Leslie Daiken

[5] In 1933, Daiken was present at the house of Charlotte Despard in Eccles Street, Dublin, also used as a Workers' College, when it was attacked by a mob of Blueshirts.

[2] Soon after his arrival in London, Daiken was one of the three founders of a duplicated publication called Irish Front, together with two other poets, Charlie Donnelly and Ewart Milne.

[3] In December 1935, The Irish Times reviewed a production in Camden Town of Ireland Unfree, a stage version by Daiken of Patrick Pearse’s poem "The Rebel".

It stated that "Mr Daiken carries Pearse’s theme beyond his idealistic conclusion to the revolutionary viewpoint of the Irish workers.

"[10] Daiken kept up his links with leftist Irish writers and dissidents and edited the collection of working-class political verse Goodbye Twilight: songs of the struggle in Ireland (1936),[5] illustrated by Harry Kernoff.

[2] In another review, Louis MacNeice called the book a "collection of proletarian poems – some communist, some Irish republican, and all written in a defiant spirit of opposition ... a violent reaction against Yeats and all that he stood for.

"[13] In October 1939, at the time of the wartime National Registration Act, Daiken was living in a studio at Old Castle Wharf, Twickenham, and described himself as "Script-writer and advertising copywriter".

[14] During the Second World War, Daiken enlisted in the Corps of Signals of the Irish Army, a neutral force,[15] and also worked for Reuters as a correspondent on education.

[2] In a tribute to Daiken, his 1930s communist associate Brian O'Neill wrote "He was always busy, always with a half dozen irons in the fire, always trying to give a hand to some Irish writer who needed it.

[18][19] The National Library of Ireland holds a collection of Daiken's papers, in particular his publications and correspondence, presented to it in 1995 by his elder daughter, by then Melanie Cuming, and his younger brother, Aubrey Yodaiken.