Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
Two bastions of unionist domination of employment in the North, Harland and Wolff and Wrightbus, are threatened with closure. The demise of the shipyard is a direct result of the geopolitical struggle to control the price of oil, in which the present owners, Dolphin Drilling, have been heavily exposed. Workers […]
The National Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Ireland at its regular meeting in late September discussed and evaluated both the national and the international situation. There are growing signs of a deepening global economic slowdown. The system may be facing into a new recession, with a combination of […]
Monagear, Co. Wexford7 September 2019Address by Gearóid Ó Machail, Peadar O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forum A chomrádaithe, I dtús báire, ba mhaith liom buíochas a gabháil le Cumann Pheadair Uí Dhálaigh as an chuireadh labhairt libh anseo i Móin na gCaor, Contae Loch Garman, inniu mar ionadaí d’Fhóram Pheadair Uí Dhónaill […]
When the latest phase of the global crisis of capitalism manifested itself through the financial markets in 2007–09, the “Celtic Tiger” collapsed. The Irish establishment, under direct pressure from the European Union, took responsibility for 42 per cent of the total of European banking debt. We bailed out German, French […]
Supermarkets are steadily installing more and more self-service check-outs (and even boasting about it), at the same time getting rid of workers, or at least not replacing those who leave. In some branches an assistant is given the job of collaring shoppers in the queue for the check-out and persuading […]
Thanks, capitalism. You started off all right and all, but I’m afraid you have to leave! You’ve eaten, binned or hidden all the food, you’ve drunk all the drink or poured it down the sink, you’ve blocked all the toilets and used up all the paper. You’ve left the taps […]
The November 2015 issue of Socialist Voice reported on the closure of Clery’s department store in Dublin in June 2015 with the loss of 130 jobs and about 300 operators of franchises. The background is as follows. Gordon Brothers had bought the store in 2012, when it had bank debt […]
On the night of the census in 2016 there were 429 homeless students in Ireland, making up over 8 per cent of the total homeless numbers. When the Government’s student accommodation strategy was launched in July 2017 there was an excess demand in purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) of over 23,000 […]
Following the Bolsonaro regime’s fascist assault on the Amazon, Macron and his loyal mimic Varadkar had to look like they were being tough on the Brazilian strongman. The mechanism they chose to use to show their new-found environmental conscience was to threaten to withhold the Mercosur trade deal unless it […]
The party of law and order “Mussolini—incomparably the greatest of living statesmen …”—Desmond Fitzgerald TD, Irish Independent, 8 July 1927 On the Wearing of Uniform Bill (intended to ban the paramilitary uniform of the Blueshirts, passed in March 1934 but defeated in the Seanad): “… the Blackshirts were victorious in […]
The world is at a crossroads. We can change the system, or the system will change our climate catastrophically. A recent study by the World Meteorological Organisation has shown that global warming is increasing in pace—along with the growth in capitalism—despite measures being taken to stop it. As a result […]
Have you ever wondered why the Fine Gael government, supported by its Fianna Fáil bedfellows, decided to publish the budget a few short days before it was expected that Britain would leave the European Union? Let’s face it, who in Dublin could have anticipated the mess Boris Johnson created for […]
After the victory of the right wing in the elections of 1990, the Sandinistas began a period of what they called “governing from below.” The new neo-liberal government increased the already massive foreign debt, cut wages, privatised industries, and slashed funds for health and education. In 2003 the former president […]
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was one of the greatest Enlightenment painters. He died 350 years ago this month at the age of sixty-three. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the Flemish cloth trade had developed into the strongest competitor of Florentine cloth-makers and traders, giving rise to a growing Dutch […]
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The power of workers in society has been declining consistently since the 1970s. Power, measured by various metrics, such as union membership, union density, and days of industrial action, has been on a steady decline, related to and proportionate to the increased wealth of the rich and the transformation of […]
The world in which we live is finite. It does not possess infinite, everlasting resources. And it is fast approaching the point of no return as we face imminent climate catastrophe. If we are to save humanity and protect the world for future generations we have to radically change the […]
On 5 August, Bank Holiday Monday, the Government published The National Risk Assessment, 2019: Overview of Strategic Risks. This is a 92-page document that sets out various risks facing Ireland, under five headings. The first such report was produced in 2014. This report was produced after a public consultation. There […]
The results of recent research on the amounts of profit declared in the Republic, and the tax subsequently paid on those profits, should surprise no-one. It has exposed the fact that American transnational corporations made profits of $83 billion (€74 billion) here. A third of these corporations have their head […]
Statement by the Communist Party of Ireland9 August 2019 The Communist Party of Ireland expresses its solidarity with the workers at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast and welcomes the action taken by them in defence of their jobs. Harland and Wolff should be nationalised. This could provide tens […]
I am a Republican, but I haven’t always been. I was born into a Protestant and Unionist family post Good Friday Agreement. Before this I had family in the British Army and the RUC. I believed these people were defending the North from terrorists. I would look around and see […]
On 19 July the president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, addressed hundreds of thousands of Sandinista supporters at a mass rally in Managua. The event was held to celebrate forty years of the Sandinista revolution as well as to show popular support for the government in the wake of the attempted […]
Speech by Eugene McCartan, general secretary, CPI, at the Spanish Anti-Fascist War commemoration, Slieve Foye, Co. Louth, organised by Friends of the International Brigades Once again we gather here on Slieve Foye to pay our respects and to honour the sacrifice of seven local volunteers from this region of Cos. […]
The Brexit storm-clouds are gathering, and the political class in Dublin is in a tizzy. Having placed almost all its emphasis on the mantra of the “hard, militarised border and return to violence,” they will be deprived of any coherent argument when this fails to materialise. The problem for the […]
The greatest of the sixteenth-century Dutch realists is without doubt Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Born about 1525, Bruegel died 450 years ago, on 5 September 1569. His lifetime coincides with the struggle of the Netherlands against Spanish domination. At that time it included Belgium, Luxembourg and part of northern France […]
In the United States, uproar has surrounded the rolling back of access to reproductive health, in Britain thousands of women missed breast cancer screenings because of a technical hitch, and in Ireland we are still witnessing the fall-out from the cervical cancer screening debacle—each the result of policies that have reduced women’s health and well-being to secondary concerns of cost management and profit margins.
Ryanair attempts to break the union In mid-August Ryanair secured a court injunction to prevent its pilots based in Ireland from striking, even after they had followed the normal industrial procedures. The two-day strike had the support of a majority of the pilots directly employed by the company who are […]
