- Building a World Party of Socialists -
IRISH SECTION OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL At its congress at the end of November in Dublin, the Irish revolutionary socialist organization People's Democracy voted to join the Fourth International.
The group is the product of a fusion in 1978 between the former Movement for a Socialist Republic, which was a section of the Fourth International and whose members remained individually in the ranks of the International, and People's
The prefusion People's Democracy became well known during the rise of the mass civil-rights movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Some of its leaders at the time, such as Bernadette Devlin and Michael Farrell, became
Under the impact of the mass movement, its successes and failures, the old PD moved toward a more consistent Marxist approach. But the fusion between the two revolut onary organizations was on the bass of a common strategy toward the nass movement, whose validity 34 was demonstrated by the rise of the
Although still small, the fused organization was able to play a significant role in the greatest mass mobilizations in Ireland since the period of the war of independence. Its political proposals were taken up by very broad forces. That was illustrated when two PD leaders in Belfast, John McAnulty and Fergus O'Hare were elected to the Belfast city council in the May 20 Northern Ireland local elections, humiliating the most prominent bourgeois machine politicians in the Catholic
FRENCH TROTSKYISTS REGISTER GROWTH
The Fifth Congress of the Revolutionary Communist League, French section of the Fourth International (LCR), held December 1619, marked substantial growth both in the size and influence of the organization.
In the past eighteen months, the LCR has grown by 11%. Some 88% of its membership is in trad inions, 30% in the CGT, 26% i the c, the rand 22% in the teachers
More important than these statistics, LCR trade unionists have led significant struggles, and made a political impact on their unions. They are playing an important role for example in the debate inside the CGT on Poland, as well as in building the mobilizations in support of Poland in the other unions where they are.
During the congress, the LCR weekly Rouge reported: "Solidarity with the Polish workers was omnipresent. On Sunday, December 13, the day of Jaruzelski's coup, in many cities the LCR held local congresses to elect delegates. From the minute that the news came over the radio, initiatives were taken everywhere, unitedfront meetings, communiques, and leaflets started to be prepared. The agenda of the national congress was changed to allow delegates to participate in the demonstrations."