The Left Archive: The Worker, May – June 1974, Socialist Workers’ Movement

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A welcome addition to the Archive this week with a copy of The Worker from the SWM. It’s a reasonably well produced broadsheet magazine, eight pages long. The black and red colour scheme is fairly striking.

In terms of content it takes a strongly all-island approach and one that is profoundly hostile to the state in both jurisdictions.

There is a strong emphasis on industrial actions and union issues. So one reads articles on the struggles in Chrysler and Unidare, and the level of detail is considerable. There is a piece on the Irish Defence Forces which unsurprisingly paints the training regimen in the most negative of terms.

Yet it is not confined to that, there are articles on RUC and British army ‘counter-revolutionary warfare’ and a deliberate effort to make a linkage between the situation in the North and that in workplaces.

In addition to that is an excoriating article on Official Republicanism on page 5 which takes them to task for talking with the UVF. Interestingly, though, on the previous page it recommends that for he local elections in the Republic:

If there is a left-wing candidate of any variety standing in your area, although we would criticise him [sic] in detail, he should be given a vote. Such candidates would be those of Sinn Fein (Gardiner Place) and the Communist Party, left-wing members of the Labour Party and of Sinn Féin (Kevin Street) and individuals standing on a left-wing platform.