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 […]
Month: September 2019
Capitalism is digging our graves
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 […]
Awareness of risk is not enough
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 […]
Ireland: No. 1 tax haven for American corporations
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 […]
Saving Harland and Wolff shipyard
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 […]
OPINION How I became a republican
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 […]
Forty years of the Nicaraguan Revolution – Part 1
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 […]
They shall not pass!
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. […]
Seize the time
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 […]
Peasant Bruegel
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 […]
How much is health worth under capitalism?
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.
Workers in struggle
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 […]