Although best known for having fought with the International Brigade in the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War, Peter O'Connor devoted an entire lifetime to political struggle. Given his family background, it was always likely to be so.
Peter O'Connor, who died on June 19th at the age of 87, was born into a politically conscious republican and working-class family in Waterford. He once recalled being told by an older brother that "while I was still in my mother's womb my father was out on strike and the family were hungry". Perhaps this was why, he added, he "got such a hatred for capitalism".
His parents, James, who was a carpenter, and Margaret (nee Bergin), were both from Waterford. He was educated at the Christian Brothers school in Mount Sion. He married Bridget (Biddy) Hartery, also from Waterford, in 1939. They had two children, Dr Emmet O'Connor, a lecturer in political science at Magee College in Derry, and Mrs Teena Casey, who lives in Waterford. He has one surviving sister, Mrs Bridget O'Donoghue, who also lives in Waterford.
He joined Fianna Eireann at the age of nine or 10, transferring to the post-Civil War IRA at 17. But he became frustrated at the organisation's concentration on military activity at the expense of "a political and social side". In 1934 an incident at the Wolfe Tone commemoration in Bodenstown caused him to leave the IRA "for good".
A group of working-class Protestants from the Shankill Road in Belfast were attacked at the ceremony and prevented from laying a wreath at Wolfe Tone's grave. "I was disgusted with the whole episode," he wrote in an autobiography, A Soldier of Liberty, published in booklet form three years ago.
In the same year he stowed away on a coal boat from Scotch Quay to seek work as a labourer in Britain, a decision forced upon him, he said, by his inability to master the skills of the family trade, carpentry. He continued his political activity in London, working for the Republican Congress - a group set up to unite the republican and labour movements - while organising a union in the rubber factory in which he worked.
He left London in December 1936 to join the International Brigade in the company of three other Waterford men - Johnny Power, Paddy Power and Jackie Hunt.
A non-drinker all his life, he suffered two serious attacks of typhoid in Spain, which he attributed to the fact that he was drinking water while his comrades consumed wine. He fought in the battle of Jarama in February 1937, which claimed the lives of 19 Irishmen, including the poet Charlie Donnelly whose body was carried from the battlefield by Peter O'Connor and Johnny and Paddy Power.
He also fought in the battle of Brunete, but was ordered home in 1937 by his commander, Frank Ryan, "to put the record straight about the Spanish war". He was given a mixed reception. One man whom he had known well stepped off the footpath to avoid him, crossing himself in the process. "Perhaps he may have seen horns on me," he wrote in A Soldier of Liberty.
After a period of intermittent unemployment and work on building sites, he got a job in Waterford as an insurance agent with Royal Liver in 1946 and remained there until his retirement. But he never softened his political views.
He had participated in the refounding of the Communist Party of Ireland in 1933 and remained a member until his death. But he was also active in the Labour Party, which he represented on Waterford City Council in the 1950s. He attended last month's election count at which his nephew, Mr Seamus Ryan, won a seat for the same party.
He was pre-deceased in February last year by his wife, Biddy, a devout Catholic to whose courage he paid tribute in 1994 - at a ceremony to unveil a plaque to the 10 Waterford men who fought in the International Brigade - for standing by him during the "vile propaganda" of the 1930s about the behaviour of "the Reds in Spain".
While he was steadfast in his political views, friends say he was a quiet, tolerant man who never tried to impose his opinions.
He is survived by his son Emmet, daughter Mrs Teena Casey, sister, Mrs Bridget O'Donoghue, and grandchildren Mark, Brian, Christine, Niamh, Laura and Deaglan.
Peter O'Connor: born 1912; died June, 1999.