This is a part of a series of articles.
Read the intro here,
part I here,
part II here,
part III here and
part IV here
Across four articles we have outlined how the Socialist Party (SP) in Ireland, and its predecessors Militant and Militant Labour, fought on issues of special oppression over three decades. The account is full but further detail could be added-there is much more to our history. An objective reader will find much to be proud of, but also weaknesses. Our history of taking up issues of special oppression is not faultless, but in considering areas of weakness it is also necessary to recall our strengths. We require a balanced assessment.
There is no doubt that in the 1960s and 1970s our tradition could have paid greater attention to issues of special oppression. There was an increased focus from the mid-1980s onwards however and there was significant progress over time. The 21st century brought new issues to the fore, and new waves of struggle developed. An orientation to these movements was essential and each section was, to one extent or another, seeking to engage and intervene. There is no reason to believe that our work on issues of special oppression could not have developed further, across the CWI, without the crisis of 2018-2020. Instead, the crisis split the pre-2019 CWI apart.
The exploration of our record over the four already published articles is necessary to address the arguments of the SP leadership. In this concluding article we summarise and weigh up the strengths and the weaknesses of our work before 2010.
Countering Racism and Fascism
We have provided an account of campaigning work against racism and fascism from 1984 onwards. The article concluded with events in 2004-2005 (countering the fascist White Nationalist Party) but of course over the next decade we continued to stand up to racists and fascists, and there are multiple examples of this work.
In June 2009the Socialist Party were central to protests organised in opposition to a spate of racist attacks on Romanian families living in South Belfast, for example. Over 20 families were forced from their homes in vicious attacks by attackers shouting Combat 18 slogans. Several people were injured and families with children as young as 5 days old were traumatised. A protest organised at short notice in the area drew well over a hundred residents, making it clear that these racist thugs did not represent the views of the local community. The protest was attacked by racist youths, who threw stones and bottles at those gathered, before they were chased off. A Socialist Party member who was involved in organising the protest received a death threat.[1]
On 15th October 2009, we participated in a protest outside the BBC studios in Belfast against the decision to provide the British National Party (BNP) a platform on a discussion programme (Question Time). The far-right BNP had won two seats in England in the June 2009 European elections and was seeking to establish a “respectable” image, but at its core were conscious fascists. In July 2013 we protested with others outside the Park Avenue Hotel in East Belfast when Nigel Farage, then the UK Independence Party leader, held a meeting of supporters.[2]
To give a final example, on the evening of Tuesday 14th April 2015, 200 people gathered in east Belfast to protest against a racist arson attack on a nail salon owned by Lithuanian woman which had taken place the night before. The protest was initiated by Socialist Youth member Courtney Robinson and organised over social media with only a few hours’ notice. It drew significant support from the local, working-class community. The attack was one in a series across the winter and spring and followed on from a statement the previous summer when First Minister Peter Robinson defended comments from a pastor who suggested that Muslims were not “trustworthy” – although Robinson conceded he might trust them to “go to the shop” for him.
Our record on racism and racist attacks stands the test of time. We stood up physically and we used our press to answer racist ideas. Comrades literally put their lives on the line. The ranks of the National Front in 1984 included individuals who would go on to become prolific murderers in subsequent years. The White Nationalist Party had a crossover membership with Combat 18 and included individuals who were associated with the paramilitary Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF). The LVF was responsible for the killing of lawyer Rosemary Nelson and their close association with fascism is illustrated by the arrest of Combat 18 members in England in relation to her death. The LVF were also responsible for the murder of journalist and National Union of Journalists activist Martin O’Hagan in 2002[3]. In this period challenging racist and fascist activity risked physical attack and even death.
We wrote extensively on racism and fascism in our paper during the 1980s and 1990s. It might be argued that we could have theorised our approached to a greater extent, but this is a weak argument. At the time we did not have a theoretical journal in Ireland (the first journal, named Socialism 2000, appeared in 1998). We did however engage in serious internal discussion and always took a class-based approach. We did not agree with or mimic the essentially all-class approach of the Socialist Workers Party, who established a Northern Ireland version of the Anti-Nazi League in the 1990s, and who in later years organised through the Anti-Racist Network. We always sought to foreground the role of the working class and its organisations, primarily the trade unions, but also genuine, non-sectarian community groups.
Fighting for Women’s Rights
As previously explained, the Northern Ireland women’s movement was cautious about taking up issues which it feared would cause division in its own movement. One such “divisive” issue was the extension of the 1967 Abortion Act to Northern Ireland (it only applied to England, Scotland and Wales: from 1971 onwards there was no devolved government in Northern Ireland, and all new legislation was first passed by the central UK government and then applied to NI by an “Order in Council”). We raised this issue in the trade unions (most consistently NIPSA) and on the local trades’ union councils. In the late 1970s and early 1980s we worked with other activists in the broad Labour and Trade Union Group (LTUG) at a time when attitudes to abortion rights were such that even workers movement activists were cautious about taking up the issue, or were openly opposed to the extension of the Act. We put down motions at LTUG conferences and argued the case patiently both there and in the wider movement.
The debates around abortion sharpened when Liberal MP David Alton introduced a parliamentary Bill with the aim of reducing the time limit for legal abortions from 28 weeks to 18 weeks in 1987.[4] It gained majority support in Parliament but was opposed by the Tory (Conservative Party) government and did not become law. A sustained campaign against the Alton Bill was launched in Britain and comrades there produced a pamphlet to intervene- “Abortion Rights-A Socialist Approach”. [5]
In the pamphlet, we stated that we stood for “abortion on demand; improved sex education in schools and the setting up of a sympathetic youth advisory service; good quality, flexible childcare, available for all; child benefits and maternity grants, which reflect the real cost of pregnancy and childbirth; maternity and paternity leave in addition to 11 weeks maternity leave before birth for up to six weeks then six months leave for either parent on full pay with their original job held open for two years”.
The thrust of the pamphlet was to argue that “the labour and trade union movement…. has a special responsibility to struggle to defend abortion rights”. We explained, “while all women need the right to abortion, it is working class women unable to afford private abortions, and under most pressure from declining living standards who are most in need. Moreover, only organised labour is able to fight for the facilities needed to provide women with a real choice”.
At the time the British Labour Party was still a vehicle which partially reflected working-class concerns and we continued “the 1985 Labour Party conference had carried a resolution to protect, restore and extend the provisions of the 1967 Abortion Act … this resolution had been carried particularly under the influence of the miners’ wives’ movement and cut through the moral confusion and recognized women’s rights as a class issue”.
The pamphlet include material relevant to our work in Ireland: “The 1967 act, however, had several drawbacks. It never applied to Northern Ireland. David Alton, in his campaign, has visited the north and spoken on a joint platform with the Reverend Martin Smith (Official Unionist MP and Grand Master of the Orange Order), Ms Rhonda Paisley (daughter of Ian Paisley), and a Catholic priest … reactionaries can get together, it seems, when it is a matter of opposing women’s rights… As a result of the situation in Ireland since April 1968 until December 1986, 20,957 from the North and 41,548 women from the South have come to Britain for abortions. Not content with this situation the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children has taken legal action in the south banning clinics from offering information to women who want to travel to Britain for abortions”.
Comrades in Britain were Involved in the campaign throughout, with extensive coverage reflecting this in publications which we used in our work in the North.[6],[7] Similarly when the “Campaign Against Domestic Violence” (CADV) was established in August 1991 we took up the relevant issues in the trade unions in the North arguing for the Campaign demands: “To increase awareness of domestic violence; To improve facilities and services for women who are experiencing or have experienced domestic violence; To campaign for legal change; For the recognition of domestic violence as a workplace issue”. We campaigned for “public funding for refuges and the massive expansion of the network to make them available to women in all areas” and “a nursery place for every child and after-school care free of charge”.[8]
Our general approach was to carry out our own work on abortion rights and to intervene in the wider women’s rights movement, always with an orientation to working class women and we did not become directly involved with the main campaigns seeking abortion law reform. Ourinterventions were agreed through the Party leadership and through a “Women’s Caucus”. As the campaign against the Brook Centre demonstrated we did not hesitate to take up important issues and to maintain a campaign through over a period of months. This work was sustained in a period when we were challenging both the paramilitary campaigns and state repression. There was nothing intermittent about our campaigns, nothing half-hearted. On the question of women’s oppression, we are open to criticism, but nevertheless, we stand for our record.
Fighting for LGBTQ+ Rights
Pride everywhere began as angry demonstrations against discrimination and for full equality for LGBTQ+ people. The first events were often small and isolated. There were only 100 on the first Pride march in Belfast Northern Ireland in 1991, for example, and its route was kept secret to prevent organised physical attacks. Within 20 years crowds had grown to 10,000 annually and both big business and pro-capitalist parties were prominent at what were by now clearly all-class events. Any critique of our past should acknowledge this context.
It is true that the issue of LGBTQ+ rights was relatively neglected by the party for many years. LGΒTQ issues were not prominently advocated in our material. When we published a “What we stand for” pamphlet for Militant in Northern Ireland in 1990 for example, we did not include any demands on LGBTQ+ rights.[9] The pamphlet did have a significant section on women’s rights-demands included the extension of the 1967 Abortion Act and free abortion on demand, and it argued for trade union action to mobilise all workers against sexual harassment, and for decent facilities, safe transport, proper street lighting and other measures to be taken to safeguard women from attacks.
A section on discrimination stated our opposition to “all forms of discrimination on the grounds of religion, sex, age, colour or nationality”. Even though we were engaging in LGBTQ+ rights activity in Ballymena by the time this pamphlet was produced there was no mention of LGBTQ+ rights. This is a clear and regrettable indication of a lack of focus on these issues at the time.
In contrast we were by this time using material produced in Britain in our student and youth activity which did clearly address LGBTQ+ issues. A “Student Bulletin” written in the summer of 1988 for interventions into the first weeks of the university term covered gay rights issues across a substantial two-page article.[10] The article included significant detail about the homophobic clause 28 of the Local Government Act introduced by Margaret Thatcher’s government in 1987 which banned the so called “promotion of homosexuality” in schools (this legislation never applied to Northern Ireland but nevertheless contributed to an anti-LGBTQ+ rights atmosphere). The HIV-AIDS crisis was also addressed, with a call for a greatly improved health service response. The Bulletin was published three years before the split with comrades around Ted Grant and Alan Woods (who went on to form the International Marxist Tendency) and is a clear indication that within the party and international LGBTQ+ issues were being taken more seriously and addressed by the central leaderships.
Soon after the publication of the “What we stand for” pamphlet, comrades in Britain published the “Out Proud and Militant pamphlet”[11] (with a longer version two years later [12]) and this material was used in our activities in the North. Nevertheless, the purpose of a “what we stand for” pamphlet, is to draw all aspects of our programme together into one place, largely to aid recruitment of new members. The absence of a section of LGBTQ+ rights is therefore striking despite the positive steps we were taking to begin to engage with work with LGBTQ+ people in this period.
As we have already stated, there was not a developed movement into which we could intervene. The question remains, however, whether we could have initiated campaigning work through our central leadership. In the context of the period however this was far from straightforward, and arguably it was correct to await an opportunity. And when an opportunity was presented, we seized it with seriousness of purpose and elan. In the aftermath of the first Gay Pride march in 1991 younger comrades engaged with the leftward-moving Gay and Lesbian One in 10 Group and co-produced the Gays and Lesbians Against Discrimination Bulletin. In those days our financial resources were very stretched, but we financially supported the work of the GLAD group, which had few resources of its own. The GLAD activists operated out of our centre, we subsidised their publications, and full-time comrades devoted time to the initiative.
As Pride events slowly grew in size in the 1990s and early 2000s our participation also grew slowly. Initially some comrades would march, but others did not as we were engaged in other intensive campaigning work orientated to the working-class (for example the “End Low Pay Campaign” against low-pay employers and then the “We Won’t Pay Campaign”[13] in opposition to the introduction of water charges). The number of comrades on whom we could rely on was relatively small as the Party lost members in the difficult years from 1985 onwards (1985 saw the defeat of the Great Miners’ Strike and the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement which resulted in an upsurge in sectarian conflict) and reached a low point in the early 2000s.[14]
In summary whilst our record is imperfect we did take up LGBTQ+ issues, beginning with the brief intervention more than 40 years ago into the confrontation between LGBT activists and “Save Ulster from Sodomy” in 1983[15] and our presence on the first Gay Pride in 1991.[16] These early interventions were not leadership organised, but were organised spontaneously by younger members. In this way, our work in this area developed in a similar way to work on LGBTQ+ rights in England, Scotland and Wales, where a new generation of comrades pushed forward and were successful in persuading the party as a whole to become more involved in these issues.
As a final point there is no mention of transgender people or transgender rights in any of our material produced before 2010. The issue of trans rights became a much prominent issue in the second decade of the 21st century and we will discuss these developments in subsequent articles.
On Balance: A Proud Record
The ideas of Marxism must develop over time, and when we update our ideas and our programme it is necessary to look back with a critical eye and to reevaluate and question our previous work. However, an honest reappraisal of the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, from the vantage point of 2025, tells us this: comrades carried out sterling work, including on issues of what might be termed “special oppression” without hesitation, without any lack of verve or imagination, against the background of considerable organisational and financial pressure on the party, and with an ever-present threat of physical violence against workers and the workers movement. The objective situation was often difficult: nationally and internationally the workers movement was in retreat. and the revolutionary left was struggling to make progress.
We must accept that there were weaknesses in the past with regards to work amongst women and with regards to the oppression of the LGBTQ+ community. We could have taken up issues such as abortion rights more robustly at an earlier stage, for example. Nevertheless, our involvement was thorough and meaningful, and despite a certain over-caution at times, we defend it.
We were seeking to build the nucleus of a revolutionary party in the 1970s we had to focus on the working class and the working-class organizations. By the 1980s we were stronger, but nevertheless, a very small minority in the workers movement.[17] In the 1980s and 1990s our small forces simply could not do everything, and we had to maintain our correct and resolute focus on workers struggles, especially on young workers. This meant that we sometimes took decisions not to become involved on every issue and in every campaign, or to intervene with only a part of our forces.
There is no doubt that in the 1970s and the 1980s we were very cautious about being drawn into what we considered to be “petty bourgeois politics” or “Mandelism”-what is now described as “identity politics”. We took great care not to make the mistakes of the groups which we described as the “sects”. We had an absolute, overriding and sharp focus on the working class, and we maintained this resolutely on every issue that arose. We sought ways to raise issues in a manner that would allow us to reach out to workers, and in Ireland we were always careful to ensure that our positions and our work would reach out to both Catholic and Protestant workers and youth.
Caution can sometimes lead to conservatism however. For example, one result of our approach was that we found it very difficult to build a base in the universities, or even to recruit significantly from among students. We were aware of this and whilst we did not regard it as a strength, we perhaps considered it to be inevitable, given our firm position on the necessity for and primacy of working-class politics. When we did recruit students, we immediately ensured that they became members of local area-based branches, but also that no area-based branch became dominated by students. We asked student members to focus primarily on the party’s activities in working class communities and to see student work as of secondary importance. There is little doubt that we took this too far at times, and opportunities were lost consequently. For example, in 1983 when a group of enthusiastic young people joined Queen’s University Belfast “Labour Club” (the student society through which we organised) and proposed launching a campaign around student housing and standing for positions in the Students Union we opposed this and lost the entire group overnight.
Conclusions
The current leadership of the Socialist Party (SP) in Ireland has drawn the conclusion that the splits of the last years were necessary, and that the CWI tradition was fatally flawed on issues of special oppression. For them, the past is a wasteland, and it is only in the last 10-15 years that issues of special oppression have been properly addressed, and then only by the small minority (of the pre-2019 CWI) who remain in solidarity with the Irish SP, grouped in the Project for a Revolutionary Marxist International.
The conclusions that have been drawn by the current leadership of the Socialist Party, are simply untrue. The facts speak for themselves. Over decades we carried out determined work on these issues, as we have demonstrated. At times this work was sustained, and involved the entire Party. Not once but on several occasions, we entered intense periods of activity during which we mobilised on multiple fronts, encouraging comrades and our periphery to engage on issues of special oppression. For example, for a period in the early 1990s we mobilised simultaneously against racism and antisemitism, in defence of women’s reproductive rights, and for the rights of gay and lesbian people. This work took place in years marked by intense violence and political turmoil during which comrades in Militant provided a lead, organising strikes and protests against sectarian paramilitary groups, and campaigning against state repression. The Youth Against Sectarianism in the 1990s initiative gave young people a voice against the on-going violence, state repression, racism, homophobia, misogyny, poverty and unemployment. All of this occurred long before the ideas of “intersectionality” began to dominate political discourse in sections of the left.
This article concludes the historical series on “fighting oppression”. The political evolution of the Socialist Party in Ireland since 2010 requires analysis and explanation. In the next article we will illustrate its current politics in a critical analysis of some of its recently published material. A further article will then seek to explain its trajectory away from our tradition in Ireland and internationally.
[1] In Northern Ireland the PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland) speak to individuals under threat with information about the threat. In this case it read: “Police are in receipt of anonymous information which states that persons unknown intend to firebomb the home of Patrick Meehan. This is believed to be connected to your recent involvement in protests about Romanian nationals.”
[2] See report of meeting July 13th, 2013, Financial Times.
[3] Amnesty International: Northern Ireland: Failure of Martin O’Hagan murder investigation has created ‘an environment of impunity’ September 27th, 2024. https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/northern-ireland-failure-martin-ohagan-murder-investigation-has-created-environment. Martin O’Hagan was active on the left throughout his life. In the early 1970s he was imprisoned for activity associated with the Official IRA (the left split in the Republican movement in 1969/1970). Martin O’Hagan had asked to join the Socialist Party in the months before his death.
[4] Political lives: David Alton on abortion, Militant and Clegg. 6th February 2013. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21358323.amp
[5] Abortion Rights: A Socialist Approach. Militant Pamphlet (No date: assumed date 1987).
[6] Stop Alton’s Bill, Teresa McKay Militant Issue 879, 15th January 1988. This issue included an advertisement for the pamphlet on abortion rights and a one-page, multiple author feature on “Unions must organise women workers.”
[7] Defeat Alton’s Bill, Maureen Hearns Militant Issue 888, 18th March 1988. This issue advertised a national demonstration on 19th March, and a two-page centre spread “No return to dark ages” written by Margaret Creer and Jane Hartley. It also published an article entitled “Belfast erupts “rioting erupted on the streets of Belfast after the murder of three mourners at the funeral of the Provisionals killed by the SAS in Gibraltar” and a short piece marking the life of a trade union activist well known to comrades “Charlie McGrillen….shot dead by,,,UFF. …a long-standing shop-steward in the ATWGU…”.
[8] We won’t take this anymore. Stop Domestic Violence. Militant (Britain) pamphlet. October 1991.
[9] What we stand for. Militant (Northern Ireland) pamphlet, February 1990.
[10] Militant Student Bulletin, Militant student supporters, Britain, Autumn 1988.
[11] Out, Proud and Militant. The fight for lesbian and gay rights and the fight for socialism. Marc Vallee, Helen Redwood and Mark Evenden. Militant (Britain), June 1992.
[12] Out, Proud and Militant: socialism and the fight for lesbian, gay and bisexual rights. Militant Labour Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual group (Britain), June 1994. ‘
[13] See We Won’t Pay! How to Defeat Water Charges. Socialist Party (Ireland) pamphlet, 2006. The “We Won’t Pay Campaign” attracted huge support, especially from working class women. https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/2265/
[14] The large majority of the comrades who kept the Party alive in the North during these more difficult years are not members of the SP today but are active with other groups. The individual comrades who pushed these issues in the 1980s and 1990s remain active in politics, but not in the ranks of the Socialist Party. Leading comrades from that period who have remained with the Socialist Party played little or no role in commencing this work in the 1980s and early 1990s.
[15] One comrade confronted the reactionary demonstrators with a comrade from the Workers Party and when the spontaneous counter demonstrators burst out of the Student Union building.
[16] This comrade is today politically active, but not with the SP.
[17] Party membership peaked in 1985 at 165 in the North: proportionate to the size of the population this meant that this was the second largest CWI group (Ireland was a section-NI a region within the section) as in our history, only surpassed by the comrades in England, Scotland and Wales, when its membership peaked at approximately 8000 in the late 1980s.
