Sam Nolan (born 1930) is the secretary of the

Dublin Council of Trade Unions {{Use dmy dates, date=April 2022 The Dublin Council of Trade Unions is the trades council for County Dublin in Ireland. In 1884, 34 craft unions were involved in organising an exhibition of artisan work in Dublin. This necessitated regular meeting ...

and a political activist.

Biography

Born in

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 ...

, Nolan became active in the Irish Workers' League soon after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, and was a member of its executive committee by 1952. In 1957, he became a member of the executive of the new Unemployed Protest Committee,Mike Milotte, ''Communism in Modern Ireland'', p.228 and was initially considered the most prominent figure in the movement. At the

1957 Irish general election The 1957 Irish general election to the 16th Dáil was held on Tuesday, 5 March, following a dissolution of the 15th Dáil on 12 February by President Seán T. O'Kelly on the request of Taoiseach John A. Costello on 4 February. It was the lon ...

, he was asked to stand for the committee in Dublin South-Central, but refused, believing that anti-communist feeling following the

Soviet invasion of Hungary The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (23 October – 10 November 1956; hu, 1956-os forradalom), also known as the Hungarian Uprising, was a countrywide revolution against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic (1949–1989) and the Hunga ...

made him an unsuitable candidate. Instead, the movement stood Jack Murphy, who was elected. During the 1960s, Nolan was prominent in the

Dublin Housing Action Committee The Dublin Housing Action Committee (DHAC) was a 1960s protest group formed in response to housing shortages in Dublin, Ireland's capital city. It quickly moved to direct action and successfully squatted buildings to oppose redevelopment plan ...

, while he also remained active in the Irish Workers' League. He stood as a candidate at the

1969 Irish general election The 1969 Irish general election to the 19th Dáil was held on Wednesday, 18 June, following the dissolution of the 18th Dáil on 22 May by President Éamon de Valera on the request of Taoiseach Jack Lynch. The general election took place in 42 ...

Dublin Central Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 cen ...

, but took only 242 votes and was not elected. In 1970, the Workers' League merged with the Communist Party of Northern Ireland to form the Communist Party of Ireland (CPI), and Nolan was elected as its first Deputy General Secretary. In January 1976, Nolan resigned from the CPI alongside Joe Deasy, Paddy Carmody, George Jeffares, Mick O'Reilly and others, in protest at the party's change of line on the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, which they opposed. They subsequently formed the Eurocommunist Irish Marxist Society, although this was short-lived, and Nolan soon joined the Labour Party, where he was a founder of Labour Left. He was elected to the Labour Party's Administrative Council, and became a full-time organiser for the

Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians The Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians (UCATT) was a British and Irish trade union, operating in the construction industry. It was founded in 1971, and merged into Unite on 1 January 2017. It was affiliated to the Trades ...

. Nolan was elected as the Secretary of the

in 1979, holding the post into the 2010s. In his personal life, Nolan is the partner of academic

Helena Sheehan Helena Sheehan is an academic philosopher, historian of science, philosophy, culture and politics. Sheehan is Professor Emeritus at Dublin City University, where she taught media studies and history of ideas in the School of Communications. She ...

. A biography of Nolan was written by Brian Kenny and published in 2010.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nolan, Sam 1930 births Living people Irish activists Irish communists Trade unionists from Dublin (city)