Irish Left Archive: Socialist Worker October 1988 (20th Anniversary of Derry 1968 edition)

To download the above please click on the following link. socialist-worker-1988.pdf

Please click here to go the Left Archive.

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

This is a very interesting edition of Socialist Worker seating from October 1988 and provides an interesting contrast with the edition of the Worker from the SWM printed almost two decades earlier. The main focus is on the twentieth anniversary of the conflict in Ireland, and includes an overview of Derry in 1968.

The front page argues that:

After twenty years, people are sickened by the continuing violence in the north. Many have given up hope of a solution being found to the problem. A solution is possible. But first we need to look behind the headlines to why the violence occurs.

And after giving an outline of events concludes:

It is the violence of the Northern Ireland state and its British masters which ensure that twenty years after the Civil Rights Movement the bloodshed still continues.

There’s a strong emphasis on news articles relating to Northern Ireland, including anti-SPUC protests and negative coverage of a Workers’ Party protest against violence in the North. Other pieces examine ‘Fianna Fáil’s con-trick’ arguing that the economy in the Republic is in fact very weak. Pieces on international issues include articles on Burma and Sudan.

Unsurprisingly Eamonn McCann writes the overview of Derry in 1968 and covers a range of areas including how ‘the moderates took over’, ‘how the Trade Unions failed’ and ‘Wishful thinking on the left’. On that last he argues that:

In the run-up to the October 5th march socialist thinking in Derry wasn’t as strong as has sometimes been made out. It is true that most of those involved in the local organisation of the march were socialists of one sort or another. But the politics were very vague and there was no coherent socialist organisation.

The piece also examines the ‘Communist Party’s 2-stage theory’ and the issue of ‘the Left without a Party’.

In relation to the Communist Party there is a review of C Desmond Greaves by Kieran Allen which is by turns positive and deeply negative.