DUBLIN – Party headquarters are usually garish affairs, with posters and symbols plastered in windows and above doorways. But this isn’t the case at 48 North Great Georges’ Street, a crumbly-looking terrace of Georgian houses on a slight rise just off Dublin’s main thoroughfare.

There is no sign, for example, of the ‘Starry Plough,’ the 99-year old flag of Irish Republican socialism. This, however, is the headquarters of the rump Workers’ Party Ireland, a once highly influential left-wing party where many of today’s leading Irish political and media figures cut their teeth.