Conspiracy theories can be the comfort blanket for both left and right, hard analysis takes just that bit of self-reflection. Within the Irish ‘Right’ there is a general notion that the genesis for contemporary progressive hegemony comes from the Stalinist sect now largely defunct known as the Workers’ Party aka the stickies for an older generation. This idea to my mind deserves critical examination lest like the foolish meme of ‘cultural marxism’ it enters the political bloodstream for good.
There are grains, perhaps even a sheaf of truth regarding the political impact of the WP and its reformist offshoot Democratic Left in setting the tone of Irish liberalisation especially through the institutional politics of RTÉ and public sector unions during the Troubles years.
However, the comforting idea that the WP and its affiliates were a premeditated operation planted to direct Irish politics and thwart physical republicanism the complex realities of late 20th century Irish politics are exactly that.
To recap the republican lore, seeded by the metapolitical foundations of various left-republicans such as Peadar O’Donnell and the selective mythos around James Connolly and Frank Ryan the origins of the Workers Party came with the failure of the IRA campaign Operation Harvest in the late 1950s.
Running up against the limits of traditional all guns blazing abstentionist republicanism in an era of national liberation by the early 1960s an erstwhile Sinn Féin slowly integrated left-politics under the stewardship of Seán Garland and Cathal Goulding. Nostalgia for the revolutionary years gave way to community activism.Rubbing traditionalists particularly north of the border the wrong way this ideological and operational tension ruptured during the breakdown of the Orange State in the late 1960s as the Provisionals splintered off from the left-side of the republican movement who went on to rebrand as the WP.
Adamant that meeting fire with fire when it came to sectarian pogroms and collaborating with more republican elements in the Free State establishment was a road to dead-end ethno-nationalism, the Workers’ Party despite an initial dabbling with paramilitarism dumped arms by the 1970s.
Focusing on a cross-sectarian coalition building encompassing Catholic and Protestants (and the left complains against Coolock Says No in Belfast) the WP became notorious for their entryism into the public sector, most famously RTÉ where members pushed anti-republican talking points when it came to CPAD and Section 31.
Quickly outflanked by the Provos in the 6 the WP focused on working-class and trade union politics in urban centres, particularly Dublin during the war years. They provided a political home for many who were disillusioned with Fianna Fáil and wary of the Provos, keen to pursue a distinctly Irish brand of socialism. This class-first messaging resonated in the post-Catholic urban South lethargic at the bloodletting.
On the point of their resistance to the Provo campaign it was generated less by an elaborate MI5 longgame but the bloody reality of the IRA insurgency which many socialists saw as a path to turning the entire island into a full scale Yugoslavia.
While the blending of the Marxist and anti-republican revisionist political narratives is an essential feature for the ideological basis of Irish liberalism, Eoghan Harris and company were not the hidden hand behind the social and cultural events of the last half-century. They merely pushed an open door.
While the Provos had romanticism the WP understood institutions far better than other left or nationalist groups of the time. This made them palatable to RTÉ and attractive to the emerging middle class. The WP aligned itself with a rising social time While traditional nationalists looked backward, the WP spoke the language of a “modern Ireland” before it was mainstream.
Rather than shouting from the outside, they worked from the inside to shape policy and public perception, especially around secularism, abortion and class. While the Provos were underground, the WP were in the room where it happens—planning boards, unions, RTÉ, the public sector. The Provos bar pockets alienated the public through violence and abstentionism. WP ran in elections, managed trade union boards and ultimately shaped institutions. Saying the WP were MI5 gives too much credit to MI5. In reality, they just understood how power works in a Republic: through state jobs, middle class messaging and above all patience.
If you think Ireland was liberalised by foreign agents, not domestic elites, you’ll never build an effective counter-strategy. You’ll be shadowboxing ghosts. Ireland didn’t need MI5 and the WP to lose its Catholic soul. It needed RTÉ, middle-class careerism, and a political class looking West. That was a homegrown development.
The eventual embrace of SF of this exact same model after ditching the armed struggle thirty years after the Battle of the Bogside underlines its effectiveness. Power isn’t taken by purity, it’s taken by those who show up, organise, and outthink their rivals. The Workers’ Party did. Nationalists should take notes, not comfort in conspiracy..
Reading your article today was very interesting I have looked at the Workers Party over the years and in real time. They did abandoned the Irish working class for the new agenda they thought they were going to take over. But they fell for the deadliest trap ever laid. And in by book that makes them responsible for the mess that we’re in today
I had some run ins with the Workers Party back in my trade union days in the late 70s and early 80s . Always considered them to be Trotskyist rather than Stalinist . Put me off trade unions for life .
Hard Analysist = Life, Reality, and the Conspiracy of non Conspiracy
DENY ONE YOU DENY ALL…and that is the reality of truth which all relate to by reason.
The shift from WP or Unions,the union movemennt,was conspired globally by Gments to harness the aspiring middle class vote into a mirage of progressive liberalism status, a seperation that created the working poor with no representation or voting power as before,
ISOLATED BY ALL…who in their right mind wanted to be identified as working class poor
…only to become later as seen today in being middle class poor…and worse off in power base and voting numbers…all orchastrated and implemented by INSIDERS OF POLITICAL ELITE ESTABLISHMENT…ALL TAX FUNDED GRUBMENT PARASITES THAT ACHIEVED THE TOTAL SEPERATION BETWEEN US AND THEM REALITY…only state and paid players matters
It was easily achieved in Ireland by successive grubments,ngo’s,foreign committments to EU
UN IMF etc. and the Celtic Tiger Con that shafted the self aspiring progressive middle class
It all became the reality when the PLANDEMIC HOAX was implemented by GLOBAL LOCKSTEP…and the only glaring reality to all and sundry that if you are NOT A GOVT. PAID
SERVANT OR FUNDED BY TAXPAYERS LIKE NGOs…you can sink or swim…or just DIE, and many people did…THAT IS REALITY, HARD FACTS AND TRUTH…STATE SURVIVES NOT YOU.
So stop the bullshit, less conspiracy dribble, face reality… governments conspire always.
It’s not clear to me who exactly alleges a WP conspiracy, defined in this article as “a premeditated operation planted to direct Irish politics and thwart physical republicanism.” The cited X thread does not seem to make this claim of a conspiracy, accompanying graphic aside. In any case, what matters is that you don’t even need to claim a conspiracy or premeditation to criticise the WP in this regard.
The liberalisation of our society was set in train by the reforms of Lemass. He lifted the green curtain and made way for a tide of foreign, mainly American, capital. Social changes followed accordingly. Lemass even contemplated divorce legislation in 1965 and encouraged the supreme court to be more activist. The social liberalisation of society went hand in hand with the Americanisation of same. No one in their right mind would argue otherwise.
In relation to the WP, you don’t need to argue premeditated conspiracy, but simply that they were useful idiots who, in their embrace of Marxist-Leninism, unwittingly weakened the ability of republicanism to resist this cultural imperialism.
The emphasis of politics over physical force is one obvious way in which this happened. But changing the thinking more generally also mattered. Marxist-Leninism and Anglo-American liberalism share two key assumptions.
Firstly, both are anti-metaphysical. They deny the existence of metaphysical causes. In the case of Anglo Saxons this tradition goes all the way back to William of Ockham. In the case of Marxism, it’s rooted in the materialism of Marx and the idealism of Hegel. The end result is that things like God, human nature, immortality, natural law, common good, the family, are dismissed as not actually real. Things, as it happens, that can be very obstructive to markets.
Secondly, both are anti-national. For Anglo American liberals, the individual is the fundamental political subject. The main conduit for this in Ireland was actually the PDs. For continental Marxists, it’s the working class.
Traditional republicanism accepted certain metaphysical claims tied to Christianity. Éire Nua referenced Christian principles. Certain ideas as to family and status of unborn followed. It also proceeded from the basis that we are a nation. It was not preoccupied with class over nation in ways WP would be.
The author writes that “Ireland didn’t need MI5 and the WP to lose its Catholic soul.” No, it lost its soul because of a crisis of confidence in the 1950s and a wave of US economic expansion thereafter.
The WP did however make this process smoother by normalising the idea that republicanism could embrace anti-nationalism and anti-essentialism. They helped move the Overton window within republicanism whereby it increasingly needed to pay lip service and justify itself to external leftist shibboleths, like international socialism, the working class, liberation of oppressed groups etc. It increasingly needed to prove that it was not reactionary, patriarchal, etc.