Editing Workers' Party (Ireland) (section)

===Political development===
====OIRA ceasefire====
[[File:Tomás Mac Giolla (cropped).jpg|thumb|200px|[[Tomás Mac Giolla]] served as leader of the Workers' Party for over a quarter of a century]]
Although the Official IRA became drawn into the spiralling violence of the early period of conflict in [[Northern Ireland]], it almost immediately reduced its military campaign against the [[United Kingdom]]'s armed presence in Northern Ireland, declaring a permanent ceasefire in May 1972. Following this, the movement's political development increased rapidly throughout the 1970s.<ref name=lost/>

On the national question, the Officials saw the struggle against religious sectarianism and bigotry as their primary task. The party's strategy stemmed from the "stages theory": firstly, working-class unity within Northern Ireland had to be achieved, followed by the establishment of a [[united Ireland]], and finally a socialist society would be created in Ireland.<ref>See Swan,(pgs 303,330) and Brian Hanley and Scott Millar, ''The Lost Revolution'', 2009 (pgs. 220, 256–7).</ref>

==== IRSP/INLA split and feud ====
In 1974, the Official Republican Movement split over the ceasefire and the direction of the organisation. This led to the formation of the [[Irish Republican Socialist Party]] (IRSP) with [[Seamus Costello]] (whom the [[Official Irish Republican Army|Official IRA]] had expelled) as its chairperson. Also formed on the same day was IRSP's paramilitary wing, the [[Irish National Liberation Army]] (INLA). A number of tit-for-tat killings occurred in a subsequent feud until a truce was agreed in 1977.<ref>
{{cite book
 | last1 = English
 | first1 = Richard
 | author-link1 = Richard English
 | year = 2003
 | chapter = 4: The Politics of Violence 1972-6
 | title = Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA
 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=WxJutBLDxg0C
 | location = Oxford
 | publisher = Oxford University Press
 | publication-date = 2004
 | page = 177ff
 | isbn = 9780195177534
 }}
</ref>

In 1977, the party published and accepted as policy a document called the ''Irish Industrial Revolution''.<ref>{{cite book|url=http://cedarlounge.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/iir.pdf|title=The Irish Industrial Revolution|year=1978|author=The Workers' Party|isbn=0860640140|publisher=Repsol|edition=2|access-date=22 September 2010|archive-date=28 January 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110128160409/http://cedarlounge.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/iir.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref> Written by [[Eoghan Harris]] and Eamon Smullen,<ref name=lost/> it outlined the party's economic stance and declared that the ongoing violence in Northern Ireland was "distracting working class attention from the class struggle to a mythical national question". The policy document used Marxist terminology: it identified [[US imperialism]] as the now-dominant political and economic force in the southern state and attacked the failure of the national [[bourgeoisie]] to develop Ireland as a modern economic power.<ref>''The Politics of Illusion: A Political History of the I.R.A.'' by Henry Patterson, (1997) and ''Official Irish Republicanism'' by Swan.</ref>

Official Sinn Féin gravitated towards [[Marxism-Leninism]] and became fiercely critical of the [[physical force Irish republicanism]] still espoused by Provisional Sinn Féin. Its new approach to the Northern conflict was typified by the slogan it would adopt: "Peace, Democracy, Class Politics". It aimed to replace [[sectarian]] politics with a class struggle which would unite [[Catholic]] and [[Protestant]] workers. The slogan's echo of [[Vladimir Lenin]]'s "Peace, Bread, Land" was indicative of the party's new source of inspiration. Official Sinn Féin also built up fraternal relations with the USSR and with socialist, workers' and [[communism|communist]] parties around the world.<ref name=lost/>

Throughout the 1980s, the party came to staunchly oppose republican [[political violence]], controversially to the point of recommending cooperating with British security forces. They were one of the few organisations on the left of Irish politics to oppose the INLA/Provisional IRA [[1981 Irish hunger strike]].<ref name=lost/>

The Workers' Party (especially the faction around Harris) strongly criticised traditional [[Irish republicanism]], causing some of its critics such as [[Vincent Browne]] and [[Paddy Prendeville]] to accuse it of having an attitude to Northern Ireland that was close to [[Ulster unionism]].<ref>
''The Longest War: Northern Ireland and the IRA'' by K. Kelley (1988) claimed that SFWP's attitude to the North was "indistinguishable in its structural form from that held by most Unionists" (pg. 270). See also Swan,''Official Irish Republicanism'', Chapter 8, and ''Politics in the Republic of Ireland'' by John Coakley and Michael Gallagher (2004), Pg. 28
</ref><ref>
One of Harris' critics, Derry Kelleher, accused him of adopting the [[Two nations theory (Ireland)|two nations theory]] associated with [[Conor Cruise O'Brien]]; see Kelleher's book, ''Buried Alive in Ireland'' (2001), Greystones, County Wicklow: Justice Books.(pp. 252,294).
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