Ireland was "not a fruitful soil" for communism in 1925, but communists in Britain had suggested an Irish colony should be established in Russia, according to Metropolitan Police Special Branch files released by the Public Record Office in London.
The Special Branch report, by an unknown author, suggested the labour leader, James Larkin, had "an attractive personality" and could command a limited following, "but as a permanent leader he is almost certain to fail".
Larkin had recently returned to Ireland from Russia and the report noted that he had informed a meeting in Dublin "that he had been appointed one of the 25 men who were to govern the Earth".
Arising from Larkin's visit to Moscow in 1925, draft resolutions on the Irish question were drawn up by the Organisation Bureau of the Communist International in London.
The document proposed the establishment of an Irish colony in Russia; nationalisation of mines, minimum pay of workers to be that of State employees "and when necessary to arrange for terrorist acts".
The author of the report also assured the Special Branch that Roderick J. Connolly, who had briefly taken over editorial control of the Workers' Republic paper after his father, James Connolly, was executed in 1916, had "dropped out altogether" from the communist scene by 1925.
Connolly had arrived in Glasgow at the end of 1918 and he quickly got in touch with local Sinn Fein clubs and addressed meetings in Coatbridge, and by March 1919 he was "engaged in drilling volunteers". Back in Dublin in 1923, the report said, Connolly advocated a change of policy at the Workers' Republic "which practically amounted to accepting the Free State Constitution.
"He was accused by his own people of all sorts of treason and there were allegations that he was fishing for a government job."
Larkin resigned from the Communist Party of Ireland that year and the report noted that he was "keeping a shop in Dublin for the sale of Catholic books and religious emblems".