of O'Donnell personally. He was opposed to the Catholic nationalism of many IRA members, and once said disparagingly that "we don't have an IRA battalion in Belfast, we have a battalion of armed Catholics". Indeed, amongst others, he eventually left the IRA to set up the communist Republican Congress. O'Donnell lost a libel case he took against the Domician published, Irish Rosary monthly, following articles in the magazine that claimed he was a Soviet agent, and had studied at the Moscow Lenin School. Post-Civil War politics In 1923, while still in prison, he was elected as a Sinn Féin Teachta Dála (TD) for Donegal. In 1924, on release from internment, O'Donnell became a member of the Executive and Army Council of the anti-Treaty IRA. He also took over as the editor of the republican newspaper An Phoblacht. He did not take his seat in the Dáil and did not stand at the June 1927 general election. He tried to steer it in a left-wing direction, and to this end founded organisations such as the Irish Working Farmers' Committee, which sent representatives to the Soviet Union and to the Profintern. O'Donnell also founded the Anti-Tribute League, which opposed the repaying of annuities to the British government under the Irish Land Acts (these were set at a rate of £3,100,000 a year, a huge cost to the new state; they were ceased by Éamon de Valera on his accession to power in 1932, and in retaliation, the British government declared an Economic War; the payments were resolved in 1938 by an agreement that Ireland would pay Britain £10 million). O'Donnell also founded a short-lived socialist republican party, Saor Éire. In February 1932, the Fianna Fáil party was elected to the Irish Free State government. On 18 March 1932, the new government suspended the Public Safety Act, lifting the ban on a number of organisations including the Irish Republican Army. Several anti-Treaty IRA political prisoners were released around the same time, including Frank Ryan, a Saor Éire colleague of O'Donnell's, who on his release declared "as long as we have fists and boots, there will be no free speech for traitors". The newly legalized and liberated Republicans began a "campaign of unrelenting hostility" against their former enemies in the Civil War, breaking up Cumann na nGaedheal political meetings and intimidating supporters. In reaction to this, in August 1932 Ned Cronin founded the Army