Left Archive: Workers’ Party Report, Spring 1987

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This document was published by the Workers’ Party in 1987. It came at a particularly bright point in the history of the party on foot of the election of four WP TD’s at the election that year. As a piece in the document notes:

The WP vote increased substantially in spite of FF promises. The defeat of [Charles] Haughey’s own son in Dublin North-East by Pat McCartan and the triumph of Joe Sherlock in Cork East were a particular blow to the attempts of Fianna Fáil to wean away working class support from the WP. The election of MacGiolla, De Rossa, Sherlock and MacCartan was a tremendous victory in the present climate and its importance should not be underestimated by anyone. 

The first article by Triona Dooney deals with ‘The Women’s Movement’ and argues that:

Fifteen years into the women’s movement we face a rather contradictory situation. On the one hand there have been substantial gains for women in a number of areas; equal pay and opportunities legislation; reform of many aspects of family law; greater access to various sphere of public life to name but a few. But for hundreds of thousands of women thees changes have meant very little, the material conditions of their lives have steadily worsened as the jobs crisis deepens and cuts in health and social welfare place intolerable burdens on them in their daily lives. 

And it outlines means by which this can be remedied, arguing that those in the WP should:

work within constituent parts of the women’s movement, interpreted in the broadest possible way; work among women traditionally outside the scope of the women’s movement and bridging the gap between these and the rest of the women’s movement; work within the WP itself, directed at male as well as female members; recruit women to the party and facilitating their full participation.

Eamon Smullen discusses the National Debt, John Lowry discuss Sectarian Education in Northern Ireland, there are pieces on Cutaway Bogs as well as Nicaragua and there’s also consideration of Dáil debates which argues that ‘The WP formed the real opposition to both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael’.