Left Archive: Gralton excerpt – The Party’s Over, Socialist Labour Party, August/September 1982 August 28, 2014
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Left Online Document Archive, Uncategorized.trackback
Another excerpt from Gralton (and many thanks to the person who is forwarding full copies of same for the Archive). This time an article from Dermot Boucher, of the National Executive of the SLP on the demise of that party.
Full article available here: GRALTON SLP2
The article is useful, being written at a time of economic turmoil, but this final paragraph from it is of particular interest:
Significantly, it now seems likely that few ex-SLP members will seek to join another political party, preferring to join the growing ranks of the organisationally unattached. This will reinforce that phenomenon of recent years whereby activists prefer to involve themselves in single issues campaigns and ad hoc organisations, rather than submit to the tedium and discipline of a political party. Given the continuing failure of the Irish Left to create any sort of credible political alternative is it any wonder that eh working class prefers to place its trust in parties of the Right, even at a time of economic crisis and deepening recession.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
The SLP allowed Suicidal Tendencies to burrow away at the membership from the founding meeting. It hadn’t a hope of connecting with the plain people of Ireland and should have died earlier instead of wasting the time and emotions of the stalwart rank and file. Verdict: suicide by lethal Tendencies.
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I knew PD, the SWM, IWG etc. were involved with the Socialist Labour Party, but I never knew these lads were part of it too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicidal_Tendencies
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Dermot Boucher joined the WP in the later 1980s, he was a member of the Dun Laoghaire Branch. He never bought into the WP’s loopier lines but joined on the basis that it was the only serious left-of-Labour party at the time. Im fairly sure he did’nt join DL or stay in the WP, he may have left before the split. Does anyone know what happened to him later?
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He died, I would guess about 15 years ago. I knew him from the Universities branch of the Labour Party from 1969. In spite of different left politics, I regarded him as a very decent and good person.
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Thanks JIm for that info. Yes that just about sums up my memory of him too: a decent and good person and I can think of no better tribute to a socialist.
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