Irish Worker League

The Irish Worker League was an Irish communist party, established in September 1923 by Jim Larkin, following his return to Ireland. Larkin re-established the newspaper The Irish Worker.[1] The Irish Worker League (IWL) superseded the first Communist Party of Ireland and became Ireland's affiliate with the Communist International.

Jim Larkin, whom the organisation gravitated around

In July 1924 Larkin attended the Fifth Comintern Congress, held in Moscow, and was elected to its executive committee. Initially, the League was not organised as a political party and had no founding congress. Its most prominent activity in its first year was to raise funds for republican civil war prisoners.

The IWL managed to enrol a number of its members in the Lenin School in Moscow. In September 1927, the IWL held a conference at which it passed a political programme.

Its sole electoral success was Larkin's election as Teachta Dála for the North Dublin constituency in the September 1927 general election. However, as a result of a libel award against him won by William O'Brien, which he had refused to pay, he was declared bankrupt and disqualified from taking up his seat.

The party's headquarters was located at Marlborough Street in Dublin.

Largely inactive since 1928, Larkin revived the IWL for his election campaigns in 1932 and 1933, in 1933 he succeeded in getting elected to the re-established Dublin City Council.