Irish Left Archive
We’re trying at the Cedar Lounge Revolution to build up an archive of materials relating to the Irish left in all it’s forms. We’re hoping to have documents, leaflets, pamphlets and newspapers from predominantly the latter half of the 20th century in PDF format and easily downloadable and reproducible for those who are interested.There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly it’s a good way for developing a history of the Irish left. Secondly it’s a means to get to grips with the various strands of the left. There is a huge incomprehension and lack of education about both. Part of that is due to the natural dynamic of being within a party or group structure. The ‘other’ tends to become stereotyped or caricatured. Part of it is due to the ephemeral nature of some formations. Part of it is due to the low level of activity of groups which had or have only a small number of members. We also think that in a context where the left is weak, in all its incarnations, it makes sense to point out both the diversity, but also the similarities between all its elements.
That’s not some idealistic hope that ‘we can all love each other’, but rather a sense that we can at least understand where the other person is coming from. Also it provides an opportunity to consider how the same themes recur again and again and again and how both problems and solutions may have been noted and arrived at.
Still for all these worthy thoughts to come to fruition we need more material, and hence it’s over to you.
We’d hope that the Archive would encompass all on the left including those from Socialist, Social Democrat, Green, Marxist, Republican and other groups in 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 would be fascinating as well. There is no particular time span.
An index of contributions to the Archive will be posted here in addition to the main part of the CLR, and you can also find them handily enough if you click on Irish Left Archive under the Categories menu on the right hand side of each page of the site.
And as a further - ahem - incentive we look on this as a means of giving a voice to anyone who donates to the Archive. You’re welcome to pen your own thoughts on the donated piece and contextualise it.
So we’d like to hear from anyone who is interested in contributing to this project. You can contact us at cedarlounge@yahoo.ie.
Hi,
I donated most of my stuff to the Linenhall library. There was some archane material including “The Irish Trotskyist”. Most of my material was Revolutionary Marxist Group later Movement for a Socialist Republic, then Peoples Democracy. I also donated some Socialist Comments from UCD in the 60s. olts of internal documents.
Can I recommend
http://www.workersrepublic.org/
Which has material from the first Trotskyist group in the late 30s and 40s. This included Matt Merrigan, John Byrne, Bob Armstrong.
See Also the journal “Revolutionary History” http://www.revolutionary-history.co.uk.
The article on Ireland was mainly the work of Ciaran Crossey who incidentally has created a comprehensive website on Ireland and the Spanish Civil War. The article build on Ranor Lysaghts original work.Best of luck with your work on an archive. One point in looking at say the reactions to the Northern troubles I feel that some in denouncing ultraleftism forget that there was a real fear on a widespread Loyalist Pogrom in the event of Britain opting for a Loyalist Takeover.Faced with this possibility Peoples Democracy and the MSR (opt cit) majorities felt the task of the moment was supporting defence of the ghettoes strategies.
Vol 6 No 2/3 Summer 1996
Essays on Revolutionary Marxism in Britain and Ireland from the 1930s to the 1960s
Editorial
Ciaran Crossey & James Monaghan : The Origins of Trotskyism in Ireland
John Archer : CLR James in Britain, 1932-38
Paul Flewers : Cornering the Chameleons, Stalinism & Trotskyism in Britain 1939 - 41
John McIlroy, ‘The First Great Battle in the March to Socialism’, Dockers, Stalinists and Trotskyists in 1945
Alan Christianson : The revolutionary Communist Party and the Shop Stewards
Sam Levy : A Footnote for Historians
Ellis Hillman and the Fourth International
Anon : The Disunity of Theory and Practice
Mike Jones : Some Recently Discovered Material on Rosa Luxemburg and Leo Jogiches
Rosa Luxemburg : Letters on Bolshevism and the Russian Revolution
A Tribute to Ryan Worrall (Probably the first British supporter of the ’state capitalism’ theory)
Not to worry Jim and thanks for the list and links. Lots of reading there. Any stuff you can at any point send us gratefully received. The Linenhall is fantastic, but without materials freely available it can be difficult to access archives and this is true of so many other places…
Einde O’Callaghan has a great site with a ot of interesting Irish stiff including Mike Farrells “Struggle in the North”.
http://www.marxists.de/ireland/index.htm
Einde like me was in the awful Healyite group “League for a workers Vanguard”, name changed for obvious reasons.I date back to UCD and the events there.
He is active in the leftist trainspotters and
http://www.marxists.org/admin/new-archives/2002-oct.htm
This has a project to put all the Marxist classics online including Connolly.
It started as a Trotskyist archive but evelved.
The real perosn to be involved is Ranor Lysaght. I would guess that Eamonn McCann, him and maybe Paddy Healy are the obly surviviors of the old IWG
James,
Gery Lawless is still alive [recovering from a serious operation]
There was an Irish Peace Movement in the 1970s that
put out an excellent magazine called “Dawn”. It would
have been linked with Neville Keery and his wife Anne,
who were involved in the anti-war group Irish Voice on
Vietnam. Norman Lockhart & the Christian pacifist group
“Pax Christi” would
have been linked with “Dawn” as well. Some of their
pamphlets are available here:
http://www.innatenonviolence.org/old/pamphlets.htm
The magazine was quite attractive to read, featuring cartoons,
drawings, poems, etc. A long way from the
snooze-inducing junk produced by the likes of
the CPI (M-L) !
The magazine used to feature articles on things like
nuclear disarmanent,the Peace People, Africa, etc., as well as features on people like Gandhi, Herbert Read,,
Sheila Rowbotham and Michael Davitt.
Cheers for that Starkadder…
I found this article on Roy Johnston’s Website:
http://www.iol.ie/~rjtechne/century130703/1970s/rot78.htm
It’s an article written for the journal “The Ripening of Time” for
had a journal with the same name,
the Wolfe Tone Society. The small leftist group
Revolutionary Struggle (the grouplet with Frank Connolly & “Nick the
Greek”
but I’m not sure if it’s the same journal.
There’s an article about RS here:
http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2002/msg03868.htm
Apparently Christy Moore’s sister Terry was associated
with them.
And that too! RS was a curious entity. I wonder did they publish any stuff… anyone got some for the archive?
http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2008/03/07/awl%E2%80%99s-record-ireland
There is a very detailed article on the Irish left in the 1960s at the above link. While I’m no fan of Matgamna’s, it is the most detailed and factually correct that I’ve come across in recent years.
I meant to post about an account that WbS gave about the Irish emigrant left when he published the Dermot Whelan document. I feel that he over relied on Wikipedia, a very unreliable source and as a consequence it had many factual gaps and errors.
Cancel that!
A slight rush to judgment!
The bulk of the article that describes the people in the London Irish left is accurate in so far as I have knowledge of the events.
When he starts outlining his own politics from the late 1960s (and it’s hard going wading through all those quotes!), Sean does not paint what then he was.
I first encountered Sean in 1970 when he moved from Manchester to London. By then he had a political reputation arising out of a political campaign within IS (now SWP) against their dropping the “Troops Out” slogan after August 1969. He used to attend the weekly meetings of ICRSC in Kings Cross and issues that I remember him commenting on included
(i) the left were in danger of making the same mistake on the Ireland as they made on the Algerian War of Independence a decade previously. In Algeria groups like the French CP, the OCR/SLL and the British Socialist Review group (later IS/SWP) were hostile to the FLN and preferred to cheer for the MNA (?). Matgamna saw similarities in the Left attitudes at that time to the Provo/Officials split.
(ii) after internment in 1971, Matgamna argued that it was correct for the British left to campaign on the slogan “Victory to the IRA” and hailed the abolition of Stormont in1972 as a great victory achieved by the IRA.
(iii) His general politics at the time were “critical support to USFI (Mandel wing) while he admired the American SWP”.
Matgamna’s article is fairly interesting, NollaigO.
Interesting that he mentions Noel Jenkinson, the
Official IRA guy convicted of the Aldershot bombing.
As I understand it, Jenkinson was also one of
several Irish people in the Communist to Defeat
Revisionism, For Communist Unity in the
early 1960s.However, unlike most of the Irish
CDRFCU members, I don’t think he joined
the Irish Communist Group later.
While I met Noel Jenkinson in 1970 on a number of occasions, I cannot throw any light on his earlier political involvement. Noel had been active in the ICRSC and was secretary of one of the area branches. When he was arrested after the Aldershot bombings, the Bill raided his house, found the membership list of of the ICRSC branch and then raided all those houses. Among those raided was John Palmer, leading IS member at the time and mentioned in the Matgamna history on several occasions. Is e mo thuairim that John, a former European editor of the Guardian, has just contributed to the CLR on the EU discussion.
An amusing anecdote about those raids:
One of the people raided was Charlie, very much a duine le Dia. When Charlie was shown the police warrant authorising them to search for ” explosives and other diverse equipment”, he replied:
“You will get nothing here, mate! I can’t even swim!”
Back to the Matgamna memoirs: surprising that there is no mention of Brendan Clifford, his coming or going!
Oiche maith!
As it happens I have some Matgamna related stuff from the late 1980s which I hope to post up fairly soon. Thanks a million for that Nollaig0. Lot’s of food for thought…
Didn’t you like the amusing anecdote then, WbS?!
Did the IWG have some connection with Saor Eire? Liam Daltun with Peter Graham?
My understanding, CL is that Saor Eire postdated the IWG, but there is still a connection.
As the IWG fell apart elements from it were involved in launching the League for a Workers Republic, a more firmly Trotskyist group based in Ireland rather than mostly in Britain. The LWR soon split three ways, with one splinter calling itself the Revolutionary Marxist Group. Each of the splinters aligned itself with one of the international Trotskyist factions.
The RMG was linked to Ernest Mandel’s United Secretariat of the Fourth International. It was particularly strongly influenced by the International Marxist Group (of Tariq Ali), the British section of the USFI. During that period, the USFI was split between a wing which supported guerillaism in Latin America and one which stuck to more traditional Trotskyist concepts of the centrality of the working class. The IMG, and through it the RMG, was in the former camp.
Peter Graham was a prominent leader of the RMG and also a Saor Eire militant and there seem to have been fairly substantial links between the two organisations. The IMG interviewed Saor Eire and published their founding statement and in general seems to have seen SE as a possible extension of their guerillaist views to Ireland.
The Saor Eire experience was a disaster and the RMG morphed into the Movement for a Socialist Republic and then merged into the declining Peoples Democracy.
Thanks Mark P.
So many talented people,-so little result.
Incidentally this is the 50th anniversary of the South Bank strike led by Brian Behan, an important event in British working class history and struggle.
I did like it NollaigO…
We have LWR material in the left archive…
CL:
I met Peter Graham during the period he spent in London in 1970/ early1971 and the Mark P’s post is not a reliable historical account. For example, tharla dunmharu, Peter in October 1971 but the RMG was founded in January /February 1972. So Peter could hardly have been a leading member of the RMG even though it would have been the type of group he would have joined.
A better insight into Saor Eire could be gleaned from the Liam O’Ruairc / Bob Purdie correspondence in The Blanket website a couple of years ago (See the links below). While Liam’s first article has many inaccuracies his second is much more reliable. [There was no volley of shots at the Mairin Keegan funeral and the coffin was draped in the Starry Plough. Gerry Lawless, while he would have known many Saor Eire people, never had links to the group. Liam Walsh was killed in October 1970 not after Peter Graham's murder.]
Saor Eire was formed by dissident republicans many from the 50s in 1967. Prominent were Liam Walsh, the Dillons, Frank Keane, Doyle, O’Neill …. A smattering of people from the break up of the IWG in spring 1968 did join like J. Morrissey.
The connection with the IMG was also tenuous. I spoke recently in London to a Niall Nolan who remembers travelling to USFI rally in Brussels with Peter Graham in late 1970. Nolan (a party name) had been in the IMG from early1970 till 1978 . He had been on their Irish Commission during that time. The Irish Commission was a committee that used to prepare policy statements for the IMG on Ireland. Nolan, while admitting that there was a bit of vicarious interest by the IMG in Saor Eire for a brief period in 1970/1971 asserts that he never remembered Saor Eire being discussed seriously within the IMG. He further asserts that the RMG, under the influence of people like Kelly, Speed, the Meehans etc, from the beginning cut an independent political furrow from the IMG. Nolan contrasted the RMG/PD to the groups like Militant/SP or SWM whom he dubbed as Irish branches of the UK organisation.
Liam Dalton was more around Saor Eire than a member. He was a close friend of Peter Graham but unlike Graham would not join the IMG because of animosity to Lawless. Dalton was very affected by Peter’s death agus fuair se bas ar a laimh fein beaganin ina dhaid. Liam was buried the day after Bloody Sunday.
After those painful memories, a Charlie story:
D Ranor Lysaght was in London in the early 1970s doing a promotion meeting for his new book. Charlie was in the audience. At the question session Charlie asks
“What can you tell us about Saor Eire group?” [Some nervous shuffling in audience]
“Oh! I suppose you could describe them as a Guevarist group” responds Raynor.
“A what sort of group?” asks Charlie!
“Guevarist. You know, followers of Che Guevara” explains Raynor.
A look of understanding comes over Charlie.
“Ah yes! This Che! Is he a member of the SWP ?”
[An old 1930s CPer beside me nearly has a heart attack from laughing].
http://www.phoblacht.net/lor1401051g.html
http://www.phoblacht.net/bp1701054g.html
http://www.phoblacht.net/lor2101052g.html
http://www.phoblacht.net/bp2801054g.html
NollaigO, go raibh maith agat.
So many groups and grouplets, splits and reformulations. Are there any lessons to be learnt? Organization is important, but it appears from the history of the Irish left, that attempts at organization lead to endless fissiparous conflict. But this historical exploration is important: if nothing else it ensures that those who should be remembered, such as Liam Daltun and Peter Graham, are not forgotten.
Several points above resonated with me…
Starkadder wrote of the peace movement in the 1970s and the excellent Dawn magazine; it meant a lot to me and many other people.
One thing that united a lot of Irish people in the late 1970s — left-wing, pacifists, environmentalists, etc. — was the anti-nuclear movement. [And we should remember that the most important pro-nuclear advocate then was the founder (later) of the Progressive Democrats.]
Starkadder also gave the link from Roy Johnston’s website, an article written for the journal “The Ripening of Time”. Yes, I’m pretty sure that was the Revolutionary Struggle journal.
Some of you may not be aware that Roy Johnston was an important figure in the Irish Green Party, with much input to its policies. What Roy thinks of the current status of the party I can only guess. (A CPI reviewer has a go at Roy here: http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/sv2007-11/07rj.html)
Now, about Revolutionary Struggle… The link that Starkadder gave (http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2002/msg03868.htm) is illuminating, and, for me, a good reminder of some people and things that were fading from my memory.
My knowledge of RS comes mainly from a grouping called Alliance for Safety & Health (ASH). That was in the early 1980s, I think. ASH was active for perhaps two years, and it comprised various environmental groups and activists. I used to represent Friends of the Earth at the ASH get-togethers. FoE was always explicitly non-political, though most of the other ASH people seemed to be very political. I would say that RS was the driving force of ASH.
We used to meet every month or two, usually in Dublin city centre, though there a couple of trips to Cork (there was a Cork contingent in ASH). Wherever we met, there was always a Special Branch car outside.
At that time, the anti-nuclear battle had been won (I first heard about RS at the Carnsore festival), so ASH’s focus was mostly on the chemical industries in Ireland, with their generally appalling record on environmental responsibility, worker rights, and so on. Incinerators were also an issue. Some of ASH’s ideas came out in the book “Guests of the Nation” by Robert Allen & Tara Jones, which I recommend very highly. Also check out Robert Allen’s later books; see http://www.bluegreenearth.us/archive/article/2006/allen-1-2006.html and http://www.bluegreenearth.us/archive/reviews/2004/barton-1-2004.html.
Involvement in ASH was very educational for me. The experience helped me make the logical connections when I first heard, years later, about the great scientific fraud of fluoridation and the many fluoride-polluting industries. In fact, I would suggest that fluoride was a significant gap in the knowledge of the ASH people. Many people are aware of chlorine chemicals and their hazards, but there is still a massive cover-up about fluorine chemicals, with most people thinking fluoride is good for you. Sodium chloride is table salt, but sodium fluoride is rat poison and every fluorine compound is very toxic.
Ireland’s leading fluoride polluters are ESB Moneypoint (are they putting scrubbers on the chimneys now, belatedly?) and Intel in Leixlip, but many industries emit fluorides, and the EPA doesn’t care very much. Fluoride pollution was almost certainly a factor in the Askeaton farm poisoning controversy a few years ago; ditto the more recent case in County Kilkenny (http://tinyurl.com/3bdqjf).
About RS publications, I seem to remember that they did a magazine called Rebel. Does anyone else remember that?
WorldbyStorm, I may have some old RS journals and things, but they’re buried in a place far away, so I won’t get them in the near future…
Nollaig0 said: I met Peter Graham during the period he spent in London in 1970/ early1971 and the Mark P’s post is not a reliable historical account. For example, tharla dunmharu, Peter in October 1971 but the RMG was founded in January /February 1972. So Peter could hardly have been a leading member of the RMG even though it would have been the type of group he would have joined.”
I am genuinely curious about any inaccuracies in my account. I am not recounting any memories of my own (not having been born yet) but was relying chiefly on a publication from 1973, “The Test of Ireland”, an internal bulletin of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International.
This bulletin was written by Gerry Foley, an American Trotskyist who spent a lot of time in Ireland in this period. He was a member of the anti-guerillaist faction of the USFI and was writing in opposition to the views of the Mandel wing of the organisation, with which both the IMG and the RMG were associated. It’s clearly a partisan document but it is extremely detailed about a lot of things.
In it he clearly treats the RMG as an organisation which was in existence before the death of Graham. I note that Wikipedia (not the most reliable of sources) dates the founding of the RMG to 1971, which would fit with Foley’s account.
It is possible however that Foley simply meant “the supporters of the USFI in Ireland”, i.e. was using a slightly later name for what was at root the same grouping. Certainly, he recounts in some detail the infatuation of the IMG with Saor Eire, and Graham’s membership of both the USFI and SE. Purdie’s account in your link also makes it clear that Graham was in both and that at least some others in SE looked towards the USFI.
Is your objection merely over a naming error, or in your view is what I said above wrong in some wider sense? Are you saying that the USFI in Ireland did not come out of the LWR and Socialist Labour Alliance, or that they didn’t sympathies with SE?
soubresauts, any RS stuff would be great. Whenever suits…
MarkP, where dates are concerned I find human memory pretty fallible, as is the capacity for documentation to give a spin to information. Which is part of the reason all this stuff is so useful to be there on the web…
[...] is a fan of some of the organisations which generally only come to our attention courtesy of the Cedar Lounge’s Irish Left Archive, chances are you don’t generally follow the Korean Central New Agency. Unfortunately, you [...]