Defenders of the state: the Irish Labour Party,coalitionism and revisionism, 1969–77

Irish Labour Party politics underwent a significant transformation during the period 1969–77. During these years, the party moved from a position of opposition to coalition and apparent support for socialist politics to involvement in a coalition government with Fine Gael and an abandonment of its previously stated goal, the thirty-two-county socialist republic. This paper locates the main factor behind this shift in Labour’s attachment to the institutions of the Republic of Ireland state. As that state was threatened by the crisis in Northern Ireland from 1969 onwards, so the Labour Party was compelled to shift ground politically and move towards agencies that could offer stability. This led to permanent shifts in Labour policy and strategy.     

‘They’ll never understand why I’m here’: British Marxism and the Irish Revolution, 1916–1923

The Irish Revolution of 1916-1923 posed a huge challenge to Marxist organizations in Britain. Although Marx and Engels themselves had supported Irish independence, later British socialists were not able to frame a consistent response to the Irish national question. Few organizations supported the Easter Rising in 1916 and although attitudes changed markedly during the Irish War of Independence, most British Marxists, with some notable exceptions, did not seem to view the Irish struggle against British imperialism to be connected to their own struggle for revolutionary change in Britain.