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Irish Left Archive

Some six or so years ago the Cedar Lounge Revolution decided to initiate and host the Irish Left Archive. This was intended to be an online archive of materials relating to the Irish left with documents, leaflets, pamphlets, posters and newspapers from the latter half of the 20th century placed online in PDF format, freely accessible and easily downloadable and reproducible for those who are interested.

Over those years the scope of the Archive has grown considerably and now includes at least some sample materials from the major political formations on the island. However, large gaps still remain both chronologically and in terms of individual groups or formations.

For more information on the Archive please go here.

The rationale for the Archive is quite straightforward. Firstly it’s a good way for developing an informal but reasonably comprehensive history of the Irish left.

But perhaps most importantly this is intended as a general historical resource open to all irrespective of political position. No judgement is made, beyond points regarding quality of production, on these documents in the accompanying texts.

Obviously copyright resides with those who produced these documents. To date we have had no queries or complaints about materials posted here. In some respects this is unsurprising, although not all were intended for a broad readership most were.

The Archive hopes to encompass materials from all on the left including those from Socialist, Social Democrat, Green, Marxist, Republican, Anarchist, Feminists, Trade Unions, campaigning groups, left and progressive Unionist voices and other groups on the island of Ireland, or with connections to Irish politics (for examples there are formations in the UK which are linked to Irish parties). But interesting or progressive noises from Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil are also of interest. Further areas include reflections upon the Irish left from organisations of the left and other ideological positions both in Ireland and outside of Ireland [for example there is a particularly interesting document in the Archive below from the UK based unionist lobby group ‘Friends of the Union’ from the 1980s]. There is no particular time span.

So we’d like to hear from anyone who is interested in contributing to this project. You can contact us at this email: contact@leftarchive.ie