Irish Republican Socialist Party
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Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) describes itself as a republican socialist party and claims to be both Marxist and republican. Like many political parties in Ireland, it claims the legacy of James Connolly, who founded the Irish Socialist Republican Party in 1896 and was executed after the Easter Rising of 1916.
The Irish Republican Socialist Party was founded on 8 December 1974 by former members of the Official Republican Movement, independent socialists, and trade unionists. A paramilitary wing, the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), was founded the same day, although its existence was kept hidden for a time. Seamus Costello was elected as the party's first chairperson and the army's first chief of staff. Together, the IRSP and the INLA refer to themselves as the Irish Republican Socialist Movement (IRSM).
Costello left the Official IRA along with other activists dissatisfied with the group's tactics and policies. In 1977 he was murdered by the Official IRA in an attempt to destroy the IRSP and the INLA. In the following years the IRSP and INLA saw many activists killed in attacks from state forces, loyalist paramilitaries, republican infighting and factionalisation within the IRSM itself.
Internal and factional violence had long plauged the IRSM from its inception, and some of its activists were allegedly (according to the book INLA: Deadly Divisions) British agents and/or informants.
Three members of the INLA died in the 1981 Hunger Strikes in HM Prison Maze (aka Long Kesh). They were Mickey Devine, Kevin Lynch and Patsy O'Hara.
In the mid 1980's, a split in the INLA took place. A group calling itself the Irish People's Liberation Organisation (IPLO) broke away, and a bloody factional fued ensued. By 1993 the INLA had emerged as the victorious faction and the IPLO quickly disappeared.
The IRSP opposes both the Good Friday Agreement and the Irish Peace Process, viewing both as simply cementing British rule in Ireland. The INLA are currently on a 'no first strike' cessation of violence.
Party members often refer to themselves as the 'Irps' (pronounced 'Erps').
Highlights in the IRSP's history:
1975: At the IRSP's inaugural convention, it becomes the first political party in Ireland to support the legalisation of abortion and equal rights for gays and lesbians (in 2000, it becomes the first Irish party to support equal rights for bisexuals and the transgendered).
1981: The IRSP wins two seats on the Belfast City Council, and comes close to winning a third. The IRSP runs two candidates, Kevin Lynch and Tony O'Hara, in the Irish parliamentary election. Neither candidate wins, but Lynch comes within 300 votes of winning a seat, while O'Hara garnered a respectable number of votes.
1982: The IRSP wins a seat on the Shannon Town Commission.
1984: At the IRSP's convention, two motions are put forward:
1. That the IRSP stands in the tradition of Marx, Engels, and Connolly. (Drafted by party member John Gilligan (now an elected Independent member of Limerick City Council) and put forward by the party's Limerick chapter).
2. That the IRSP stands in the tradition of Marx, Engels, and Lenin. (Drafted by the party's chairperson, Jim Lane, and put forward by the party's Cork chapter.)
Both motions are passed and combined into a single statement: that the IRSP stands in the tradition of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Connolly.
2000: The IRSP passes a new ideological motion at its convention, which affirms:
a) That the IRSP is a revolutionary Marxist organisation, and that by this we mean that the IRSP believes:
b) Class conflict is the motive force in human history;
c) The IRSP stands unreservedly and exclusively for the interests of the working class against all others;
d) Only the creation of a 32-county Irish socialist republic can provide the means by which Irish national liberation can be realised;
e) That there can be no socialism without national liberation in Ireland, nor can there be national liberation without socialism;
f) That there is no parliamentary road to socialism, because socialism cannot be forged by seizing the bourgeois state apparatus; nor is there a guerilla road to socialism, because a social revolution requires the active participation of the masses; and therefore a socialist republic can only be established through the mass revolutionary action of the working class in the political, economic, and social spheres;
g) That socialism means the ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange collectively by the entire working class, with an end to wage labour, an end to production for profit and its replacement by a system of production based on human need; and
h) That socialism must be administered democratically by the working class itself, recognising the class dictatorship of the workers, because the vast majority of society is formed by that class. This does not suggest the need for a political dictatorship of a single party. Rather it calls out for a class dictatorship, administered through new working class institutions created to permit the greatest degree of political freedom for all working people.
See also
External links
- Irish Republican Socialist Party (http://www.irsm.org/irsp/) Official web site