Cathal O’Shannon

Life
1889-1969; b. Randalstown, Co., Antrim; raised in Derry; ed. St. Columb’s College; mbr Gaelic League and IRB; fndr-mbr. Irish Volunteers; organiser for ITGWU for James Connolly; sub-ed. The Irish Republic; interned in 1916, though non-combatant, having mobilised 100 Volunteers who dispersed without orders; anti-conscription campaigner, 1918; unsuccessfully urged that Labour Party should contest election of Dec. 1918; worked on early drafts of Democratic Programme of first Dail; Irish delegate to Socialist International Conference, Berne, presenting Irish case for self-determination (Irish at Berne); ed. The Voice of Labour, 1918-19, and The Watchword of Labour, 1919-20; arrested March 1920; fndr.-mbr Socialist Party of Ireland, and expelled with William O’Brien; TD Meath-Louth, June 1922; lost seat, 1923; ed. Voice of Labour and Watchword, 1930-32; workers’ representative at Labour Court from its establishment, 1946; ed. Fifty Years of Liberty Hall (1969). DIB DIH DUB

 

Works
Out of the Dark into the Dawn: An Account of the Founding of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union and the role it played in the period up to the Rising in 1916. ([Dublin] [1966]); Devoy’s Post-Bag 1871-1928 / A Broadcast Talk by Cathal O’Shannon [pamph. ; ed., Fifty Years of Liberty Hall: the golden jubilee of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union 1909-1959 (Dublin: Three Candles [1959]); The Planting of the Seed (Dublin: ITGWU [1966]); Labour in Ireland [ [containing 1. Labour in Irish History and 2. The Reconquest of Ireland]] with an introduction by Cathal O’Shannon (Dublin: Sign of the Three Candles [1949]), xiv, 264pp.; with Thomas Johnson, Irish Labour and its International Relations in the Era of the Second International and the Bolshevik Revolution [report by delegates of the Irish Labour Party, Irish Trade Union Congress and Socialist Party of Ireland to International Labour and Socialist Conference, Berne, 1919; Cork Workers' Club / Historical reprints, No. 13] (Cork: Cork Workers Club [1975]), 56pp.

Note: Devoy’s Post-Bag 1871-1928 / A Broadcast Talk by Cathal O’Shannon [pamph. rep. from Liberty, June 1953] - chiefly a commentary on William O’Brien’s book, with remarks on P. S. O’Hegarty - is held in William O’Brien Collection, National Library of Ireland [album PO 115, Item 55].

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