In 2018, the SWP changed its name to Socialist Workers Network.[2]
Foundation and growth
The SWP was founded in 1971 as the Socialist Workers Movement by supporters of the International Socialists of Britain (now called the SWP) living in Ireland, who had previously been members of People's Democracy, the Waterford Socialist Movement and the Young Socialists. Many of the members had been active in the new Socialist Labour Alliance. The SWM subsequently affiliated to the SLA, but soon left, claiming that the Alliance was organised to debate, rather than to campaign.
Some of those who joined the SWM after its formation sympathised with a small tendency in Britain and later split away to form the Irish Workers Group,[3] which later became Workers Power. Meanwhile, the SWM grew on a modest scale and published a paper called The Worker.
In 1975, the SWM narrowly rejected a proposal to merge into the Irish Republican Socialist Party.[4] SWM members helped to organise and publicise public meetings which were addressed by IRSP founder Seamus Costello. In 1976 prior to the establishment of the Socialist Labour Party, and the SWN affiliation to it, they were in negotiations with the Independent Socialist Party (Ireland) a schism from the IRSP about a merger.[5]
When the Socialist Labour Party was founded in 1977, the SWM joined as a 'tendency' (or subgroup). The Socialist Workers Tendency was noted in the SLP for producing a bulletin more professional than that of the party. They left in 1980 to reform the Socialist Workers Movement.[3]
Growing from a small agitation group of about fifty members, the SWM now began to build groups in major colleges such as Trinity College and University College Dublin. Its traditional workplace bastion, Waterford Glass, has faded in strength but the SWP has developed some limited support in the Dublin Bus unions and the education branch of SIPTU. The party campaigned vigorously in referendums for abortion choice and for divorce.
The SWM changed its name to the Socialist Workers Party at its conference in 1995, after delegates from Dublin Bus argued that it should now take itself seriously on the left, as it then had a growing and active membership.
From movement to party
The SWP grew from a mostly Dublin-based membership, where it had two branches, to today's organisation with a number of branches in Dublin as well as branches in some other Irish cities and towns, and also in some colleges and universities.[vague] At its 2004 conference it claimed to have five hundred members, although this membership figure was regarded as much exaggerated by many others on the Irish left who have estimated SWP membership at anything between seventy and two hundred. It has not made any public membership claim since 2004.
Since it began to participate in elections, both general (Dáil) and local government, in 1997, it has so far failed to have any of its candidates elected under its own name. So far the party has not run any candidates for the European Parliament or the Seanad.
In the 2004 local elections, it improved on its previous performances by polling relatively strongly in four Dublin wards. These were Artane, Dún Laoghaire, Clondalkin and Ballyfermot, where its candidates won 792 votes (5.65%), 1,439 votes (7.94%), 1,044 votes (7.36%) and 1,094 votes (11.75%) respectively. No seats were won however.
The 2002 general election was the last occasion on which SWP candidates stood under the SWP banner in a general election.
In the 2009 local elections ten of the thirteen People Before Profit candidates were also SWP members. In 2014 Bríd Smith of the SWP stood for the Dublin constituency in the European Parliament Elections, which was believed to have been a factor in Socialist Party (Ireland) MEP Paul Murphy losing his seat which had been won by Joe Higgins in 2009.[7][8]
Due to disagreements between the Dublin leadership and the Belfast branch of the SWP on the selection of election candidates, a majority of the Belfast branch broke away at the end of 2009. They formed a group known as the International Socialists which is confined to Belfast.
The best known SWN publication is the monthly newspaper Socialist Worker. In recent years the paper has sought to change itself from a narrow party publication to a broader, full colour, anti-capitalist 'paper of the movements', occasionally including contributors from the wider Irish left. Socialist Worker was for a period the most frequently published Marxist newspaper in Ireland,[citation needed] published fortnightly from 1995, and weekly for a brief period in 2003 following the invasion of Iraq. However, in 2005 it was issued only once every three weeks and in 2006 it returned to a monthly schedule.
It has occasionally attempted to launch a magazine dealing with theoretical and political issues in greater detail. One such attempt was called Resistance and lasted for eight issues. A more recently attempt entitled New Left Journal, lasted for two issues.
In 2012, the Irish Marxist Review[9] was launched and since has had regular editions. After its recalibration in 2018, the SWN also launched a new socialist website called Rebel.[10]
Politics
The SWN argues that working class unity can only be built if Protestants turn their back on loyalist ideas, and Catholic workers reject the idea of a "pan-nationalist alliance" in Northern Ireland.[citation needed]
However, in earlier years they tended to take a more Republican line on The Troubles, for example arguing in 1985 that "Protestant workers can be compared to the poor whites of the Southern states of the US. Their cheap labour goes hand in hand with their racism." (Socialist Worker, No. 21, December 1985). It was supportive of the turn towards socialism by Sinn Féin during the late 1970s and 1980s, and considered merging into the Irish Republican Socialist Party in 1975.[4] The SWM were active in the mass movements opposing the criminalisation of IRA prisoners in the early 1980s, and members of the SWM were active in local Anti-H Block committees (Dundalk member Phil Toale, a shop steward in the town's cigarette factory, organised a general strike in the town the day that hunger-striker Bobby Sands died). The SWM took the view that it was the duty of revolutionary socialists to support those opposing British imperialism, but that this would be better done by a mass movement like the Civil Rights Movement than the one thousand or so trained volunteers of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. The SWM used to call for a vote for Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland up until its party conference of 1995, when it was argued that the Adams/McGuinness leadership of Sinn Féin were moving to an accommodation with imperialism. It opposed the subsequent Belfast Agreement, arguing that rather than ending conflict in Northern Ireland, the Agreement was 'institutionalising sectarianism', creating two competing communities and political leaderships, both nationalist and unionist, which did little for working-class people.
Following riots in Dublin on 25 February 2006 by Republicans, protesting at a planned 'Love Ulster' parade, the SWP issued a press release in which it expressed its full support for the actions of the rioters. According to the press release, given the wider context of (apparent) working-class alienation at the hands of the capitalist political establishment, the riots were completely justified: "socialists do not join in the condemnation of young working class people who riot against the police - especially given this wider context." Also, the SWP claimed that the 'Love Ulster' march was purposely planned by Michael McDowell, the Minister for Justice, as a provocation to republicans to riot, and thus further blacken the Republican movement, of whom the Minister is a most vocal critic.
The SWN is organised on both sides of the border. In Northern Ireland it initially operated as part of the Socialist Environmental Alliance (SEA) in elections. The SWP was the only organised grouping within the SEA. The group was dissolved in 2008 with most of it folding into People Before Profit.
^Irish Times – Harry McGee. “ For anybody who has not been intimately involved with the Socialist Workers Party or the Socialist Party, you would need to have a PhD in semantics and rhetoric to winkle out the actual ideological difference between them. They are both Trotskyist and advocate permanent revolution and political agitation through working class mass action in capitalist societies such as Ireland.”
^ abGoodwillie, John (August/September 1983). "Glossary of the Left in Ireland". Gralton: an Irish Socialist Review 9: 17-20.
^ abHanley & Millar, B&S (2009). The Lost Revolution: The story of the Official IRA and the Workers Party. Ireland: Penguin Ireland. p. 286. ISBN978-1-84488-120-8.
