Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
A recent study by the Think Tank for Action on Social Change (TASC), The State We Are In: Inequality in Ireland Today, throws up a lot of interesting facts about life in Ireland. The survey points out that Ireland’s low union density leads to low pay and high rates of […]
Addressing his partners at the Fianna Fáil ard-fheis last month, the leader of the SDLP, Colum Eastwood, drew inspiration from the president of the EU Council, Donald Tusk, and told the audience that “there will be a special place reserved in Hell for those who call for a border poll […]
The attempted coup d’état of 23 January in Venezuela is unique in one respect: it was promoted and organised openly and publicly by the government of the United States, supported by its allies and client states in Europe and Latin America. One hundred years ago the United States declared its […]
The situation in Venezuela continues to deteriorate as the illegal sanctions imposed by the United States (Trump’s policy, a continuation of Obama’s) and the European Union continue to have an impact upon workers, the urban and rural poor and farmers. The Venezuelan oligarchs have used every possible manoeuvre—economic, political, and […]
“The bourgeoisie turns everything into a commodity, hence also the writing of history. It is part of its being, of its condition for existence, to falsify all goods: it falsified the writing of history. And the best-paid historiography is that which is best falsified for the purposes of the bourgeoisie.” […]
The Trade Union Left Forum is holding a public meeting and discussion workshop on anti-union legislation and how it affects the Irish working class, north and south. The purpose of the forum is to encourage and initiate serious examination and debate on the major questions facing the labour movement today […]
Priscilla Metscher, Pioneers of Women’s Emancipation in Ireland (Connolly Books, Dublin, 2018) This fascinating study stands out as a commentary on Irish fighters for women’s emancipation, written from a Marxist viewpoint. The author, Priscilla Metscher, examines in turn the ideas and activities of Mary Ann McCracken, Anna Doyle Wheeler, William […]
Last month the United States withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces [INF] Treaty, which was concluded with the Soviet Union in 1987. That treaty was the first nuclear disarmament agreement ever to be concluded between the two countries, albeit to the disadvantage of the Soviet Union. It led to the […]
There has been a growth in resistance by workers and demands for increased wages, for better terms and conditions, and for union recognition. Pay and conditions for nurses have deteriorated with the continuing “austerity,” and during February nurses and midwives were the latest group of workers to organise and strike […]
Many regions on the outskirts of Dublin have been plagued in recent years by an invasion of aggressive gulls, which soil houses and clothes-lines and scatter refuse, as well as killing smaller birds. Most people, it seems, have either not speculated about the cause of this new plague or else […]
Arrival, a recent and popular sci-fi film based on the Ted Chiang novella Story of Your Life, and China Miéville’s perennially popular Embassytown both build on a long tradition of fiction challenging and examining the power of language. These are especially interesting because of their focus on the interaction of […]
Part 2 ■ Part 1 of this article was published in February. All the wealth created by labour in the production process is appropriated by capital, only appearing in its money form in the exchange process, with a portion of the proceeds then being redistributed back to labour through the […]
23 February to 6 March Israeli Apartheid Week is an international series of events that seeks to raise awareness about Israel’s apartheid regime and to build support for the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement and to help in grass-roots organising for effective solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle. […]
On Monday 11 March at 3 p.m. in the Luke Wadding Library in Waterford Institute of Technology, Prof. Anthony Coughlan will relaunch the classic biography of James Connolly by Desmond Greaves. Prof. Coughlan is editor of the newly republished Connolly biography and is Greaves’s literary executor. He wrote the introduction […]