Saor Éire Action Group the Story 1967-73

Thanks to the Irish Republican Marxist History Project for sending this on…

Saor Éire Action Group the Story 1967-73.

The 1960s was a time of upheaval and change in conservative Irish society; social attitudes, fashion and music, for instance, all changed dramatically. New social movements reflected the thinking of a new generation that, in particular, wanted more freedom. The huge student-worker protests of May-June 1968 in France, the Vietnamese struggle against America ,the US civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, and the national liberation struggles in Latin America and Africa galvanised opposition to the existing order. In Ireland, these events inspired people, especially the new generation, into action. This was especially the case around the civil rights movement in the north of Ireland. Among the new organisations which emerged here as a result of this new ferment and revolutionary idealism was the Dublin-based Saor Éire (SE) or, to give it its full name, the Saor Éire Action Group.

Saor Éire Acton Group was established in the late 1960s by former members of the Republican Movement and newer young Irish political left activists coming together. As an organisation they claimed to have their roots in the tradition of old Fenianism and the left-wing Republicanism that was prominent in the 1930s. But SE’s founding was also influenced by the IRA’s lack of military activity and political direction, following the cessation of Operation Harvest (the IRA border campaign of 1956-62). There is an element of truth, the group also had a political relationship with the International Marxist Group (IMG), the British section of the Fourth International (the revolutionary movement founded by Leon Trotsky on the eve of World War 2) and that some SE members belonged to the IMG at different points.

The Action Group never saw itself, however, as leading the Irish Revolution or developing a front political organisation but rather as a revolutionary catalyst for change – helping to develop a political consciousness by exposing the contradictions in Irish capitalist society. ……

The remainder of the lengthy piece is here