Workers' Party of Ireland

The Workers ' Party of Ireland ( Irish: Páirtí na nOibrithe ) is a Marxist party in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Formation

The origins of the party are in the republican movement in Ireland and can be traced back to the split in the IRA in 1969. At that time, the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland, which demanded equal treatment of the Catholic population of Ulster developed. Those forces within the IRA who were Marxist oriented and trying to resolve the Northern Ireland conflict by political means, established the Official Irish Republican Army, and parallel to the Party Official Sinn Féin. After several name changes from this arose the Workers' Party of Ireland. The more nationalist -minded and more willing violent wing of the movement founded the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

Into parliament

The Workers' Party succeeded in the 80s the favor of voters to gain less privileged strata of Ireland, particularly in the Dublin area. This justified by the high rate of unemployment of those years, the high taxes and inadequate public services. So the party succeeded in soliciting the Irish Labour Party votes. The highlight of the political influence was the year 1989; in the parliamentary elections, the Workers ' Party was able to win seven seats in Dáil Éireann.

Cleavage and loss of influence

Although the Official IRA had declared already in the 70s the armistice, she was the underground movement still present, many of its members were active in the Workers ' Party. The allegations that the OIRA would have given with bank robberies and organized crime funds were to an ever-increasing burden on the party. The party leadership tried to change their statutes so that members of the OIRA could be excluded with the party in 1999. The vote failed, and thus the change of direction. As a consequence, left almost all the leading members of the party and founded the Democratic Left, among them Pat Rabbitte, who would later ascend to the Chairman of the Irish Labour Party. The remaining members of the party could no longer connect to the previous success in the elections. In 2004, the party suffered controversy, was accused as its chairman Seán Garland to have (known as Super Dollars) brought into North Korea fake U.S. dollar notes in circulation. Since then, the party fights against the efforts of the U.S. authorities to extradite Garland to the U.S..