Come Here To Me!

Irish Examiner, 9 November 1956.

The idea of hundreds of people laying siege to a bookshop or a political party office is a strange one that we might not associate with Dublin, but it has happened here on more than one occasion.

Yesterday was the centenary of the birth of Michael O’Riordan, a remarkable figure in Irish political history. Born in Cork in November 1917, just days after the Bolshevik revolution had transformed world politics forever, O’Riordan devoted decades of his life to the cause of communism in Ireland. It wasn’t always (or ever) a popular cause to promote. In 1989, he joked in one interview of how “we are becoming more acceptable, people no longer cross the street when they see me coming and bless themselves.” O’Riordan, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, remembered the more difficult days no doubt.

In the early 1930s, anti-communist sentiment in Ireland was sharpened by events on the continent, and in particular the rise of the left in Spain. It spilled over in March 1933 with the siege of Connolly House on Great Strand Street, the headquarters of the Revolutionary Workers’ Group, a forerunner of the Communist Party. Just over two decades later, in 1956, events in Hungary brought thousands onto the streets of the capital again, this time directing their anger at New Books on Pearse Street, the forerunner of what is now Connolly Books and the home of the Communist Party in the city.

The anti-Soviet uprising in Hungary in the winter of 1956 received much sympathetic coverage in the Irish press. When Soviet troops took control of Budapest and other urban centres from 4 November, the resulting violence led to hundreds of deaths. In Dublin and many other cities across Europe, protests followed.

Irish Press, 9 November 1956.

A protest of some 4,000 students on O’Connell Street saw placards reading ‘Communism: Down With It’, ‘Aggression: We Know What It Means’  and ‘Save Crucified Hungary’ carried. Banners identified the students as coming from UCD, Trinity, the National College of Art and other institutions. It was all standard protest fare, but at New Books on Pearse Street things took a turn, with the Irish Examiner detailing how attempts were made “to rush the seven policemen outside the shop, but this failed, and cries of ‘burn it down!’ were heard.” The windows of the bookshop were smashed, as well as an unfortunate neighbouring business premises. Its owner told the press he was in full sympathy with the objectives of those who had damaged his premises!

Sunday Independent, 11 November 1956.

The Irish Democrat, newspaper of the Connolly Association, reports on the attack.

Not all opposition in Dublin to the behavior of the Soviet Union in Hungary came from the traditional religious right, the instigators of much of the violence in the 1930s. The meeting organised by the National Students’ Council on College Green following Hungary was described as being “both anti-imperialist and anti-communist”, with one speaker insisting that “if there was an armed insurrection in the Six Counties there would be a repetition of the brutality of the scenes in Budapest.” Among the speakers was Count Nickolai Tolstoy, described as a “White Russian now a student in Dublin” (though born in London) and an Egyptian student who condemned Britain’s actions in Suez and Cyprus. In some ways, it was not unlike the huge demonstrations in Dublin in 1949 over the imprisonment of of Cardinal Mindszentry,  which was also an unlikely coming together of the right and some from the left, including the Larkinite Workers’ Union of Ireland.

New Books continued on, moving to Parliament Street in 1971, before finding its current home on East Essex Street, where it is known today as Connolly Books. In the words of Irish Times writer Frank McNally, it has somehow survived “the rise of that flagship of rampant western consumerism known as Temple Bar.”