Class Struggle, No. 24
| Date: | 1995 |
|---|---|
| Organisation: | Irish Workers' Group [1976] |
| Publication: | Class Struggle |
| Issue: | Number 24 |
| Type: | Publication Issue |
| View: | View Document |
| Discuss: | Comments on this document |
| Subjects: | Northern Ireland Framework Documents, 1995 Abortion Workers Solidarity Movement |
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Commentary From The Cedar Lounge Revolution
25th June 2018
Many thanks to the person who forwarded this to the Archive.
In this edition of Class Struggle, joining others in the Archive, there are a number of particularly interesting pieces. The first includes an overview of the then newly formed Fine Gael/Labour/Democratic Left coalition which makes the prescient point that ‘inter-party coalitions are expected now to the normal rather than the exceptional form of bourgeois government’. It regards this as a ‘new flexibility of the ruling class in arriving at solutions to Governmental crises without recourse to general elections’.
Perhaps also presciently it notes:
DL is likely to be the main loser in the coalition. More is expected of it than of the LP as it, unlike the LP, has been up till now primarily a left reformist party. Already DL has lost one councillor who opposed coalition De Rossa has been pilloried because of the huge disappointment the budget represented to the long term unemployed and old age pensioners.
It notes too that..
The party also faces defections from its left wing to the far left.
There’s a striking critique of the Framework document as ‘peace without justice’ and an overview of Sinn Féin which suggests that ‘in the end, what they failed to achieve in the last 25 years through the ballot and the bomb, they hope to achieve in the ned 25 years through demographic changes and economic cooperation’.
It also analyses how the Unionist Bloc ‘fragments’ noting that ‘the Unionist ruling class does not speak with one voice on relations with Dublin or the benefits of economic cooperation within the EU’.
There are pieces on the X Case, and how Micahel Noonan had roles back what gains had been made since then, and why the IWG supports abortion on demand.
There’s also a long piece which takes the Workers Solidarity Movement to task for, as the IWG sees it, misrepresenting the October Revolution on foot of a privately circulated WSM response to an earlier piece in Class Struggle 22.
One last aspect of interest is a review of a volume of essays on Interpreting Irish History: The debate on Historical Revisionism which offers some useful insights into the issue at that point in time.
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By: Joe Mon, 25 Jun 2018 16:19:46
The Irish Workers Group was still going in 1995. What happened to it since?
And I’ve just seen an ad on my fb feed for the Socialist Workers Network – is the SWP, which was once the SWM, now the SWN?
Reply on the CLR
By: WorldbyStorm Mon, 25 Jun 2018 16:26:03
In reply to Joe.
I think it is, isn’t it part of PBP?
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By: WorldbyStorm Mon, 25 Jun 2018 16:26:51
In reply to Joe.
The plan is clearly to use every letter of the alphabet after SW!
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By: Aonrud ⚘ Mon, 25 Jun 2018 19:43:30
In reply to Joe.
The SWP changed a few months back: http://www.socialistworkeronline.net/socialist-workers-take-a-new-direction/
The site for Workers Power (successor of IWG) seems to have last been active in 2007 – I assume it petered out somewhat before that though? https://web.archive.org/web/20070801000000*/www.rebelnation.com/wp
I’m seriously starting to think that Joe doesn’t study the graph… 😉
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By: Joe Tue, 26 Jun 2018 08:18:39
In reply to Aonrud ⚘.
You’re seriously right, Aonrud :). I mean, why have a dog and bark yourself? 🙂 :).
Aonrud a chara, your wonderful work on behalf of lazy bastards like me will be rewarded with a Medal of the Order of Lenin, come the revolution.
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By: Aonrud ⚘ Tue, 26 Jun 2018 12:58:03
In reply to Joe.
“So what did you do in the revolution?”
“I sat at my laptop collecting and categorising metaphorical stamps.”
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By: Joe Tue, 26 Jun 2018 13:18:14
In reply to Aonrud ⚘.
After the revolution, you can collect and categorize medals – Order of Lenin; Order of Connolly…. and the most prized of all, of course, Order of Joe.
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By: Aonrud ⚘ Tue, 26 Jun 2018 16:40:20
In reply to Aonrud ⚘.
Rise up techno-philatelists! You have nothing to lose but your blockchains!
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By: WorldbyStorm Tue, 26 Jun 2018 16:54:03
In reply to Aonrud ⚘.
Disgraceful, surely the most prized will be Order of Glorious and Correct WorldbyStorm (Marxist) Thought! And I’m being generous to Marx in allowing him on the medal at all.
But hey, that’s me, very big-hearted, which is why there’s another medal Order of Benign and Unselfish Providential Kindness of WorldbyStorm (Meritorious Award).
Reply on the CLR
By: Joe Tue, 26 Jun 2018 17:59:06
In reply to Aonrud ⚘.
Careful now. There’s precedent. After the Revolution, Joe takes over. And what Joe says goes. The rest of yis should be prepping your confessions for your show trials.
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By: Alibaba Tue, 26 Jun 2018 18:44:23
In reply to Joe.
At the risk of my beloved commerical push it’s rubber medals, folks.
https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/rubber-medals-for-children.html
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By: James Tue, 26 Jun 2018 21:02:15
Perhaps worth noting that the switch from the SWP to the SWN is more than a mere name change; it signals the formal abandonment of their particular conception of the revolutionary vanguard party, i.e., their inheritance from Trotsky and, more importantly, Tony Cliff.
The corollary, of course, is the undisputed dominance of People Before Profit as the vehicle for effecting social change.
Whatever one thinks of their trajectory it is a change that has received remarkably little comment given their influence on left politics in Ireland.
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By: Joe Tue, 26 Jun 2018 21:37:48
In reply to James.
“it signals the formal abandonment of their particular conception of the revolutionary vanguard party”
Yeah, right.
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