Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
“Let me tell you a story, I’ll be quick as I can Terrible news from the Holy Land Pictures of children etched in my mind Buried in the rubble, on the firing line.” — Christy Moore, “Palestine” Christy Moore played a sold-out concert at the Keadeen Hotel in Droichead Nua […]
Does the concept of polycrisis capture the current conjuncture? The world is on fire. Every day we wake up to news of brutal wars, reckless environmental destruction, oligarchy brazenly flaunting its wealth and power amidst escalating economic inequality, election of politicians who are blatantly corrupt and hostile to the class […]
Sinéad O’Shea’s documentary All About the Money was screened in Dublin on 26 September as part of the IFI Documentary Festival 2026, followed by a Q&A with O’Shea. Her documentary is a story of Fergie Chambers, in particular following his activities in the period from 2023 to 2025. It premiered […]
On 22 September, the Chinese Embassy in Ireland hosted a reception marking the 77th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. The Communist Party of Ireland was honoured to accept the invitation of His Excellency Mr. Zhao Xiyuan, Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to Ireland, […]
It is 1890. While Britain is aggressively expanding its global empire, its domestic industries are increasingly dominated by mechanised production and growing concentration of capital, and the industrial proletariat is increasingly alienated from the products of its labour. In The Commonweal, a utopia describes London in 2102: the Thames is […]
This is the third in a five-part series on the politics of power. Earlier articles asked what makes rights real and why some carry greater weight. This article examines the State and institutions through which those power relations are reproduced. One of the clearest moments when political power appears to […]
A chara, Many seem to believe that China holds the silver bullet for helping the Cuban Revolution, struggling at the moment against the intense and vicious US blockade, and threats of military invasion. This is a simplistic criticism of Beijing that essentially amounts to wanting China to do a deus […]
For most workers, whether living standards are improving comes down to something fairly tangible: what comes into the household and what has to go out again. A pay rise matters because it increases the claim a worker can make on the goods and services produced by society, but that gain […]
January 3, 2026, marked a turning point in Venezuela’s contemporary political history. The U.S. military intervention, the bombings of national territory, and the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores constituted an open violation of sovereignty and gave way to a new balance of power, in which the United States […]
Turmoil has characterised international bond markets across September. As a reminder, governments borrow money mainly by issuing bonds. Investors lend money to governments, receiving interest in return, with the original sum repaid later. Bonds are bought by typically large financial institutions: banks, pension funds, insurance companies and investment funds. They […]
The Communist Party of Ireland calls for a sovereign, socialist, reunited Ireland. The CPI, in the tradition of Connolly, has always maintained that political independence from Britain would not in itself lead to genuine sovereignty. The history of the 26-county state bears this out. It has all the formal legal […]
Have pay increases for teachers kept pace with inflation over the last number of years? No, the same as the rest of the public service and, more broadly, most workers. Pay increases under the “Building Momentum” pay deal and the first two years of the Public Service Agreement 2024–26 amounted […]
On 27 September, the Swiss people voted on a popular initiative (propositional referendum) aimed at enshrining the country’s permanent neutrality in the Federal Constitution. The initiative was rejected, receiving 29.85% of the vote nationally, against 70.15%. Although the initiative originated primarily from the nationalist right wing, around businessman and former […]
Dear readers, I watched the EU State of the Union address so you don’t have to. Similar to the wearing of sashes by MEPs in parliament sessions, the annual address by the EU president is one of those unusual rituals which no EU citizen seems to know or care is […]
Ireland is approaching a significant confrontation between organised labour and the State. The public service pay agreement expired at the end of June, without a successor agreement or formal negotiations. Since then, unions representing workers across healthcare, education, local government, the civil service and State agencies have balloted their members […]
During his recent visit to Ireland, Donald Trump behaved much as expected. Unwilling to share the limelight, he stole attention from Shane Lowry, winner of the Irish Open, by announcing a lifting of tariffs on Irish whiskey exports to the USA. This populist gesture in Doonbeg was, however, superseded by […]
The Irish political and military establishments, state bureaucracy, mass media and numerous “think tanks” continue in their carefully crafted strategy to end the neutrality of this state and turn our country into an unsinkable platform for NATO. They want this state to be the new poster boy for NATO. The […]
Organised Workers have had enough! The Communist Party of Ireland welcomes the clear mandate from public sector workers for industrial action over pay and conditions in the public sector. Unions across the public sector have been returning massive ballot results in favour of industrial action demonstrating that public sector workers […]
The undemocratic attack on Irish neutrality by the Government has reached a fever pitch. As a neutral country we should be using the EU Presidency to promote peace and dialogue to end conflicts and to encourage the EU to pull back from increasing militarisation. In effect, quite the opposite is […]
Havana, 7-8th of August 2026 “Maidin mhaith a gcomradaithe, Buenos días camaradas, Good morning comrades.” Pól Mac Phádraig Communist Party of Ireland National Political Committee National Executive Committee International Secretary It is an honour to be amongst Communists here in Havana at such a critical time for the Cuban Revolution. […]
Organised Workers have had enough! The Communist Party of Ireland welcomes the clear mandate from public sector workers for industrial action over pay and conditions in the public sector. Unions across the public sector have been returning massive ballot results in favour of industrial action demonstrating that public sector workers […]
The undemocratic attack on Irish neutrality by the Government has reached a fever pitch. As a neutral country we should be using the EU Presidency to promote peace and dialogue to end conflicts and to encourage the EU to pull back from increasing militarisation. In effect, quite the opposite is […]
This summer, Belfast saw the worst of its colonial legacy, and the best of its working-class resistance. In June, racist pogroms tore through the city while the state stood by. By August, Féile an Phobail offered a different vision: solidarity over division; internationalism over ethnonationalism. At the heart of that […]
Meabhrú, athrá agus crácamas – na trí haspal de chúrsa na hArdteiste. Tá sé soiléir go bhfuil an córasoideachais in Éirinn seanfhaiseanta – nach bhfuil sé in am é a athrú? Ar fud na tíre feictear easpa múinteoirí agus acmhainní oideachasúla, chomh maith le scoláirí traochta tar éis seacht n-uaire […]
A lot has been written and said over the past month about Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann in Belfast, culture, and partition. While being able to somewhat accurately report on the effects of the Fleadh, the majority of the commentariat struggles with an analysis of historical developments that have brought us […]
UK consumer price inflation, the relevant measure for the North’s economy, was at 2.6% in June, down from 2.8% in May. Food inflation was just 1.7%, below the rates experienced during the 2022–2024 inflationary spike. The inflation rate has fallen, but the general price level remains roughly 30% above where […]
The 450th anniversary of Titian’s death on 27 August 1576 offers an opportunity to revisit a Venetian master whose long career coincided with the emergence of early capitalism. His seventy-year creative life spanned almost three-quarters of the sixteenth century, a period of profound social transformation. His art reflects both the […]
Havana, 7-8th of August 2026 “Maidin mhaith a gcomradaithe, Buenos días camaradas, Good morning comrades.” Pól Mac Phádraig Communist Party of Ireland National Political Committee National Executive Committee International Secretary It is an honour to be amongst Communists here in Havana at such a critical time for the Cuban Revolution. […]
In the spring of 1920, as the young Soviet Republic struggled for survival amid internal and external siege, Lenin penned “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder. The pamphlet took aim precisely at those West European communists who considered themselves “more Left” than the Bolsheviks. Lenin pointed out that this “Left-wing” infantilism “regards […]
“In my opinion, the greatest act of treachery ever perpetrated by the Free State Government was when De Valera brought over to Ireland the British hangman Albert Pierrepoint, who just a few years previously had hanged three other Irishmen – Barnes, McCormack and Tom Williams – to hang another soldier […]
The Irish people are broadly ‘left-wing’ when we look at support for typically social-democratic or socialist positions on things like collective bargaining, housing, healthcare, neutrality and transport. Yet combinations of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael continue to be elected and form Governments who actively deliver against these popular positions time […]
This is the second in a five-part series on the politics of power. The first asked what makes rights and freedoms real. This article examines what happens when they come into conflict. Consider a home. To the person living in it, whether tenant or owner-occupier, it is somewhere to live […]
On 29 August 2026, Icelanders rejected EU accession by 52.8% to 47.2%, on an extraordinary 82.5% turnout. The verdict was a decisive rejection of Brussels’ neoliberal discipline and the erosion of national sovereignty—a rejection that carries profound lessons for Ireland. Iceland’s EU path has been ambivalent. It applied in 2009 […]
In May of this year, the Minister for Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, Jack Chambers, TD, published details of an enhanced expenditure control and escalation process to curb what was described as out-of-control spending. It was stated by the Minister that spending was already over the 6% […]
There is a long history of powerful, dominant states practising what we might describe as defining or controlling the narrative. This is done by steering public opinion so that one specific interpretation becomes dominant within society. The objective is to ensure that those in power retain their position by building […]
In many bourgeois liberal democracies, analysts have become anxious about the “crisis of democracy” – i.e. the loss of support for the traditional parties. Some commentators look outside the system and blame interference by Russian and Chinese state agencies. More realistic defenders of bourgeois democracy locate the crisis within the […]
