50 years since Irish Republican Socialist Party split from Official Sinn Féin
Fifty years ago this Sunday dozens of disaffected members of Official Sinn Féin formed the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) in Dublin.
Disgruntlement over Tomás Mac Giolla’s leadership had been festering by December 1974.
This erupted in open rebellion in a Lucan hotel on Sunday, December 8, 1974, when 80 delegates – including ex-Officials from Derry and Donegal – established a caretaker national executive of the IRSP under Seamus Costello.
Costello, a veteran of the IRA Border Campaign, had been a senior member of both Official Sinn Féin and the Official IRA following the 1970 split with the ‘Provisionals’ as they were dubbed by the media.
He was, however, opposed to the Official IRA’s 1972 ceasefire and was court-martialled and expelled in mid-1974.
Costello’s ouster led to complaints, including from Derry socialist republicans, about a lack of ‘internal democracy’.
The split was fuelled by disillusion with the movement’s reformism, its decision to abandon abstention in the North whilst internment continued and its perceived disinterest in the national question.
Two days before the IRSP was founded the ‘Journal’ reported on Official Sinn Féin's decision to end abstention in the North at its Ard Fheis on December 1.
"Members can now take their seats if elected in Convention or Westminster elections. The vote in favour of ending the policy of abstention followed a lengthy debate on a resolution put forward by the Liam Mellows Republican Club, Strabane,” the paper noted.
Máirín de Burca told the Ard Fheis ‘ordinary people north and south do not give a damn for their principle of abstention' whilst acknowledging internment was 'probably one of the most important issues' and arguing ‘we could have done a great deal more if we had taken our seats'.
By December 10 the 'Journal' was reporting Official Sinn Féin members in Donegal were among those who had joined the IRSP.
The Republican Clubs in Derry, however, insisted there was 'no split'.
"Many members and former members of the Co. Donegal Comhairle Ceantair of Official Sinn Féin in Co. Donegal have resigned and have applied for membership of the IRSP, a new political party formed by 80 breakaway members of the Gardiner Place Sinn Féin.
"But in Derry the local area executive of the Republican Clubs said yesterday: 'There has not been, and will not be, a split in the movement locally'.”
Delegates from Derry and Donegal were among those who attended the December 8 meeting.
But the Derry Republican Clubs said: "Those who attended that conference were people who have not been active in the movement in the recent past and who have more than once refused to accept the democratic decisions of the majority of the members.
"The significance of this new group and the impact that it has had, or will have, on the Republican movement, can be gauged by the fact that those who support it could only muster 15 delegates out of a total of 250 at the recent Ard Fheis in support of their 'political' stand.”
The paper carried an IRSP statement attacking Official Sinn Féin as 'lacking in internal democracy’ and claiming several Donegal members had defected.
"It gave these three reasons for the resignations - the attitude of Official Sinn Féin towards the national question, where decisions taken at recent Ard Fheiseanna on the national question had been completed ignored by the Gardiner Place leadership; dissatisfaction with the overall strategy of the organisation in the formulation of clearly-defined class position on the way to a socialist republic; and the complete lack of internal democracy within the movement, where power was exercised by a small segment of the leadership to the total exclusion of the rank and file members," the 'Journal’ reported.
By December 13, a committee had been formed to supervise the establishment of an IRSP branch locally.
A statement read: "Fully recognising the failure of the established parties to provide an answer to the spiralling descent towards widespread poverty and civil war, and in full view of massive attacks on the working class from the British occupation forces, it is now immediately apparent that there is a need for a real socialist alternative.
"With the horror of internment beckoning arrogantly through the barbed wire of Long Kesh, we see the inability of the established parties to work effectively for its termination.
"The opportunism of the middle-class parties like the SDLP is surpassed only by the hypocritical double standards of the 'Official' Republicans.
"Even the promise which they gave the electorate during the local government elections that they would not take their seats until every last internee had been released has been twisted, broken and unashamedly cast aside."
The branch attacked Mac Giolla and the Official Sinn Féin leadership.
"Evidence of their intransigency is indicated by the intolerant attitudes to members who expressed even the mildest dissent about national policy.
"Johnny White, a founder member of the James Connolly Republican Club and a tireless worker for the working class and socialism, fell foul of the Stalinist dictates of the Gardiner Place clique. His crime? He was seen talking to a former member of the organisation who had been expelled for similar reasons," the statement claimed.
Alleged ‘purges of the Communist Party-dominated leadership' were decried.
Members of the IRSP in Derry included five former Republican Club candidates in local government elections, a former editor of the Starry Plough newspaper and a recently resigned North-West representative on the Sinn Féin Ard Comhairle.
A North-West coordinating committee was appointed by the national executive of the IRSP.
This included chair Johnny White (ex-James Connolly Republican Club, Derry); vice-chair Joe Sweeney (ex-Rosemount Republican Club); secretary, M. Doherty (ex-G. Doherty Republican Club and Sinn Féin Ard Comhairle representative, North West); treasurer, P. Collins (ex-James Connolly Republican Club); and press officer, Terry Robson (ex-James Connolly Republican Club).
The split intensified on December 16, when the Gerry Doherty Republican Club in the Bogside disaffiliated from Official Sinn Féin and joined the IRSP.