Author: leftarchivist

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Many thanks to the person who forwarded this to the Archive.

This publication joins others from Organise!, the anarcho-syndicalist group based in Belfast. As noted previously in the Archive (and here are a selection of other documents from the organisation) 

Organise! is an anarchist group based in Belfast and a local of the UK Solidarity Federation. It took its current form in 2003 as a merger between the Anarchist Federation in Ireland, the Anarcho-Syndicalist Federation and other small groups and individuals.

The Organise! bulletin had been published by the Ballymena and Antrim Anarchist Group since 1986 and in 1992, they created the Organise! group. When this was dissolved in 1999, the Syndicalist Solidarity Network was formed, which later became Organise! Anarcho-Syndicalist Federation.

Organise! currently issues a local bulletin called The Leveller.

The Solidarity Federation is affiliated with the International Workers’ Association.

This publication covers considerable ground. The front page piece deals with Bloody Sunday and argues that:

 …all governments use massacres as just another repressive tool of the state. What happened in Derry in 1972 was not only preceded by a litany of organised state killings, but followed by many as well.

This year, for example, also marks the tenth anniversary of the Marikara massacre of striking miners in South Africa in which thirty-four workers were shot dead by the South African police.

Interestingly, African National Congress spokesmen, including leading policemen have been  chosen to give the, annual Bloody Sunday lecture in the past. Appropriate perhaps, if not in the way intended by the organisers.

Other pieces discuss the UK Election, the Sea Border on foot of Brexit and related matters. One considers Just Books Peoples Library and the Belfast Anarchist Assembly.

This notes:

Just Books – Belfast Anarchist Collective recently moved into a new space in Blackstaff Mill on the Springfield Road. Over the last couple of months we’ve been gathering the Just Books Peoples Library back together from the various locations its been stored since the closing of the Réalta space in King Street in August 2019. While we were in Berry Street (2016- 2018) the library grew rapidly to thousands of books.

Of course it has been a longer process than that, the library has been built up over many years. Just Books and the collective have a history stretching back to the Belfast Anarchist Collective and the original anarchist bookshop and space in Winetavern Street opened in 1978.

There’s a ‘Statement in Solidarity with Revolt in Kazakhstan’ and a page long piece that calls on reads to ‘Get Involved: Help Build An Anarchist Alternative.’

This last concludes with the paragraph:

We currently have members in Belfast, Cork, Derry, Lisburn, Newtownabbey and Portadown and are building the organisation on the basis of active involvement and participation. We aren’t interested in meaningless ‘paper’ membership so you can’t join by filling in an online form and bunging us a few quid.

To talk to us about joining get the ball rolling, check out our website at https:/ /organiseanarchistsireland.com and send an email to: organiseasi@gmail.com

 

You can download this file here:

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Many thanks to Irish Election Literature for this, very much appreciated. As the campaign website notes:

The campaign is about the conservation, appropriate restoration and revitalisation of a quarter of great national and international historical importance: a WW1 and 1916 Battleground and the oldest surviving open-air street market in Dublin.

 

This leaflet adds to our selection of campaigns, albeit it is not positioned as left-wing as such. 

However it is notable how inclusionary the language used is.

The campaign to save Moore Street, the ancient market and 1916 Battleground, has been going for nearly 25 years and the Save Moore Street From Demolition group has been on the street with a stall, petition sheets, leaflets, posters, badges etc. for over ten years now.

And:

This ancient street market (older than O’Connell Street) and an appropriate standing commemoration of
the history and culture of the 1916 Rising are threatened by the plans of Hammerson, a property speculator, approved by the Planning Department of Dublin City Council and by An Bord Pleanala and have been also backed by the Government. This struggle is not only about conserving a valuable and ancient social space for independent businesses and shoppers, nor about an important site of World and Irish history alone. It is also about what kind of a city and what kind of country we want; whether it is to satisfy the social, cultural and heritage needs of the people – or just another city centre speculation and commercial development. We don’t have to let them win. We can draw strength from the history of people stmggling for freedom in  Ireland and around the world and make a stand. You can be part of the solution by sharing the information  (or some of our posts) with the people you know and social media contacts.  

To download the above please click on the following file:

Many thanks to Aidan Feenan for forwarding this document, one of a number donated by him to the Archive.

As the monthly magazine of the British SWP it offers an analysis of ‘Ireland after the hunger strike’. While the rest of the contents offers a snapshot of Britain at a particular point in its social, political and economic history, with a deepening economic crisis and increasing unemployment, it also stands before the height of Tory popularity under the premiership of Margaret Thatcher.

However, of most interest to Irish readers will be the section starting on pp16. This contains two pieces, one by Chris Harman ‘analysing the background to the Northern Irish war’ and a ‘breakdown of the left in Ireland’ by Kieren Allen of the Irish SWM.

Harman writes:

the ending of the hunger strike produced considerable confusion. Most republicans and many socialists outside the prisons regarded it as a considerable victory at first. Yet a fortnight later the ‘dirt·y protest’ was still continuing, and there were reports of threats of a further hunger strike.

The confusion arises partly from an ambiguity throughout the H-block campaign.

It was built around five demands that were posed in humanitarian terms, as if they were something different from political status. Yet the basic aim of the’dirty protest’ was to stop ‘criminalisation’ of the republican struggle and to force recognition that the prisoners were political. Of course, once the campaign was underway on this basis, every serious supporter of political status had to back it. But as the Irish socialist group, the Socialist Workers Movement, has correctly pointed out, “‘Humanitarianism’ has been cleverly used by the Brits

And:

Of course, if the British troops went to withdraw, the Protestants would be forced to face the reality of being on their own alongside a majority in Ireland as a whole who resent their privileges, and would eventually change their tune. But that is to beg the question.

While the British troops remain, the attitude of the Protestant workers remains a factor confining opposition to the state to a minority within it – and to a minority which discrimination keeps away from the real centres of political or economic power.

Hence the impasse into which every method of fighting the sectarian state has run – whether that of constitutional reform, of armed action, or, for that matter, of mass agitation.

The impasse is not a new thing; we noted in the old IS journal back in

1969:

‘There were always limits within which the• Civil Rights movement had to operate. These were the limits of what could be achieved by mass mobilisation within the boundaries of the six counties … against an opposition made up in the main of the Protestant working class.’ (IS ( old series) 40)

The impasse could only be broken either by breaking the hold of Loyalism over the Protestant working class, or by drawing the nationalist majority in Ireland as a whole into the struggle by spreading it to the South.

And:

Given the grip of the Loyalists on the Protestant communities, it is likely that any real lead in promoting class-based struggle will have to come from outside.

But this does not excuse socialists who may be forced themselves to operate from within the Catholic ghettoes from explaining to Protestant workers what needs to be done, how to confront the problems which the crisis poses for them – and to do so in a language which the best Protestant workers can under stand.

Meanwhile Allen writes about political parties on the left in the Republic. Unfortunately paragraphs have been transposed, so therefore some of the entry on SFWP is actually relating to ‘The Provos’ – likewise some of it has been transposed with the PDs. A handy instruction for numbering the paragraphs has been added to the text of the document.

Interestingly the entry on the IRSP is very short and does not mention the INLA – a particularly curious omission given the role INLA prisoners played during the hunger strike. As to the SWM he writes:

The Socialist Workers Movement
(SWM), the fraternal organisation to the
SWP, has managed to build a small toehold.
in the working class movement
through its involvement in rank and file
groups. It argues that only the working
class can solve the national question, as
part of its struggle for workers’ -power.
It beHeves that the Protestant working
class cannot be ignored while a united
Ireland is being established, but that
socialists . must seek to involve themselves
·in their struggles around unemployment,
wages etc. without hiding
their anti-imperialism.
During the H-block campaign the
SWM succeeded in initiating union
groups such as Corporation Workers
. Against the Ii-blocks which brought
about limited industrial action. It
argued that Southern workers could
not _be appeakd to on a simpll’ nationalistic
basis ~ but as a class with a direct
political i11terest in the national struggle.

A very interesting overview.

For more materials from the (Irish) SWM/SWP/SWN please visit the Socialist Worker (Ireland) Publications archive.

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Many thanks to Fergus White for donating this to the Archive.

This edition of United Irishman joins other copies in the Archive. This particular edition is of considerable interest, since it is the first official publication of 1975 for the Official Republican Movement. The emphasis is very much on a core set of issues. As the front page headline argues: These are the ISSUES… Employment, Resources, Farming Peace. And underneath that there is This is the POLICY.

This provides a neat summation of OSF at the time:

The Republican Movement is a party of the people. It stands for the men and women of no property. It fights for no religion, but against all exploitation and foreign control. It believes that all of Ireland should be controlled by the Irish working class. It rejects the idea that there can be real freedom in any part of our country as long as there are any who live in want, who are unemployed, who fear discrimination or who are crushed and degraded by their work.

The Republican Movement stands for the nationalia  of Building Societies and Banks and tile establishment of a national building fund to provide decent housing at reasonable rant,.h demand, the nationalisation of our oil and mineral wealth a, the beginning of a great lndustrial revolution which wiD wipe out unemployment, develop full welfare services and provide new and creatlve life for our children.

The Republican Movement wants peace in lreland. A  peace within which the people can come to grips with the problem of taking over their own lives in all senses.

It demands the withdrawal of the British army and an end to the gross exploitation of the people in any part of Ireland.

This is but a part of the progressive policy which the Republican Movement will develop in the coming year. The Republican Movement is being joined by men and women of all creeds and of none. Your place is among them.

Other pieces include a very brief overview of the split with the Irish Republican Socialist Party which is characterised as follows:

The political development and prospective unity of the IRSP will depend on the extent to which such diverse and personally ambitious characters as Costello and Bernadette McAIiskey can stomach the gangster elements and the factionallsts who dominate the rank and file”. One would imagine that this would be brief unless foreign aid Is received. There ate sufficient ultra-left, ·manic organisations In Europe and the USA to ensure them of some support.

By contrast the editorial is more positive:

In retrospect 1974 can be seen as the year in which the Republican Movement consolidated its claim to be the only party capable of representing the Irish working class in the North or South.

The publication also includes a statement from the Army Council of the Irish Republican Army. This is notable in that it welcomes the ‘Truce called by the Provisionals’ and argues that “All the Irish participants in the conflict in the North both Loyalist and Republicans have now ended aggressive military action. If there is to be an end to  violent conflict the British forces must also end their aggression’. 

There are a wide range of other pieces, including articles on Palestine and Israel, a speech by Tomas Mac Gill on the state of the economy in the 26 counties and a report on how Clann na Éireann was ‘fighting against repressive laws’ in Britain along with the Communist Party there.

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Many thanks to the person who forwarded this to the Archive.

This short leaflet from Éirígí promotes ‘Bringing Renewable Energy into Public Ownership’ and notes that ‘Ireland is now in the early stages of an energy revolution. Over the coming years we will all be using much more electricity in our daily lives – to power our cars, to heat our homes, to cook our meals and for many other uses.’

But it argues that ‘the government is handing control of Ireland’s renewable energy sector to Big Energy corporations’.

It asserts that ‘Éirígí fundamentally disagrees with he give-away of Ireland’s renewable energy resources. Our Power to the People campaign is calling for these resources to be used to provide Irish families and businesses with low-cost electricity to help them move away from fossil fuels’.

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Many thanks to Sam McGrath who forwarded this to the Archive. This is a short but useful article from the first issue of Nusight magazine, published in 1968. Nusight was edited by Vincent Browne until 1970. This article examines the Special Branch in the Republic of Ireland and provides a background to certain aspects of the histories of the Left and Republicanism during this period of time and after.

There’s also an interesting reference to the Irish Communist Organisation in the text, relating to the eviction of two members where there was involvement by Special Branch, noting it is a ‘tiny group… total membership of which is not much more than ten people, drawn from the Ballyfermot/Finglas area’.

It serves well, also as an example of the extreme reluctance on the part of the national newspapers to express opinions, or even to report on happenings which are found to be connected with the Special Branch. Indeed certain reporters on the staffs of the Irish Independent and The Irish Press groups are known to be branch collaborators. The national press is, however, less ‘safe’ than before. One result of this was the reporting in the three national dailies of the resolutions passed at the last Congress of the Union of Students in Ireland which called for ‘an investigation of the activities of the Special Branch and the harassment of students within colleges’.

It notes an RTÉ Seven Days current affairs programme on the same topic and the efforts to stop that from being screened. It also notes that since then that ‘minority interest publications’ such as the United Irishman (of Sinn Féin) and ‘Socialist Comment’ from the Labour Party Universities branch have been amongst the few to detail SB activities – not least alleged interference in USI’s presidential elections.

The article outlines what Special Branch is and its history. It notes:

It is the political department of the Branch’s activities which we are concerned with here, and the methods used to ‘control subversive groups and anti-constitutional organisations’. It is clear that the SB is left a great deal to itself and that it is given a large degree of freedom to decide what is and what is not a subversive group or an anti-constitutional organisation. What is more important it seems to have ‘carte blanche’ to carry out its work as it sees fit.

Many thanks to Sean Patrick Smyth for forwarding these documents to the Archive. They consist of two statements from the IRSP from 1975. The firsts issued following the assassination of Billy McMillen during the breakaway of the Irish Republican Socialist Party from Official Sinn Féin and the consequent split within the OIRA as the INLA was formed. As noted on wiki:

On 28 April 1975, McMillen was shot dead by INLA member Gerard Steenson, as he was shopping in a hardware shop on Spinner Street with his wife Mary. McMillen was hit in the neck and died on the scene. His killing was unauthorised and was condemned by INLA/IRSP leader Seamus Costello. Despite this, the OIRA tried to kill Costello on 9 May 1975 and eventually killed him two years later. McMillen’s death was a major blow to the OIRA in Belfast.

The second document addresses sectarianism and declares that ‘the only way in which sectarianism can be eradicate forever is to end the British economic and political control in Ireland’. However it also calls for ‘the formation of local organised street committees, as a defence against British Army and Loyalist Terror gangs.’