The Irish People, Vol. 9, No. 13
| Date: | 27th March 1981 |
|---|---|
| Organisation: | Sinn Féin The Workers' Party |
| Publication: | The Irish People |
| Issue: | Volume 9, Number 13 |
| Type: | Publication Issue |
| View: | View Document |
| Discuss: | Comments on this document |
| Subjects: |
Please note: The Irish Left Archive is provided as a non-commercial historical resource, open to all, and has reproduced this document as an accessible digital reference. Copyright remains with its original authors. If used on other sites, we would appreciate a link back and reference to The Irish Left Archive, in addition to the original creators. For re-publication, commercial, or other uses, please contact the original owners. If documents provided to The Irish Left Archive have been created for or added to other online archives, please inform us so sources can be credited.
Commentary From The Cedar Lounge Revolution
18th February 2008
Allow me a nostalgic moment this week, for here, in all its glowing somewhat maroon marooness (check out the masthead - never quite red in colour), is “The Irish People”, from Sinn Féin the Workers’ Party from 1981. This, the ultimate successor of the United Irishman was to become the document probably most widely distributed by the SFWP/WP over the years, and certainly the one most widely recognisable to pub goers across Dublin and other centres around the country.
For it was there that my earliest political activity was concentrated having joined the party only a couple or so years later. Is there any more humbling experience than carrying bags worth of political papers around pubs and housing estates on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon and hoping against experience that a friends father will buy one from pity or exasperation? The Provo’s had, frankly, a vastly more organised way of selling An Phoblacht/Republican News and on more than one occasion I encountered groups in semi-military regalia in various pubs in the inner city. That seemed to die away in the late 1980s, early 1990s.
And let’s not underestimate the way in which the paper becomes in some ways the signifier of political activism for many a left party. Having said that the WP was a bit more ambitious than many and - more importantly - a lot more cohesive and even at this point had elected councillors and such like to provide at least some semblance of political activity in a different forum.
As to the document itself, well, it’s as one might expect. Nuts and bolts socialism with an eye on NATO. That a fairly similar piece appeared five years later is neither here nor there. I have to smile at the picture of Pat McCartan, now Judge McCartan, on page 2. And note how the party identification is not played up. No form here to inveigle the unwary into the joys of Marxist-Leninism. No trumpeting the inevitable collapse of capitalism and the vanguard position of SFWP. Instead a diet of mundane, but entirely truthful stories about life in Ireland in 1981 with a sort of internationalism - note the story on page 4 about Fine Gael links with the junta in El Salvador. As to the North? Well, not a whisper. Perhaps the party recognised just how little that played south of the border…
It’s an interesting thought, isn’t it, that in all probability many many issues of the IP were printed over the years, and yet as it happens I never kept one, and I’ll bet most other members or former members of the WP didn’t either. It’s remarkable how ephemeral all this material is. Printed on low grade, slightly transparent paper, the inks and photographic reproduction muddy and uneven. It’s a seemingly fragile container for a sort of kind of revolutionary message.
Still, it must have worked on some level, maroon or not, to judge from the increasing vote the party got. And maybe in its own way was actually more sophisticated than on first view.
More from The Irish People
The Irish People in the archive
Comments
No Comments yet.
Add a Comment
Comments can be formatted in Markdown format . Use the toolbar to apply the correct syntax to your comment. The basic formats are:
**Bold text**
Bold text
_Italic text_
Italic text
[A link](http://www.example.com)
A link
You can join this discussion on The Cedar Lounge Revolution
By: WorldbyStorm Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:55:22
I’ve a number from 1972 and even a couple from 73 of the UI, but I don’t think any of the head honcho’s spoke then. Not sure about the SEA. You could look at the Oireachtas website to see what the thinking was on the part of elected reps then…
Reply on the CLR
By: Maddog Wilson Thu, 25 Jun 2009 23:27:40
Peadar
I had all copies of the UI from september 1971 to it’s demise in 1980( I think) and it’s replacement by Workers Life. It was a terrible step backwards in my opinion, i note Mick Ryan had the same view. I had a few Irish People’s; but i am not really sure what happened to them. I remember getting rid of the UI’S and feeling quite sad, but this was before the internet and anything like CLR.
On the Single European Act, from memory the Workers Party was opposed, but i think someone needs to confirm that(garibaldy?) Still hunting for that copy of the IIR, I know it’s there.
Reply on the CLR
By: WorldbyStorm Fri, 26 Jun 2009 06:35:12
Yeah, the WP was opposed IIRC. I know how you feel about the papers. I had tons of IPs back in the day – sure I sold them in Dublin North East, and yet I hadn’t one copy left when it came to the CLR. I’m kicking myself.
Reply on the CLR
By: Joe Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:14:41
Yeah, the WP was opposed to the Single European Act. I leafletted the local Dart Station with our TD, McCartan, one morning. I was passionately opposed to it. He was just going through the motions. I’m pretty sure De Rossa would have spoken out clearly against it.
I remember being flabbergasted to hear that the Democratic Socialist Party were in favour. Their line being that Ireland could only benefit from the progressive norms of European social democracy, I think. I can see where they were coming from now. I voted No to Lisbon but only just. My vote next time is still in the balance though it’ll probably still be a No, safe in the knowledge that I’ll be back on the comfortable losing side once more.
Reply on the CLR
By: Colm B Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:00:35
Seeing as we’re all on a ‘Ah them were the days’ IP nostalgia trip I might as well add my tuppence worth.
During the late 1980s the sale of the IP was a major part of our activity in the WP in Dun Laoghaire. We started with pub sales, usually for some reason on a Sunday morning, but soon abandoned what was effectively providing an excuse for morning-after grumpy old men to have a go! Then we switched to door-to-door and I can honestly say this proved to be remarkably successful.
All the sales were carried out in council housing estates on a weekly basis by the same party members. I would reckon that there was hardly an council estate in the constituency that at some stage did not have a regular IP sale and the sales of the paper certainly reached into the hundreds at one point.
I’ll come back to the content of the IP but the main point with these weekly sales was that they provided a contact point between the party member and residents of an estate. Once the run had been established you went to the same doors every week. I know from my own experience from doing two runs, one in Sallynoggin and the other in Monkstown Farm that you quickly got to know the people who bought the IP. This had an impact in a number of ways. Some of these IP buyers became active supporters or even members of the party. They also transmitted information about local issues which allowed us to intiate campaigns or raise it at a council level. Perhaps most significant of all it meant that party members were visible in the estates on a regular basis, negating the natuiral complaint of voters that ‘we only see you at elections’. The end result was that it contributed in a major way to our electoral breakthrough in the area, where we had a TD and three council seats in 1991 the vast majority of our support coming from the same council estates where we had IP sales, although assidous clientalism and some campaigning work probably played an even greater role in our success.
Im only taking about the ‘technical’ advantages of this work and not its ideological ramifications. I would be very critical (and was at the time) of the failure to turn this activity towards campaigning rather than electoral advantage but thats another story.
As for the content of the IP, it was, IMO, a dreadful paper: it was just full of boringly written articles about local issues, entirely lacking in socialist analysis, which invariably centred on what Joesephine Bloggs local WP rep was doing or saying about the issue (I still have a cutting from the IP with myself pointing to some wheelie bins in the Mounttown Flats area…ah the stuff of revolutionary history). There were some general articles but these usually brief summaries of the WP position on national issues in dry ‘press-release’ style. From what Ive seen of earlier issues the standard was better at the beginning with much more solid stuff about campaigning etc. Now we could get into a long discussion about the nature of a left-wing newspaper aimed at the general public rather than ‘left-world’ but I think most people would agree there is a balance to be struck between the Tooting Popular Front style of ideological rants plus Long Live the Nepalese Revolution stories and dry localist tracts which make no serious attempt to integrate socialist ideas into the day to day material.
Reply on the CLR
By: Jim Monaghan Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:41:45
I rarely saw the IP but wasn’t Padraig Yeates the editor. I would have though that it would have been bright and readable with him as editor. I am told that Rachmann types were goping to take action against hime for exposing them.
In Dun Laoghaire now the same local activism is being done by Eoin O’Broin (SF) and Boyd Barrett (PBPor SWP). Will they become clientistic and glorifies social workers or something better?
The sheer gring of weekly sales etc. must alienate those who want to live a little, maybe have a personal life. This is the problem of all groups how to have members who are not doing 20 plus hours a week for the cause.
Reply on the CLR
By: Mark P Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:18:48
20 plus hours a week? Are you nuts, Jim? No present day left wing group requires anything like that kind of activity level from its members, week in week out.
Your question does remind me of something though. I recently picked up a glossy SWP recruitment leaflet, which was politically a bit bizarre. It consisted of a list of statements and the response that “If you agree, then you should join the socialists”. The problem being that you don’t have to actually be a socialist, let alone a Marxist, to agree with the propositions. But anyway, I’m getting off the point a bit, which was that the last part of the leaflet says the following:
But can I afford the time?
“It’s the question that many ask when they consider getting involved. And it’s no wonder, as we face hugely stressful lives. Socialists want to create a mass party where everyone makes whatever contribution they can. If that just means distributing a few leaflets to your friends or workmates, that is fine, Of if you want to help organise activity that is also fine.
You choose what level of involvement you want – but do get involved!”
On another note, I think that the Yeates period was considerably earlier in the history of the IP than the period Colm B is talking about. My understanding is that the quality of the paper had declined a fair bit by then.
Also, on the subject of clientelist activity in Dun Laoghaire, it’s interesting to note that Hugh Lewis (a likeable guy and a local, but essentially a stand in for Boyd Barrett) completely crushed Eoin O’Broin at the ballot box in Ballybrack. Some of you may recall a Phoenix profile of Boyd Barrett, seemingly written by a rather Provo partisan with a greater than average interest in the left. Amongst other tendentious points it implied that the more working class vote in Ballybrack would be more natural home for SF and O’Broin than for Boyd Barrett and his associates. I would guess that the Provisionals are bit less smug about such things now.
Reply on the CLR