1. Michael O'Riordan was the founder of the Communist Party of Ireland and fought with the Connolly Column in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War.
18 Facts About Michael O'Riordan
1. 2.
Michael O'Riordan's parents came from the West Cork Gaeltacht of Ballingeary-Gougane Barra.
3.
Michael O'Riordan joined the Communist Party of Ireland in 1935 while still in the IRA and worked on the communist newspaper The Irish Workers' Voice.
4.
Michael O'Riordan was repatriated to Ireland the following month, after the International Brigades were disbanded.
5.
In 1938 Michael O'Riordan was offered an Irish Army Commission by the Irish Free State but chose instead to train IRA units in Cork.
6.
Michael O'Riordan subsequently worked as a bus conductor in Cork and was active in the Irish Transport and General Workers Union.
7.
Michael O'Riordan stood as a Cork Socialist Party candidate in the 1946 Cork Borough by-election, coming third behind Fianna Fail's Patrick McGrath and Fine Gael's Michael O'Driscoll with 3,184 votes.
8.
In 1948, Michael 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 to 1970.
9.
Michael O'Riordan met and befriended folk musician Luke Kelly, and the two developed a "personal-political friendship".
10.
Michael O'Riordan did receive playwright Sean O'Casey's endorsement in 1951.
11.
Michael O'Riordan was a member of the Irish Chile Solidarity Committee and attended the 1st Party Congress of the Cuban Communist Party in 1984.
12.
Michael O'Riordan campaigned on behalf of the Birmingham 6 and attended their Appeal trial in 1990.
13.
Michael O'Riordan served between 1970 and 1983 as General Secretary of the Communist Party of Ireland; and from 1983 to 1988 he served as National Chairman of the party publishing many articles under the auspices of the CPI.
14.
Michael O'Riordan was presented with Cuba's Medal of Friendship by the Cuban Consul Teresita Trujillo to Ireland on behalf of Cuban President Fidel Castro.
15.
In 1969, according to Soviet dissident Vasili Mitrokhin, Michael O'Riordan was approached by IRA leaders Cathal Goulding and Seamus Costello with a view to obtaining guns from the Soviet KGB to defend Irish republican areas of Belfast during the communal violence that marked the outbreak of the Troubles.
16.
Mitrokhin alleges that Michael O'Riordan then contacted the Kremlin, but the consignment of arms did not reach Ireland until 1972.
17.
Michael O'Riordan continued to live in their family home before moving to Glasnevin in 2000 to be close to his son Manus who lived nearby.
18.
Michael O'Riordan lived there until falling ill in November 2005 and was taken to the Mater Hospital.