Dunne, William F.

William Francis Dunne (1887-1953) was a labor organizer, politician, editor, and Communist Party activist for most of his life. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, he worked as an electrician and was active in various unions. He joined the Socialist Party in 1910. With the outbreak of World War II, Dunne worked in war related industries and shipyards. From 1944 until the beginning of 1946, he found work as a navy cook in the Aleutian Islands. (From a biographical sketch provided by the Tamiment Library in New York. The full version is available in the collection.)

William Francis Dunne was a labor organizer, politician, editor, Socialist, and Communist Party activist and leader. Born in 1887, in 1916 Dunne moved to Butte, Montana where he was a leader of the Anaconda copper strike of 1917, edited the Butte Daily Bulletin, the organ of the Butte Central Labor Council, co-founded the Federated Press (a labor news service) and was elected to the State Legislature. In 1919 Dunne led a section of the Butte Socialist Party into the Communist League of America (later the CPUSA). Dunne was the national organizer for the Trade Union Unity League, organized national marches of the CPUSA-led Unemployed Councils, represented the CPUSA at the Communist International and served as an alternate member of its executive, travelling to the USSR and Mongolia, and became a member of the CPUSA's Political Bureau in 1929. A close associate of William Z. Foster, Dunne was critical of the political direction of the Party under the leadership of Earl Browder. By 1934 he was removed from national leadership, but continued to organize and write in the Pacific Northwest region. In 1946 Dunne was expelled from the Party. In 1951, two years before his death, Dunne helped found the James Connolly association, an Irish Republican organization.