- See Workers Power
for the Irish Workers' Group which was a member of the League for a Fifth
International.
The
Irish Workers' Group (IWG) was a Marxist political
party in Ireland
. It
originated as the
Irish Workers Union and contained a
variety of people who all considered themselves to be Marxists.
Some were from an
Irish Republican
background, and some, including
Gerry
Lawless, became involved in
Saor Éire.
In time the group developed distinct
Trotskyist and
Maoist
wings. The latter broke away to form the
Irish Communist
Organisation, which evolved into the
British and Irish
Communist Organisation. The former became the Irish Workers
Group and produced a paper
Irish Militant and a
theoretical journal
An Solas/Workers' Republic.
By 1967
the IWG, then based in London
among exiled
political activists, was failing and handed over their journal to
Sean Matgamna and Rachel Lever who were about to launch Workers Fight. A section with support
in Ireland then formed the
League for a Workers Republic
which entered discussions with the
Socialist Labour League, British
affiliate of the
International
Committee of the Fourth International.
Other members of the IWG later influential in the Irish
far-left were
Eamonn
McCann, a leader of the
Socialist Workers Party,
and
Michael Farrell, a leader of the
now defunct
People's Democracy.
This group seems tohave ceased to exist in the late 1960s.
A later group with the same name was an Irish group that split from
the
Socialist Workers
Movement in 1976. It maintained links with theBritish
Workers Power group.
References
- See International Trotskyism, 1929-1985 by Robert
Jackson Alexander, Duke University Press, 1991.
- Glossary of the Left in Ireland 1960-83