Years Active:19661968
  Documents in Archive:1
  Publications:Workers' Republic
  Emerged/Split from:Irish Workers' Union
  Other Related Organisation: League for a Workers Republic
Related Collection:1916 Easter Rising: Anniversaries and Commemorations
  Article:Irish Workers' Group, 1966-1968
Timeline:View in the timeline of the Irish left
Discuss:Comments on this organisation

About

The Irish Workers’ Group was a Marxist party established in 1966. Prior to this it had been called the Irish Workers Union and then the Irish Communist Group. It included Marxists and Irish Republicans including Gerry Lawless (later of Saor Éire). Two wings developed in the ICG including a Trotskist wing which became the IWG and a Maoist wing which became the Irish Communist Organisation. It produced two publications, the Irish Militant and An Solas/Workers’ republic. The IWG by the late 1960s had relocated to London and saw some members join Sean Matgamna in Workers Fight and others form the League for a Workers Republic. It became defunct around 1968.

(Not to be mistaken for the later Irish Workers’ Group).

Identifiers

WikipediaIrish Workers' Group 

Documents

Show: By publication | Chronological list

Publications

A list of known publications from Irish Workers' Group [1966], including those not represented in the Irish Left Archive collection.

NameYearsOrganisation(s)
Irish Militant: For an Irish Workers' Republic19661968Irish Workers' Group [1966]
Solas, An19651966Irish Communist Group, Irish Workers' Group [1966]
Workers' Republic19671988 c.Irish Workers' Group [1966], League for a Workers Republic

Articles

Irish Workers' Group, 1966-1968

From The Irish Left Open History Project

The Irish Workers Group (IWG) was formed in London in 1966, out of the divisions within the Irish Communist Group. It is argued by D.R. O’Connor Lysaght that the IWG was the first active Trotskyist group to establish itself in Ireland since the Revolutionary Socialist Party of the 1940s. This does not mean that the origins of modern Irish Trotskyism lie within the IWG – the SWM/SWP and Militant/Socialist Party, who arrived in the 1970s, are both outside its borders, while the Socialist Labour League had activists in Ireland contemporaneous to the IWP – merely that it is pivotal to any understanding of the Trotskyist movement on the island. Indeed, in terms of personnel, if not quite ideology, it is possible to trace the IWG in 1967 to the present-day Workers Unemployed Action Group in Clonmel, as well as Socialist Democracy.

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