Irish Workers' Group 1967-8

Irish Emigré Trotskyism in the mid-1960s: Notes by a Participant

[Workers' Fight and the Trotskyist Tendency of the International Socialists – now the SWP – were forerunners of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty. This is only an outline account, part of a longer article “AWL’s record on Ireland” .] INTRODUCTION The politics of the Trotskyist Tendency on Ireland in 1969 were rooted in the work of the small group of socialists who produced the journal An Solas/Workers’ Republic in 1966-7, under the umbrella of the Irish Workers’ Group, a mainly émigré and mainly London-based organisation. The group producing Workers’ Republic was the original nucleus of the...

Trotskyism or Chameleonism? The Irish Workers Group (1965-68)

The main document of the Trotskyist side in the faction fight in the Irish Workers' Group in 1967-8. CONTENTS I. Vacillation and inconsistency II. What kind of revolutionary party? Organisational politics III. The record: political chameleonism Eclecticism and nationalism IV. The present orientation Shopkeeper Polemics Result of the nationalist accommodation Accommodation to Labour too? V. The theory of Irish exceptionalism And exclusiveness Religion VI. The internal "regime" The chameleon at home - a petty bonaparte Centralism vs. democratic centralism Subjectivism The Lawless clique and the...

The Fenians: Rise and Decline

Article from Workers' Republic 19, mid-summer 1967. Fenianism is generally thought of as the archetypal physical force movement, directed towards establishing an independent Irish Republic. It was founded in Dublin in 1858. It organised the unsuccessful Rising of 1867. Segments of it played a leading role in the Land League agitation in the 1880s. One of its strands helped to organise the partially successful Rising of 1916. Fenianism was in the line of that Republicanism which has for seven generations now been the vehicle of radical protest against exploitation and oppression in Ireland. At...

"Taking whose gun out of politics?" Irish Militant, January 1967

This article, published in Irish Militant of January 1967, demonstrated the confusion of the Irish Workers' Group in relation to Republicanism. It was by-lined for though not written by Phil Flynn, later vice-president of Sinn Fein, a prominent trade unionist in the 26 Counties, and later a high-profile businessman. Sinn Fein is in danger of blundering into a parliamentary blind alley. At its Ard Fheis. held late in November, there emerged a considerable body of opinion in favour of entering Leinster House. Motions calling for the party immediately to declare its willingness to take seats in...

40 Years of the IRA: Where the Hillside Men Have Sown [IWG 1967]

James Connolly wrote: “Ireland occupies a position among the nations of the earth unique … in the possession of what is known as a ‘physical force party’ – a party, that is to say, whose members are united upon no one point, and agree upon no single principle, except upon the use of physical force as the sole means of settling the dispute between the people of this country and the governing power of Great Britain. Click here to download this article as pdf . "The latter-day high falutin ‘hillside’ man, on the other hand, exalts into a principle that which the revolutionsists of other countries...

Trotskyism and Ireland (Irish Workers Group, 1965-8: Archive) Ireland and Permanent Revolution, etc:

[See also Marxism and Ireland: Articles from the AWL Press] Where the Hillside Men Have Sown: 40 Years of the IRA [1967] Ireland and Permanent Revolution: A Discussion 1966/7 Debate on permanent revolution with Cuba as "example" in the Irish Workers' Group, 1967-8 WHY WE PUBLISH THE WORKERS REPUBLIC [Jan. 1967] THE "MANIFESTO" OF THE IRISH WORKERS' GROUP [1967] THE CONNOLLY ASSOCIATION AND IRISH NATIONALISM:"SOVEREIGNTY AN OLD JOKE" [1967] The Connolly Association and its Work: a Critical Memoir DO IRISH WORKERS NEED REPUBLICANISM? THE SAD STORY OF CONNOLLY'S HEIRS [1967] HUNGARY 1956: "AN...

Debate: anti-semitism and the split in the Irish Workers' Group.

Contents "Secret Zionists"? How the IWG divided Marranos? Maria Duce Not just logic Aha! But now? Farrell and McCann McCann's politics Lysaght in the IWG Part two of a response to Rayner Lysaght on the history of revolutionary socialism in Ireland. It is a copy edited and expanded version of the text in Solidarity. It now includes relevant quotations from the record of the hearing of the Lawless Case by the European Court of Human Rights. Rayner Lysaght's response to the charge that an anti-semitic witch-hunt took place in the Irish Workers' Group in 1967-8 is typical, and typically modest. He...

The theory of Permanent Revolution and Ireland: is there a socialist quintessence in Irish nationalism?

[This is a copy-edited and slightly expanded version of the text in Solidarity replying to Lysaght .] A dozen years on from the “Good Friday Agreement” (GFA) things in Northern Ireland are far from settled. The Good Friday system is far from stable. The political system set up by the GFA is an intricate network of bureaucratised Catholic-Protestant sectarianism. Communal antagonism is still so strong that it takes 60 or so permanent walls to keep active communalism from erupting into violence across Belfast. Militarist republican activity is still a major factor in Northern Ireland. It is a...

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