JAMES CONNOLLY was the great thinker of the Irish working class. It was he who put pen to paper and proved in an Irish context what Lenin was saying in Russia about the connection between the struggle for national independence and socialism.
He organised and armed trade unionists into the Irish Citizen's Army, and in alliance with the Irish Republican Brotherhood launched the insurrection which has gone down in history as the Easter Rising. The strengths of Connolly's tradition has quent generations of Irish freedom fighters.
But his greatest failing was an uncertainty about what instrument could fight for and lead the process of revolutionary change the need to create a revolutionary party of Irish workers.
Seventy years later, Ireland is partitioned. One half is under military occupation by the British. The other is mortgaged to the hilt to the imperialist powers. therefore still working on the same problem.
The Democracy, the organisation born out of the civil rights struggles of the late 60's, now the Irish section of the Trotskyist Fourth International is no exception.
Crises of dramatic proportions loom in the Southern workers' organisations whilst the left advance inside the republican movement is continuing. developments into a force that can sweep imperialism whilst socialist republic in a united Ireland is a pressing task.
Some delegates were in favour of abandoning the fight to build an independent working class party and wanted to join Sinn Fein, but the overwhelming majority opted for a strengthening of revolutionary marxist influence as the best way of aiding the progressive evolution of the left.
It has already been proved that quite small organisations like dramatic effect on the struggle. It was PD that pushed for the H-block campaign to adopt a united front approach and pioneered the standing of anti-imperialist candidates in elections to broaden the struggle. It was the two PD councillors McAnulty and O'Hare who thrashed Gerry Fitt and Paddy Devlin at the polls, making clear to all the value of this tactic.
On international questions and women's oppression, has number of years to good effect. The next period will however be the most testing.
must now combine the struggle for unity in action with all forces villing to struggle and point the direction of that struggle towards the creation of a mass party that is both anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist. PD rejected arguments to centre its efforts to build a 'national liberation front'.
It resolved to continue to discuss and work toward the building of a genuine anti-imperialist workers party that can lead all sectors of the oppressed. That means working with both the workers who reject the pro-capitalist policies of their existing parties. At the two day conference conducted in a highly democratic fashion — where all currents of opinion had the right to organise in tendencies and factions PD more clearly in the workers movement, stepping up their organisation amongst the youth, and elaborating next steps in fighting for liberation Abortion Amendment.
do, we send PD our best wishes for success in the year ahead.
informed subseRevolutionaries are People's The need to fuse these British occupation and the legacy of creating a democratic PD can have a campaigned for It left in Sinn Fein - other discussions involved rooting the AntiFor a small organisation with a big job to
Socialist Action 16 December 1983