Tom Maidhc O'Flaherty

Not to be confused with the 21st-century rugby union player Tom O'Flaherty

Tom Maidhc O'Flaherty (died 1936) was an Irish Communist politician in the early 20th century, a supporter of the Trotskyist James P. Cannon, and writer.

Background

East beach of Inishmore, O'Flaherty's birthplace

Tom Maidhc O'Flaherty was born at Gort na gCapall, Inishmore, an island off the west coast of Ireland. His parents were Maidhc Ó Flaithearta, a well-known Irish nationalist, and Maggie Ganley. His brother was Liam O'Flaherty. His family, descendants of the Ó Flaithbertaigh family of Connemara, were not well off. The Irish language was widely spoken in the area, and the O'Flahertys spoke both English and Irish from the Gaeltacht.[1] His sister was Bríd Ní Fhlatharta.[2]

O’Flatherty's education was subsidized by Roger Casement, the British diplomat who exposed slavery in the rubber collection zones of the Belgian Congo and the Putomayo an area in between Peru and Colombia and was later executed in 1916 for his part in the 1916 Rising.

Career

Charter for local unit of the Communist Party of the USA (October 24, 1919)

O’Flatherty was a founder member of the Irish Volunteers, a militia formed to further Ireland’s independence, and later migrated to the United States, where he became a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

He was among those who first joined the American Communist Party, where he was an associate of John Reed, James P. Cannon, and William F. Dunne. He was a columnist for the Daily Worker and was the first editor of the Labour Defender.

O'Flaherty was active in the defence of imprisoned Irish labour leader James Larkin and was editor of the left-wing Irish-American paper The Irish People.

He left the Communist Party and returned to Ireland in 1934 because of ill-health. There he became editor of the Irish-language left-wing paper An tÉireannach.

Personal life and death

O'Flaherty's brother Liam (1896–1984) was an Irish novelist and short story writer who played an important role in the Irish literary renaissance as well as helping to found the Communist Party of Ireland.

His sister Bríd's Ní Fhlatharta son was Gaelic Athletic Association commentator and writer, Breandán Ó hEithir.[2]

His health problems may have been exacerbated by heavy drinking.

Tom Maidhc O'Flaherty died of heart failure on the Aran islands in 1936.

Works

Like his brother Liam, O'Flaherty retained a deep interest in the Irish language. Unlike Liam, however, he wrote fiction only in English. His works include two books of short stories:

  • Aranmen All
  • Cliffmen of the West

Legacy

O’Flatherty figures in the memoir of Whittaker Chambers, who worked with him at the Daily Worker in New York City:

Behind Comrade Angelica sat Comrade Tom O'Flaherty. He was a big, unhappy Irishman, who lived sadly in the shadow of his celebrated brother, Liam, the author of The Informer and The Assassin. He drank heavily, and I have sometimes seen him lying, stiff and foul, in front of the Workers Center on Union Square. He was bad publicity. So he would be roughly lugged inside, amidst taunts and remarks of disgust, by men who were not worthy to touch him. For Tom O'Flaherty was a man of some gifts and a brisk sense of humor (always a heavy cross for a Communist). Secretly, he hated the bad journalism, the low gossip, base intrigues, the foolish and fetid factionalism around him. Secretly, and sometimes openly, he would gibe at them. The American party was aping the Russian style of abbreviating organizational names (the world had not yet been conditioned to alphabet soup). I once heard O'Flaherty solemnly propose to the humorless Engdahl that henceforth the Daily Worker should refer to the United Councils of Working Class Housewives as the Uncopwokwifs.
One day Tom O'Flaherty did not show up at the Daily Worker office. The revolution of the 20th century was over for him. He was dead, a pathetic exile from his country, his church and his world.
Next to Comrade O'Flaherty sat Comrade Chambers...[3]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Ó hEithir, Breandán (1991). An Chaint sa tSráidbhaile. Comhar Teoranta. p. 16.
  2. 1 2 "Breandan O hEithir, Irish Writer, Dies at 60". New York Times. 25 October 1990. Retrieved 7 April 2018.
  3. ↑ Chambers, Whittaker (May 1952). Witness. New York: Random House. pp. 222–223).

External sources


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