At Tolpuddle last weekend, I had a chat with a union general secretary who was telling me that the (UK) Labour party is the one with the chance of power, that if you divert your energies elsewhere you are choosing a decade at least of Tory rule, and so Labour is where you have to work. I am a member of the SP in England, and was one in Ireland (in your branch, Henry), but I found it very difficult to make a better argument.
In Ireland, in part because of the electoral system, it has been possible to support the SP, and others, in the realistic hope of putting forward a political position which offered a genuine alternative. If what you are saying is correct, and I have no good reason to say it’s not, there is no serious radical movement in Ireland: the left has failed to break through in electoral politics, and it has failed to lead an extra-parliamentary movement.
What is to be done?
