43 Facts About Peadar O'Donnell

Peadar O'Donnell was one of the foremost radicals of 20th-century Ireland.

Peadar O'Donnell was born into an Irish-speaking Catholic family in Meenmore, near Dungloe, County Donegal in 1893.

Peadar O'Donnell was the fifth son of James O'Donnell, a kiln worker, migrant labourer, and musician, and Brigid Rodgers.

Peadar O'Donnell's uncle Peter was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World in Butte, Montana, whom Peadar met on trips home to Ireland.

Peadar O'Donnell attended St Patrick's College, Dublin, where he trained as a teacher.

Peadar O'Donnell taught on Arranmore Island off the west coast of Donegal.

Peadar O'Donnell attempted in Derry to organise a unit of the Irish Citizen Army.

When this failed to get off the ground, Peadar O'Donnell joined the Irish Republican Army and remained active in it during the Irish War of Independence.

Peadar O'Donnell led IRA guerrilla activities in County Londonderry and Donegal in this period, which mainly involved raids on Royal Irish Constabulary and British Army installations.

Peadar O'Donnell 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.

Peadar O'Donnell attempted to subvert decisions of the Dail 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.

Peadar 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.

Peadar O'Donnell escaped from the Four Courts building after its bombardment and surrender but was captured by the Free State Army.

In March 1924 Peadar O'Donnell walked out of the Curragh camp dressed in Free State uniform.

Peadar O'Donnell 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.

Peadar O'Donnell became governor of the Soviet and declared a 48-hour week for the workers and sacked the matron for insubordination.

Peadar O'Donnell believed that the IRA should have adopted the people's cause and supported land re-distribution and workers' rights.

Peadar O'Donnell 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 Peadar O'Donnell's view, and in fact, there was a large redistribution of land from absentee landlords to tenants in the new Free State.

Peadar 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.

In 1924, on release from internment, Peadar O'Donnell became a member of the Executive and Army Council of the anti-Treaty IRA.

Peadar O'Donnell took over as the editor of the republican newspaper An Phoblacht.

Peadar O'Donnell did not take his seat in the Dail and did not stand at the June 1927 general election.

Peadar O'Donnell 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.

Peadar O'Donnell founded the Anti-Tribute League, which opposed the repaying of annuities to the British government under the Irish Land Acts.

In 1933, Peadar O'Donnell wrote an introduction to Brian O'Neill's book The War for the Land in Ireland.

Peadar O'Donnell rejected the proposal, arguing that the Left had more power as a united front.

In 1936 Peadar O'Donnell was in Barcelona in order to attend the planned People's Olympiad on the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.

Peadar O'Donnell joined the Spanish Republican militia that supported the Popular Front government against Francisco Franco's military insurgency.

Peadar 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.

Peadar O'Donnell referred to these attacks as "dark backwardness" and "outrages", along with being concerned with how anti-Fascist Catholics would respond.

Still active in the later part of his life, Peadar O'Donnell was chairman of the anti-Vietnam War "Irish Voice on Vietnam" organisation which he co-founded with Dan Breen.

Peadar O'Donnell was one of four Irishmen named on George Orwell's 1948 list of people unsuitable for anti-communist propaganda work for the British government's Information Research Department; the others were Sean O'Casey, George Bernard Shaw and Cecil Day-Lewis.

Peadar O'Donnell himself describes a story of how she bluffed her way in to see Thomas Johnson, then leader of the Labour party, and gave him a message that he would be shot if Peadar O'Donnell were executed.

Witnesses at Lile and Peadar O'Donnell's wedding included his brother Frank, Sinead de Valera, Fiona Plunkett of Cumann na mBan and Mary MacSwiney.

Lile had a large inheritance and this allowed Peadar to devote himself to his writing and political activism, allowing O'Donnell to, in the words of Donal O Drisceoil, 'live the life of that favourite bogeyman of police reports, the "professional agitator"'.

When World War II broke out, Peadar O'Donnell Joe stayed with them permanently and they raised him as their son.

Peadar O'Donnell Joe attended the fee-charging Catholic secondary school Belvedere College.

Lile died in October 1969, and Peadar O'Donnell subsequently sold their home and moved to a bedsit in Dublin, then stayed with a friend in Mullingar, Ned Gilligan, and he lived with Peadar O'Donnell Joe and his family.

Peadar O'Donnell spent the final seven years of his life living at the home of his old friend Nora Harkin in Monkstown, County Dublin.

In 1985 Peadar O'Donnell wrote his last piece for publication, "Not Yet Emmet", an account of the Treaty split of 1922.

Peadar O'Donnell left instructions that there were to be "no priests, no politicians and no pomp" at his funeral, and those wishes were granted.

The Irish folk-rock band Moving Hearts recorded Tribute to Peadar O'Donnell, written by Donal Lunny, on their 1985 album The Storm.