Irish Left Archive

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Digital collection of political material from the Irish Left.

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"Socialist Workers Movement 1971-1977"

An outline of the history of the Socialist Workers Movement, and their decision to join the Socialist Labour Party (forming the Socialist Workers Tendency).

From Socialist Worker Review, No. 1, 1978.

https://www.leftarchive.ie/document/view/3931/?page=19

View Document: Socialist Worker Review, No. 1 - Socialist Workers' Tendency

Irish Left Archive

Scanned article headlined: Socialist Workers Movement 1971-1977 -- John Goodwillie details the origins and political traditions of the tendency members who publish Socialist Worker Review.
Scanned text reading: For many of those who have been in the Labour party or in the Republican movement, the members of small left-wing groups have been seen, by definition, to be either mad or incurably sectarian, or both. In looking at the background and development of the Socialist Workers' Movement over the years, this article aims to show that its traditions and politics are neither mad nor sectarian. It also aims to explain the entry into the Socialist Labour Party of S.W.M. members.
Scanned text reading: To co-ordinate the activities within the SLP of those who feel an affinity with the politics that S.W.M. defended in the past, the Socialist Workers Tendency has been formed. The tendency is not a party within a party: it will not force its members to act monolithically without regard to their own views. It simply is a grouping of like-minded people who wish to exercise an influence within the Party for direct action and against the road of parliamentary careerism. The basis of its politics can be summarised in one quotation from Karl Marx: The emancipation of the working class is the task of the workers alone.
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The SWM left the SLP in 1980, later becoming the Socialist Workers Party.

It now exists as the Socialist Workers Network in People Before Profit.

https://www.leftarchive.ie/organisation/1454/

People Before Profit

Irish Left Archive