Solidarity 126, 7 February 2008

The Debacle Of Demagogy: IS/SWP and the troops in N Ireland, August 1969

This series: The Northern Ireland crisis of 1968-9 and the left Part 9 Section 2 of this article Section 3 of this article Next in series: Part 10: The SLL on Ireland ; introduction The "hard Trotskyists" of 1969 Part 1: Why Northern Ireland Broke Down Part 2: The Irish Workers' Group, IS and the "Trotskyist Tendency" Part 3: Why Northern Ireland Split on Communal, Not Class, Lines Part 4: When militant sloganeering meant promoting communal war Part 5: When socialists looked to "Catholic Power" ; and Part 5 Section 2 Part 6: SWP (IS) and Northern Ireland in 1968-9: Advocating civil war — until...

The debacle of demagogy, section 2

This series: The Northern Ireland crisis of 1968-9 and the left The wreckage of the previous policy and analysis — in so far as there ever was anything remotely resembling an independent IS analysis — cluttered the special "Irish issue" of Socialist Worker published on 21 August. It was flimsy, even as a hastily put together effort. Section 1 of this article Section 3 of this article It had four main articles – an account of capitalist exploitation in Northern Ireland, by Michael Kidron; a strangely gamey look at Irish-British history by Duncan Hallas, riddled with factual errors; the text of...

The debacle of demagogy, section 3

This series: The Northern Ireland crisis of 1968-9 and the left Section 1 of this article Section 2 of this article Next article in this series: Part 10: The SLL on Ireland ; introduction The "hard Trotskyists" of 1969 The leaders of IS had brought out an issue of Socialist Worker on Thursday 14 August, the same day that the troops were put to work in Derry after two days of fighting there, and just before Belfast exploded. Evidently, they did not work up much of a sense of urgency about what was happening in Ireland. The lead story in the 14 August SW was: "Steel Strikers Fight Union-Boss...

French left hopes to build "from below"

At its congress on 24-27 January in Paris, the LCR (Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire) decided to set about building "a new anti-capitalist party". This is a longer version of this article than in the printed paper It has already started setting up local "collectives" of activists interested in taking part in this "new party", and hopes to pull them together into a new organisation by the end of the year. The LCR has been talking about a "new party" since the late 1980s, but up to now its perspective has been of some sort of broad merger of left-wing forces including large chunks from the old...

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