It is with great sadness that the Communist Party of Ireland learnt of the death of Comrade Donie Corcoran, late of Gurranabraher on Cork city’s north side. We offer our deepest sympathy to his family and friends.
Donie had been a member of the party since 1983 and was treasurer of the Cork Branch. Prior to that he had been a member of the Connolly Youth Movement. Among the earliest political campaigns in which Donie took part was the nationwide support for the demands of the hunger-strikers in 1981. He also took part in the Dáil campaign for Mairéad Farrell, then a political prisoner, in Cork North-Central.
Every September Donie worked on the CPI stall at the Fête de l’Humanité in Paris, where he loved to buy communist paraphernalia from fraternal parties. He was a tireless campaigner for all left and progressive causes in his native Cork. Over the past few years Donie could be seen with his party comrades on the streets of Cork distributing party leaflets and engaging in political discussion with passers-by.
Donie studied Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Connolly, and he had been a student at the Lenin School in the USSR in the 1980s. He was among those comrades who were shocked by the collapse of the Soviet Union but who continued to fight for socialism and a better world for all.
Donie’s last political involvement was as a delegate to the 26th Congress of the CPI in Dublin, where he took part in the political debate and enjoyed being able to meet and socialise with comrades old and new in person once again.
Donie was proud of his class and of his local area in Cork. We salute his memory as one of those comrades who kept the Red Flag flying during the dark days following the counter-revolutionary overthrow of European socialism.
Farewell, comrade!
