People's Democracy (Ireland)

Last updated

People's Democracy
Daonlathas an Phobail
Founded1968
Dissolved1996
Ideology Socialism
Trotskyism
Irish nationalism
Irish republicanism
Factions:
Anarchism (1968–1974) [1]
International affiliation Fourth International (post-reunification)
ColoursGreen and red

People's Democracy (PD; Irish : Daonlathas an Phobail) [2] was a political organisation that arose from the Northern Ireland civil rights movement. It held that civil rights could be achieved only by the establishment of a socialist republic for all of Ireland. It demanded more radical reforms of the government of Northern Ireland than the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association.

Contents

Foundation

It was founded on 9 October 1968 at a meeting held in the Queen's University Belfast debating hall. A catalyst for its foundation had been the attack on a Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) march in Derry on 5 October by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). [3]

The group consisted mainly of students who were involved with the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association or left wing groups such as the Labour Clubs and Young Socialist Alliance.

At the meeting the group decided on five aims:

It was initially led by a committee of ten members which consisted of Queen's University students Malcolm Miles, Fergus Woods, Anne McBurnley, Ian Godall, Bernadette Devlin, Joe Martin, Eddie McCamely, Michael O'Kane and Patricia Drinan, as well as Kevin Boyle, a law lecturer at QUB. Other prominent members included Eilis McDermott, Cyril Toman, Eamon McCann and Michael Farrell. [4]

The name of the group was selected by accident, according to Bernadette Devlin.

The next evening our leaflet and poster were approved by a mass meeting of the students, and taken off to be printed. John D. Murphy, our printer, got the material late at night and only then noticed that our organisation had no name. To comply with the law, he had to put up the name of the organisation responsible at the bottom of the leaflet, and, the story goes, he read through it, decided it was all about people's rights and christened us People's Democracy. [5]

After marches in Belfast, in imitation of Martin Luther King Jr.'s March 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches, about 40 People's Democracy members held a four-day march between Belfast and Derry starting on 1 January 1969. The march was repeatedly attacked by loyalists along its route, including an incident at Burntollet bridge on 4 January where the marchers were attacked by about 200 unionists, including off-duty special constables, armed with iron bars, bottles and stones, while the RUC stood by and watched. [6]

PD became increasingly radicalised as a result of these events. They also attacked the censorship laws in the Republic earning a rebuke from Ruairi Quinn and Basil Miller, then leaders of Students for Democratic Action, a revolutionary socialist student organisation, for letting British imperialism off the hook. In later years, members of the PD either quit politics altogether or became independent left-wing activists (such as Devlin and Farrell).

Development

In 1971, PD became a founder of the Socialist Labour Alliance.

In the mid-1970s, the experience of the Ulster Workers' Council strike led to PD predicting a loyalist takeover in Northern Ireland, but it later came round to the view that this perspective was incorrect, giving loyalism a degree of autonomy from imperialism which it did not possess. [7] The minority which clung to the old perspective left to form the Left Revolutionary Group, becoming the Red Republican Party in 1976, which was moribund by 1978. [8]

During the 1970s, PD evolved towards Trotskyist positions and, by merging with the Dublin-based Movement for a Socialist Republic, was recognised by the reunified Fourth International as its Irish section.

PD was especially active around the issues of internment and prisoners' rights. Following the formation of the National H-Block/Armagh Committee in 1979 to build support for the Republican prisoners then on the "blanket protest" in support of political status and the subsequent death of Bobby Sands and nine of his comrades during the H-Block hunger strikes, a number of members of the organisation, led by Vincent Doherty - then a member of the Political Committee and a former party general election candidate - argued that PD should join Sinn Féin, which had moved openly to the left in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

In 1981, two members of People's Democracy were elected to Belfast City Council. John McAnulty and Fergus O'Hare were elected in a joint campaign with the IRSP. Fergus O'Hare won the council seat of Gerry Fitt, a sitting Westminster MP. O'Hare had been a founding member of the National H-Block/Armagh Committee and had previously been chairperson of the Political Hostages Release Committee which spearheaded the campaign against internment in the early 1970s. He subsequently went on to found the first Irish-language secondary school in Northern Ireland Meánscoil Feirste.

When Sinn Féin ended its boycott of elections and gained mass support among the republican community, PD entered a political crisis. From 1982 on, a number of activists left them and joined Sinn Féin. At a PD national conference in 1986, a group including Anne Speed proposed the dissolution of the group and that the members all join SF as individuals. This position was defeated by 19 votes to five. A few weeks later the minority of five resigned from PD followed by their supporters and joined Sinn Féin. The remaining members who continued to oppose this view maintained PD as a small propaganda group.

Election history

Northern Ireland

General elections

ElectionFirst Preference Vote%Seats
1969 23,6454.2%
0 / 52
1982 4420.07%
0 / 78

Local elections

ElectionFirst Preference Vote%±Seats±
1981 4,7340.71%N/A
2 / 526
N/A
1985 1310.02%Decrease2.svg 0.69
0 / 565
Decrease2.svg 2

Republic of Ireland

Dáil Éireann

ElectionFirst Preference Vote%Seats
1992 370 [a] 0.02%
0 / 166
  1. Joe Harrington in Limerick East [9]

Local elections

ElectionFirst Preference Vote%±Seats±
1985 5890.04%New
1 / 883
New
1991 9050.06%Increase2.svg 0.02
1 / 883
Steady2.svg

See also

Footnotes

  1. Hall, Michael (October 2019). "A History of the Belfast Anarchist Group and Belfast Libertarian Group" (PDF). Island Pamphlets. No. 117. Island Publications. Archived (PDF) from the original on 21 June 2021. Retrieved 21 June 2021.
  2. Roibeaird, Fionnghuala Nic (29 June 2016). "Tabhair dúinn an rogha! Léirsiú mór i mBéal Feirste Dé Sathairn".
  3. Devlin 1969, p. 101.
  4. Devlin 1969, p. 102.
  5. Devlin 1969, p. 103.
  6. The IRA by Tim Pat Coogan ( ISBN   978-0312294168), page 626
  7. John McAnulty A People Undefeated
  8. Peter Barberis, John McHugh and Mike Tyldesley Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organizations
  9. "Leaflet from Joe Harrington -Peoples Democracy – Limerick East 1992 General Election". Irish Election Literature. 2 June 2014. Retrieved 15 February 2024.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Official Irish Republican Army</span> Former Irish republican paramilitary group

The Official Irish Republican Army or Official IRA was an Irish republican paramilitary group whose goal was to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and create a "workers' republic" encompassing all of Ireland. It emerged in December 1969, shortly after the beginning of the Troubles, when the Irish Republican Army (IRA) split into two factions. The other was the Provisional IRA. Each continued to call itself simply "the IRA" and rejected the other's legitimacy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Hume</span> Irish nationalist politician (1937–2020)

John Hume was an Irish nationalist politician in Northern Ireland and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. A founder and leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, Hume served in the Northern Ireland Parliament; the Northern Ireland Assembly including, in 1974, its first power-sharing executive; the European Parliament and the United Kingdom Parliament. Seeking an accommodation between Irish nationalism and Ulster unionism, and soliciting American support, he was both critical of British government policy in Northern Ireland and opposed to the republican embrace of "armed struggle". In their 1998 citation, the Norwegian Nobel Committee recognised Hume as an architect of the Good Friday Agreement. For himself, Hume wished to be remembered as having been, in his earlier years, a pioneer of the credit union movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bernadette Devlin McAliskey</span> Irish socialist and republican political activist

Josephine Bernadette McAliskey, usually known as Bernadette Devlin or Bernadette McAliskey, is an Irish civil rights leader and former politician. She served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Mid Ulster in Northern Ireland from 1969 to 1974. McAliskey came to national and international prominence at the age of 21 when she became the youngest person ever to become a member of the British Parliament. McAliskey broke the traditional Irish republican policy of abstentionism and took her seat in Westminster. McAliskey's ascension came at the outbreak of the Troubles, an ethno-nationalist conflict which would come to dominate Northern Ireland for the next 30 years. For the majority of that time, McAliskey would be politically active, advocating for a 32-county socialist Irish republic to replace the two states on the island of Ireland. Originally linked to the People's Democracy group, McAliskey was later a founder of the Irish Republican Socialist Party. However, McAliskey left the party after a year when members voted that its paramilitary wing, the Irish National Liberation Army, did not have to obey the political wing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gerry Fitt</span> Northern Irish politician (1926–2005)

Gerard Fitt, Baron Fitt was a politician from Northern Ireland. He was a founder and the first leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), a social democratic and Irish nationalist party.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Irish Republican Socialist Party</span> Irish political party

The Irish Republican Socialist Party or IRSP is a minor communist, Marxist–Leninist and Irish republican party in Ireland. It is often referred to as the "political wing" of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) paramilitary group. The party's youth wing is the Republican Socialist Youth Movement (RSYM). It was founded by former members of 'Official' Sinn Féin in 1974 during the Troubles, but claims the legacy of the Irish Socialist Republican Party of 1896–1904. The party opposes the Good Friday Agreement and the European Union.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paddy Devlin</span>

Patrick Joseph "Paddy" Devlin was an Irish socialist, labour and civil rights activist and writer. He was a founding member of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), a former Stormont MP, and a member of the 1974 Power Sharing Executive.

The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) (Irish: Cumann Cearta Sibhialta Thuaisceart Éireann) was an organisation that campaigned for civil rights in Northern Ireland during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Formed in Belfast on 9 April 1967, the civil rights campaign attempted to achieve reform by publicising, documenting, and lobbying for an end to discrimination against Catholics in areas such as elections (which were subject to gerrymandering and property requirements), discrimination in employment, in public housing and abuses of the Special Powers Act.

The Irish Independence Party (IIP) was a nationalist political party in Northern Ireland, founded in October 1977 by Frank McManus and Fergus McAteer. The party was effectively a merger of Unity and the Nationalist Party, as the bulk of activists and councillors from the two movements joined IIP. However several independent councillors also joined the party. It was boosted in the late 1970s by the defection of a prominent Protestant Larne Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) councillor, John Turnley, later the party chairman, who was killed in 1980 in Carnlough, County Antrim, by an attack claimed by the Ulster Defence Association.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2006 Dublin riots</span> Riots in Dublin, Ireland (2006)

A series of riots in Dublin on 25 February 2006 was precipitated by a proposed march down O'Connell Street of a unionist demonstration. The disturbances began when members of the Garda Síochána attempted to disperse a group of counter-demonstrators blocking the route of the proposed march. The situation escalated as local youths joined forces with the counter-demonstrators.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the Troubles.

Coláiste Feirste is the only secondary-level Irish-medium school in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Joe McCann was an Irish republican paramilitary. A member of the Irish Republican Army and later the Official Irish Republican Army, he was active in politics from the early 1960s and participated in the early years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. He was shot dead during a confrontation with RUC Special Branch members and British paratroopers in 1972.

Billy McKee was an Irish republican and a founding member and leader of the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

Events during the year 1969 in Northern Ireland.

The Mid Ulster by-election was held on 17 April 1969 following the death of George Forrest, the Ulster Unionist Party Member of Parliament for Mid Ulster. The two-way contest was unusual in featuring two female candidates.

The Nationalist Party was the continuation of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), and was formed after the partition of Ireland, by the Northern Ireland-based members of the IPP.

Fergus O'Hare is an Irish musician, activist and former republican politician, active in Northern Ireland.

The Northern Resistance Movement was an Irish republican organisation set up by Sinn Féin and People's Democracy following the introduction of internment on 9 August 1971. Bernadette Devlin was involved in founding the group, which from time to time engaged the support of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, with whom they organised the protest march which was attacked by the British state on Bloody Sunday. However their call for an end to Stormont meant that such relationships with more reformist organisations were not always smooth.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Miriam Daly</span> Irish republican and communist activist (1928 - 1980)

Miriam Daly was an Irish republican and communist activist as well as a university lecturer who was assassinated by the loyalist Ulster Defence Association (UDA) in 1980.

The Northern Ireland civil rights movement dates to the early 1960s, when a number of initiatives emerged in Northern Ireland which challenged the inequality and discrimination against ethnic Irish Catholics that was perpetrated by the Ulster Protestant establishment. The Campaign for Social Justice (CSJ) was founded by Conn McCluskey and his wife, Patricia. Conn was a doctor, and Patricia was a social worker who had worked in Glasgow for a period, and who had a background in housing activism. Both were involved in the Homeless Citizens League, an organisation founded after Catholic women occupied disused social housing. The HCL evolved into the CSJ, focusing on lobbying, research and publicising discrimination. The campaign for Derry University was another mid-1960s campaign.

References