Communist Party of Northern Ireland
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Communist Party of Northern Ireland
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|---|---|
| Leader |
Sean Murray William McCullough Hugh Moore |
| Chairman |
Sean Murray Andy Barr |
| Founded | 1941 |
| Dissolved | 1970 |
| Preceded by | Communist Party of Ireland |
| Succeeded by | Communist Party of Ireland |
| Headquarters | Belfast |
| Ideology | Communism |
| Political position | Far-left |
| International affiliation |
Communist International Cominform |
The Communist Party of Northern Ireland was a small communist party operating in Northern Ireland.
The originated in the 1941 split in the Communist Party of Ireland (CPI), which also produced the Irish Workers' League (IWL) in the Republic of Ireland. The split was due to the difficulties of operating in the Republic, and the unpopularity of the argument that Ireland should enter World War II in the Republic, as opposed to its popularity in the north.
In July 1941 the Communist Party of Ireland National Executive suspended independent activities and its membership were encouraged to undertake entrism and join the Irish Labour Party, and trade union movement, the Irish Labour Party was not organised in the North of Ireland and in October the Communist Party of Northern Ireland published its manifesto.
The CPNI held its first conference in October 1942, in Belfast, with many former members of the CPI from the Republic attending. By 1943, it had grown to 35 branches, although it was not able to operate openly in more strongly Catholic areas. Indeed, while the party in Belfast had a mostly Catholic membership in the 1930s, following the split, it became mostly Protestant.
The CPNI stood their own candidates in the 1945 Northern Ireland general election. While they did not come close to winning any seats, they polled a respectable 12,000 votes for their three candidates (Betty Sinclair, William McCullough and Sid Maitland), who retained their deposits.
The CPNI was unable to use any momentum from their election result and declined in the following decades. It stopped publishing its newsletter, Unity, in 1947, membership fell from 1,000 in 1945 to 172 in 1949, and at the 1949 Northern Ireland general election it ran only McCullough, who took just 623 votes. Nonetheless it became prominent in the trade unions, with Sinclair becoming full-time secretary of the Belfast Trades Council.
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