birmingham 6 and attended their Appeal trial in 1990. O'Riordan served between 1970-1983 he served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of Ireland and from 1983-1988 he served as National Chairman of the party and published many articles under the auspices of the CPI.

His last major public outing came in 2005 at the re-dedication of the memorial outside Dublin's Liberty Hall to the Irish veterans of the Spanish Civil War. He and other veterans were received by President of Ireland Mary McAleese. He was also presented with Cuba's Medal of Friendship by the Cuban Consul Teresita Trujillo to Ireland on behalf of Cuban President Fidel Castro.