COMMUNIST activist Bob Doyle, who died in 2009 aged 92, has now been commemorated with a plaque at his birthplace in North King Street in the Smithfield area of Dublin.

He fought with the International Brigades in Spain against Francisco Franco’s fascists.

His granddaughter unveiled the plaque and thanked those who had helped arrange the memorial, which she called “a great honour for a great man.”

Doyle joined the anti-treaty IRA in the 1930s and later the Communist Party. He took part in street battles with the Blueshirts and Dublin’s Animal Gangs. One such confrontation left him with permanent damage to his left eye, after which he wore an eyepatch.

In Spain, Doyle was captured by Italian fascist troops and imprisoned for 11 months in a concentration camp near Burgos. Here he was regularly tortured by Spanish guards. He was once brought out to face a firing squad and also was interrogated by the Gestapo before his release in a prisoner exchange.

Returning to Ireland in 1939, Doyle failed to find work and so moved to England, where he landed a job building air-raid shelters and later joined the merchant navy.

After his discharge, he joined Britain’s Communist Party and became active in the printing industry and Fleet Street unions. Arrested in 1959 during a mass picket in support of the campaign for a 40-hour week, he was charged with riotous assembly but cleared by an Old Bailey jury.

Doyle stood as a Communist candidate in local elections and was an enthusiastic campaigner, marching in support of striking miners, dockers and steelworkers and against the poll tax.

Late in life, he discovered marijuana and grew cannabis plants at home for his own use. He also campaigned for the legalisation of the drug. However, thieves brought an end to his illicit growing. “My plants all got nicked,” he said, “and I dare not go to the police about it.”

Before his death, Doyle published a book documenting his experiences in the Spanish civil war called Brigadista: An Irishman’s Fight Against Fascism.