Summary: <br> <a href="https://twitter.com/mooreholmes24" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener external" data-wpel-link="external">Moore Holmes</a> is a Loyalist and a member of the advocacy group Let’s talk Loyalism. <br> <br> <br> <br> <a href="https://blog.hereshow.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Moore-Holmes.png" data-wpel-link="internal"></a><br> <br> <br> <br> *****<br> <br> <br> <br> You probably think that you’ve never heard of the WSM, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_Ireland#Active_organisations" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener external" data-wpel-link="external">Workers Solidarity Movement</a>, but you probably have heard of them, even though you don’t remember it; most people don’t pay much attention when they are offered a leaflet from one of the various fringe political associations that set up stall at the pedestrian pinch-points in our city centres.<br> <br> <br> <br> The Workers Solidarity Movement aren’t to be confused with the Workers Party, the Socialist Party, the Socialist Workers Party, the Solidarity Party or any of the other small and sometimes minuscule groups on the far left. I say that, but in reality they are often confused with each other, which makes all the more ironic the ferocity with which these tiny groups sometimes dispute the most esoteric distinctions between each other.<br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> The WSM, for example, was a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platformism" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener external" data-wpel-link="external">Platformist</a> group. I would think that almost nobody outside the far left has even heard of that ideology, let alone have any idea what it is. In case that’s not you, platformism is, in short, a particularly puritanical version of left-wing anarchism, although I’m sure as I speak someone somewhere is drafting a motion of condemnation of me for misrepresenting the movement.<br> <br> <br> <br> The WSM never stood any candidates, though they did regularly campaign for people not to vote in elections, they even argued for people to boycott the referendum on the Good Friday Agreement for <a href="https://irishelectionliterature.com/2017/08/29/irish-anarchists-say-there-is-no-choice-good-friday-agreement-leaflet-from-the-wsm/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener external" data-wpel-link="external">reasons argued in a leaflet</a> so densely typed that I suspect nobody who had it thrust into their hand even read it, let alone understood it.<br> <br> <br> <br> But the curious thing about the WSM is that <a href="https://freedomnews.org.uk/2021/12/09/ireland-a-farewell-to-the-workers-solidarity-movement/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener external" data-wpel-link="external">they were so strict</a> about their ideological correctness – there are articles online where they describe the steps they took to prevent people who didn’t hold all the right views from joining – they were so strict that they ended up being one of the smallest of these fringe parties, and a few weeks ago got so small that <a href="http://www.wsm.ie/c/wsm-end-new-anarchist-beginnings" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener external" data-wpel-link="external">they announced that they were winding up</a>.<br> <br> <br> <br> That’s kind of an unusual thing for these groups to do, usually their core activists are so strongly attached to the cause that they stay with the party through thick and thin, and their statement does talk about the individuals remaining committed to the cause, but it’s clear that they have given up the ghost.<br> <br> <br> <br> I sort of feel sorry for these guys – these groups are overwhelmingly male; I don’t agree with much of their ideas, but their criticisms of contemporary society are often on point. It’s been said that the definition of a crank is someone who won’t change their mind and can’t change the subject.<br> <br> <br> <br> It’s difficult not to apply this to a lot of these groups, but I think that their motivation comes from a good place, and nobody is really in a position to critique the psyche of people who are tryi...
