Official Sinn Féin was the larger of the two movements that emerged when Irish republicanism split at the turn of 1970. Through the 1960s the leadership around Cathal Goulding had steered the movement away from physical force and toward radical social and political agitation, drawing on Marxist analysis and pressing for an end to the policy of abstention from the Dáil, Stormont, and Westminster. When the break came, at the IRA convention of December 1969 and the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis that January, the minority who rejected that direction walked out to form the Provisionals; the majority who stayed with the Gardiner Place leadership became known as the Officials, to distinguish them from “Sinn Féin (Kevin Street).”
For the Officials, the priority was increasingly class politics rather than the national question taken alone. They argued for the unity of Protestant and Catholic workers against what they saw as a common exploitation, and their literature concerned itself as much with ground rents, fishing rights, banking, and housing as with partition. The Official IRA declared a ceasefire in May 1972 and the movement turned steadily toward constitutional and electoral activity. This was a course that alienated those who wished to continue the armed campaign, among them Seamus Costello, whose followers broke away in 1974 to form the Irish Republican Socialist Party and whose departure was followed by a bitter and violent feud.
That trajectory continued leftward: the party became Sinn Féin the Workers’ Party in 1977 and simply the Workers’ Party in 1982, by which point it had largely set aside the republican label of its origins for an avowedly Marxist politics that would go on to win seats in Leinster House. The documents gathered here trace that evolution: the newspapers The United Irishman and The Plough alongside a range of regional titles, theoretical pamphlets and Ard Fheis reports, election and agitational material, and memorial booklets to figures such as Cathal Goulding and Liam McMillen.
Official Sinn Féin Newspapers 1970-1980
A large collection of Official Sinn Féin Newspapers including The United Irishman, Eolas, The Irish People and Starry Plough can be found here.
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The Plough
The Plough was the newspaper of Official Sinn Féin in South Down and South Armagh.
 Vol 1, No 7 (2) |  Vol 2, No 6 (3) |  Vol 3, No 2 (3) |
 Vol 3, No 3 (3) |  Vol 3, No 4 (3) |  Vol 3, No 6 (1) |
 Vol 4, No 1 (3) |  1975 (3) |  Election Special (3) |
 Election Special 1975 (2) |
1970
1971
 Ireland in Rebellion |  Culture and Revolution in Ireland (1) |  Battle of Belfast |
 Resistance (1971) (3) |  Resistance (08 September 1971) (3) |  Resistance (1971) (3) |
 Teoiric (1971) (5) |
1972
1973
1974
 Ground Rent is Robbery (1974) (5) |  An Eochair (May 1974) |  Election News (June 1974) (2) |
 The Great Irish Gas and Oil Robbery (1974) |  Official Sinn Féin Poster (1974) |
1975
1976
 Republican Worker (Cork) January 1976 (1) |  Republican Worker (Cork) 06 March (1) |  Galway People 12 March (1) |
 Galway People 19 March (1) |  Galway People 14 May (1) |  Teoiric (Summer 1976) |
 The Banks (1976) |
1977
1979
Misc Official Sinn Féin and Workers Party
Memorial Booklets
(1) Donated by Brian Hanley
(2) Donated by @irish_republican_archive
(3) Donated by Colum Ó Ruairc
(4) Donated by Jason McLean
(5) Originally appeared here
© Irish Republican Digital Archive. Historical documents are presented for educational and research purposes only. We do not endorse or promote any views expressed in the material. Some content may be politically or historically sensitive. [Read full disclaimer]
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