People's Democracy
People's Democracy was a political organisation that, while supporting the campaign for
civil rights for
Northern Ireland's
Catholic minority stated that such rights could only be achieved through the establishment of a
socialist republic for all of
Ireland. It was founded on
9 October 1968, after
Royal Ulster Constabulary police had broken up a
Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association march in
Derry on
5 October. It demanded more radical reforms of the
government of Northern Ireland than the NICRA.
The founders included
Queen's University, Belfast students such as
Bernadette Devlin and
Michael Farrell.
In imitation of
Martin Luther King's
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 police stood by and watched.
The PDs were created out of a milleu of various leftist student organisations - in the late 1960s Queen's University gained its first Labour Club (affiliated to the forerunner of
Labour Students as well as its Irish equivalent) and a Young Socialist Alliance which grouped together many radical leftists.
The PDs became increasingly radicalised - many of their members turning towards
Maoism as a result of the events of
1968. They also attacked the
censorship laws in the Republic — earning a rebuke from
Ruairi Quinn, then a leader of the
Union of Students in Ireland for letting
British imperialism off the hook. In later years members of the PDs either quit politics altogether, moved towards the
INLA's views (Devlin) or became leftist supporters of the
IRA (Farrell).
In 1971, PD became a founder of the
Socialist Labour Alliance. In the mid-1970s, a group left to form the
Left Revolutionary Group.
During the
1970s it evolved towards
Trotskyist positions and, by merging with the
Dublin-based
Movement for a Socialist Republic, affiliated to the
United Secretariat of the Fourth International as its Irish section.
People's Democracy was especially active around the issues of
internment and prisoners' rights. The organisation held 2 seats on
Belfast City Council in the
1980s during a period when
Sinn Féin were boycotting electoral contests. People's Democracy critically defended the
Provisional IRA against
Britain.
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 the organisation should join Sinn Féin, who had moved sharply to the left in the late 70s and early 80s.
When Sinn Féin ended their boycott and gained mass support among the nationalist community, People's Democracy entered a political crisis. From 1982 a number of activists left PD and joined Sinn Féin. At a PD 1986 national conference a tendency 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 5. A few weeks later the minority of 5 resigned from PD and joined SF. The majority who continued to oppose this view maintained People's Democracy as a small propaganda group.
In the early
1990s the remaining members of People's Democracy initiated the
Irish Committee for a Marxist Programme as an attempt to regroup
socialists and left wing
republicans. This project ended in
1996 when PD dissolved and reconstituted itself as
Socialist Democracy, adopting the programme put forward by the ICMP.
