The only reminder of the Workers' Party's revolutionary past at its weekend ardfheis came when Tomas Mac Giolla took the microphone for the Northern Ireland debate.
Anxious not to be too longwinded, the veteran campaigner and former leader and TD told the party officers: "If I go on a bit, shoot me down."
The party's president, Tom French, remarked: "Would you like to rephrase that, please?"
In a fiery and strongly-worded speech to the delegates in Liberty Hall, Mr Mac Giolla called on the Provisional IRA to decommission its weapons and went on to criticise Sinn Fein for wanting to go into government with the Ulster Unionist Party, "the most right-wing party on the island".
With Mr Mac Giolla retired from national politics, and his erstwhile Dail colleagues having moved to Labour via Democratic Left, following the bitter Workers' Party split, the party has no Oireachtas representation.
But Mr French, clearly grateful for small electoral mercies, praised Shay Kelly for increasing the WP vote in the recent Dublin South Central by-election from 0.7 per cent to 2.8 per cent.
"He received 555 first-preference votes for the Workers' Party in a situation where his very existence, and that of his party, was kept a political and media secret, and where a minority bothered to vote."
Mr French had some strong words for his one-time party colleagues.
"The Labour Party does not have principles. It is in no sense socialist. And with the recent low-dose injection of a couple of dozen Democratic Leftists, it has become even more comfortable with capitalism and the dictatorship of the market."
The revelations from the Moriarty and Flood tribunals were a talking point for many delegates.
Ms Anne Finnegan, from Lucan, spoke of a "culture of greed," which set worker against worker.
Mr French referred to former Taoiseach Mr Charles Haughey's fondness for expensive meals and shirts and predicted that hand-made Italian shoes might well figure in the "maze of sleaze".