Month: October 2018

Housing Ireland

Balaclavas, evictions, and the state

The true class nature of the Irish state was exposed recently at the eviction of the Take Back the City group from a house in North Frederick Street, Dublin, when employees of a private security firm, masked and armed with sledgehammers and cutting equipment, smashed into the occupied premises while […]

International Socialism

A new constitution for Cuba

Social property will be the main basis for production in Cuba after the adoption next year of a new constitution, and this will continue to be the governing principle of the country’s social and economic life. This was the main message of the Cuban deputy minister of foreign affairs, Ana […]

Political Economy

The Rights of Man

Thomas Paine’s famous work Rights of Man was published in 1791. It was written as a reply to Reflections on the Revolution in France by the Anglo-Irish politician Edmund Burke. Burke’s book was an attack on the principles of the French Revolution, written by a representative of the ruling class […]

Culture

Freedom becoming

Thro’ the shattered mainstream of life the waste land bears testimony to the shadow Hear mothers wail for dead children whose fathers slave to re-erect the rubble Upon the rubble their fathers erected This alter for sacrificed generations Build fast! Build furious! Erect the citadels of despair Light high in […]

Culture History

Another world is possible

Twenty years ago, on 8 October 1998, the communist writer José Saramago became the first Portuguese author to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. The first fifty years of Saramago’s life were defined by the fascist dictatorship that ruled Portugal from 1926 to 1974 and his active resistance against it. […]

Culture

Robin Hood, Ireland, and the communists

Robin Hood, the legendary outlaw known throughout the world, has an unusual connection with Ireland, and an even stranger connection with the communist movement. No-one knows for certain whether Robin Hood ever existed or was based on a real individual. There are records of people named Robin Hood or similar […]

Culture

A Star Is Born

A Star Is Born has been remade for the fourth time and was released in Irish cinemas on 5 October. The retelling follows the familiar story of an aging male star—this time the country singer Jackson Maine (played by Bradley Cooper)—who happens across an ordinary woman whose talent is being […]