Communist Party of Northern Ireland
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The Communist Party of Northern Ireland was a small communist party operating in Northern Ireland. Its origins lay in the 1941 split in the Communist Party of Ireland, which also produced the Irish Workers' Party in the Republic of Ireland. While the reasons for this split remain unclear, operational difficulties during World War II and the possibility of orders from Moscow remain the primary suspects - certainly, the split did not garner any reproach from the Comintern.
The IWP were able to undertake entrism into the Irish Labour Party, which was not organised in Northern Ireland at the time. Instead, the CPNI stood their own candidates in the 1945 Northern Ireland general election. While they did not come close to winning any seats, they polled a respectable 12,000 votes for their three candidates.
The CPNI was unable to use any momentum from their election result and declined in the following decades. It ultimately became the junior partner in a merger with the Irish Workers' Party, which was once again acting as an independent organisation, in 1970.
