Socialist Workers Party (Ireland) - Politics

Politics

The SWP argues that in Northern Ireland, it more unites Roman Catholic and Protestant workers than divides them. They believe that working class unity can only be built if Protestants turn their back on loyalist ideas, and Catholic workers reject the idea of a "pan-nationalist alliance".

However, in earlier years they tended to take a more Republican line on The Troubles, for example arguing in 1985 that "Protestant workers can be compared to the poor whites of the Southern states of the USA. Their cheap labour goes hand in hand with their racism." (Socialist Worker, No. 21, December 1985). It was supportive of the turn towards socialism by Sinn Féin during the late 1970s and 1980s. The SWP were active in the mass movements opposing the criminalisation of IRA prisoners in the early 1980s, and members of the SWM were active in local Anti-H Block committees (Dundalk member Phil Toale, a shop steward in the town's cigarette factory, organised a general strike in the town the day that hunger-striker Bobby Sands died). The SWM took the view that it was the duty of revolutionary socialists to support those opposing British imperialism, but that this would be better done by a mass movement like the Civil Rights Movement than the one thousand or so trained volunteers of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. The SWM used to call for a vote for Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland up until its party conference of 1995, when it was argued that the Adams/McGuinness leadership of Sinn Féin were moving to an accommodation with imperialism. It opposed the subsequent Belfast Agreement, arguing that rather than ending conflict in Northern Ireland, the Agreement was 'institutionalising sectarianism', creating two competing communities and political leaderships, both nationalist and unionist, which did little for working-class people.

Following riots in Dublin on 25 February 2006 by Republicans, protesting at a planned 'Love Ulster' parade, the SWP issued a press release in which it expressed its full support for the actions of the rioters. According to the press release, given the wider context of (apparent) working-class alienation at the hands of the capitalist political establishment, the riots were completely justified: "socialists do not join in the condemnation of young working class people who riot against the police - especially given this wider context." Also, the SWP claimed that the 'Love Ulster' march was purposely planned by Michael McDowell, the Minister for Justice, as a provocation to republicans to riot, and thus further blacken the Republican movement, of whom the Minister is a most vocal critic.

The SWP is organised on both sides of the border, but in Northern Ireland it works as part of the Socialist Environmental Alliance (SEA) in elections. The SWP is the only organised grouping within the SEA. It supports a united, socialist Ireland, organised as a "worker's republic".

The SWP is part of the International Socialist Tendency grouping.