The crisis of the capitalist economic system continues to grow, and the imposition of limited tariffs on steel imports etc. by the United States is just another symptom of this deepening crisis. The reaction of the liberal establishment in the European Union shows clearly its weakness in relation to the […]
Month: July 2018
Who will fight fascism?
Soviet sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko was credited with killing 309 fascist invaders With the Trump government in the United States turning an already opaque and Kafkaesque machinery of violence against the marginalised into a more overt American fascism, and the rise of the far right throughout Europe, mechanisms of resistance have […]
Fórsa’s first strike
Fórsa, the biggest public-sector union, is in existence since January 2018, but already workers’ rights are under attack. The CEO of Roscommon County Council launched the attack on the issue of flex time. This is not a simple local issue but a challenge to trade unions and workers’ rights in […]
Trade unions must make no excuses
Industrial relations law often works on the assumption that both sides of a dispute are reasonable entities: employers won’t exploit or take advantage of their workers, and in return the workers won’t ask for “too much”; and, just in case, we have trade unions to try to keep the playing-pitch […]
Ireland’s Basque refugees
A very interesting talk on Ireland’s Basque refugees during the Spanish Civil War was given by the political activist Stewart Reddin at the Ubh café in Droichead Nua (Newbridge), Co. Kildare, on Saturday 16 June, as part of June Fest. The café was packed for the talk, with part of […]
More deeply enmeshed in imperialism
A number of events in late June must raise serious concerns regarding the direction in which this state and its political establishment are going, and wish to bring us. Firstly there is the appointment of a former deputy chief constable of the PSNI as commissioner of the Garda Síochána. Relatives […]
Ominous messages for Ireland’s ruling class
While speaking recently in Germany, the left-leaning economist and former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis described Ireland as a tax haven, “free-riding” on the rest of Europe. Coincidentally, within a few days of his address to the IFO Institute for Economic Research in Munich1 two of Europe’s most powerful right-wing […]
What is the Industrial Relations Act?
The Industrial Relations Act (1990) was introduced on 18 July 1990, replacing the Trade Disputes Act (1906), the main principle of which was that anything done in a trade dispute, provided it was not illegal in itself, would be free from criminal and civil liability. The 1990 act was introduced […]
The EU’s crisis of legitimacy
The European Union’s crisis of legitimacy continues to develop, as do the attempts by those elements that call themselves the “liberal centre”—that is, those political parties and the economic interests they serve that are central to the EU’s further integration and are attempting to use that crisis to mask their […]
Emily Brontë, Heathcliff, and the nature of class society
30 July 2018 is the 200th anniversary of Emily Brontë’s birth. Her singular novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), challenges class society in an amazing way. In the mid-1840s England was in the throes of the Industrial Revolution, as described by Engels in The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845). […]
Aid to Syria – Against all odds
When global authorities, including the United Nations, insisted that it was impossible, because of dangerous conditions and sanctions, to provide aid to the people of war-torn Syria, a group of courageous people from Switzerland achieved the “impossible.” The following is an extract from a report written by Eva Heizmann and […]
Opinion – Border Poll
With demographic change, Brexit, and a deadlocked Northern Ireland Assembly, the call for a border poll has been raised more and more often. Under the terms of the Belfast Agreement, a border poll is the only way partition can be ended. It can be allowed to happen only if the […]
Opinion – Marxism in the twenty-first century
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” Two hundred years after the birth of Marx, looking back from our 21st-century vantage point into the middle of the nineteenth century, we ask, How useful is Marxism as a tool for understanding society […]