Sean Matgamna
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Sean Matgamna is an Irish
Early life
Matgamna was born in 1941 in Ennis, County Clare, Ireland, and grew up in the town,[1] serving as an altar boy at Ennis Cathedral.[2] He emigrated with his family to Manchester in 1954 and attended St Peter's Catholic School in Salford.[3]
Early political experience
He joined the
Workers' Fight
Matgamna, working with two supporters, formed the
Around this time Matgamna, who believed that effective working class rule then existed in some Catholic-majority areas of Northern Ireland, proposed that in the probable event of attacks on this control, that those areas should secede to the Irish Republic as a way of making Northern Ireland ungovernable and forcing open the national question in Ireland. He had already argued for the Protestant (overwhelmingly Unionist) areas having political autonomy within a united Ireland. Some commentators have argued that both of these positions are in fact calls for repartition although Matgamna and his supporters have always denied this.[7]
At the end of 1971, the Trotskyist Tendency was expelled by IS and re-formed Workers' Fight with a much increased membership. Martin Thomas, who had joined earlier in 1971, worked with Matgamna to take prominent roles in the group, alongside Rachel Lever, Phil Semp, Andrew Hornung, Stephen Corbishley, Pat Longman, Fran Broady, Mary Corbishley, and others. Matgamna became a full-time theorist within the group, having moved to London.
Throughout the late 1970s and into the 1980s Matgamna remained a leader of the revived Workers' Fight. This endured through the disputes that led to the short-lived fusion with the Workers' Power group, which had briefly joined Workers' Fight in a fused grouping known as the International-Communist League. Similarly, when the I-CL fused in 1981 with the Workers' Socialist League, Matgamna was strongly identified as the central leader of one side in the factional fight that erupted within the fused group in 1982 and would split it in 1984.
One key area of disagreement in 1982 was that the inhabitants of the
- even prior to the overthrow of capitalism in the region. By 1985 he and others, notably Clive Bradley, had won a majority in the group for this view."Third Camp" position
In 1989, Matgamna, along with many other members of the group's national committee, by then known as the
Matgamna remains a prominent member of the Trotskyist group he founded, now called the Alliance for Workers' Liberty.
Pseudonyms
Over the years, he has used a large number of pseudonyms, including John O'Mahony, Seán Mac Mathúna, Paddy Dollard and Jack Cleary.[8]
References
- ^ Matgamna, Sean (December 2009). "Working Class Life in Ennis in the Mid-Twentieth Century". Workers' Liberty. Retrieved 7 November 2013.
- ^ Matgamna, Sean (August 2008). "Confessions of a Tridentine Boy". Workers' Liberty. Retrieved 7 November 2013.
- ^ Matgamna, Sean (December 2009). "Finding my way to Trotskyism, part 1: the "manacles" of nations and classes". Workers' Liberty. Retrieved 20 November 2013.
- ^ Matgamna, Sean (December 2009). "Finding my way to Trotskyism". Workers' Liberty. Retrieved 4 September 2010.
- ^ Matgamna, Sean (1994). "Gerry Healy and the Failure of the Old British Trotskyist movement". Workers' Liberty. Retrieved 4 September 2010.
- ^ Lever, Rachel; Semp, Phil; Matgamna, Sean (July 1966). "What We Are and What We Must Become". Workers' Liberty. Retrieved 5 September 2010.
- ^ Greenstein, Tony (2007). "AWL, Imperialism and Lies". What Next?. Retrieved 5 September 2010.
- ^ Croft, Andy; Heisler, Ron; Patterson, Ian; Potts, Archie. "British Political Pseudonyms" (PDF). Left On The Shelf. Retrieved 5 September 2010.
External links
- Sean Matgamna, "The RSL (Militant) in the 1960s – a study in passivity"