Workers' Party/Democratic Left

Workers' Party/Democratic Left. The Workers' Party' had its roots in the schism within Sinn Féin which opened at the Ard Fheis of 1970. Official Sinn Féin, which emerged from the split under the leadership of Tómas MacGiolla, was Marxist in orientation and supported the creation of a democratic socialist republic in Ireland: it was linked to the Official IRA. In January 1977 Official Sinn Féin became ‘Sinn Féin: The Workers' Party’. and in 1982 (in a further effort to distance itself from paramilitarism) this title was shortened to ‘the Workers' Party’. The Workers' Party fared rather better in the Republic than in Northern Ireland, where it achieved an electoral peak in the 1982 Assembly elections, with 2.7 per cent of first‐preference votes. In the Republic the Workers' Party won 4.3 per cent of the vote in 1989, and returned seven TDs. In February 1992 the party split over allegations that there were residual links with the Official IRA and that financial support had been accepted from the Soviet Union: the majority of members supported the reformist leader, Proinsías De Rossa, and left the party to form New Agenda (later renamed as Democratic Left). The recusant Workers' Party lost its single member of the Dáil at the election of November 1992; but DL was able to return four deputies. De Rossa was minister for social welfare in the coalition government of 1994–7, which was supported by his party colleagues. In January 1999 DL united with the Labour Party. Neither the DL nor the vestigial Workers' Party achieved any significant electoral showing in Northern Ireland during the 1990s. Despite this DL and the pre‐1992 Workers' Party had a greater intellectual influence in debate on Northern Ireland than might have been expected. In the Republic DL has sustained an important social and constitutional critique.

Alvin Jackson