Over the past few years, the Irish state has been marking the centenary of the events that led to its foundation in the 1920s. For much of that period, the absence of European-style class politics was supposed to be one of the state’s defining features. Although organized labor had played a significant role in the events of the national revolution, no party that based itself explicitly on the working class ever won an election or headed a government in Dublin.

Having been late to industrialize, with a largely agrarian economy well into the twentieth century, the South of Ireland appeared in recent times to have skipped straight ahead to a postindustrial phase of capitalist development based on services and knowledge production. With labor movements on the defensive throughout western Europe and North America, few expected Ireland to buck the trend.

Yet commentators have identified a marked realignment of Irish party politics along class lines since the Great Recession. Along with the electoral rise of parties like Sinn Féin, the last decade has also seen the emergence of social movements like the campaign against water charges that mobilized in working-class communities.