Month: July 2022

Letters

Pride is a protest

On Saturday 25 June members and comrades of the CPI joined a protest organised by the Connolly Youth Movement on Rosie Hackett Bridge to protest against the take-over of pride by companies that solely see us as a means to profit, by people who have historically oppressed LGBT minorities and […]

Books

Two book launches

This month Connolly Books will play host to two book launches.      On 15 July, at 7pm, Conor Magahy will launch his first book, Posh Mackers, a moving and at times humorous account of his early childhood in Dublin, set between the years 1978 and 1988. It tells the story […]

Culture Gaeilge - Irish Language Poetry

War poet

The short life of Sidney Keyes (1922–1943) is in itself a striking metaphor for the cruelty and futility of war. He was killed in action before his twenty-first birthday in Tunisia. His book The Cruel Solstice (1944) can be read on Faded Page (tinyurl.com/4282dd4u).      Keyes was an unusual poet, […]

Culture Poetry

“Let the axe strike at the root”

Engels said about Shelley: “Byron and Shelley are read almost exclusively by the lower classes; no ‘respectable’ man is likely to have the latter’s work on his table without coming into the most terrible disrepute.”      Born shortly after the French Revolution, Shelley was heir to a substantial estate and […]

International Opinion

There is a better way

Recently I had the good fortune to travel to the United States for a week. It was, to say the least, an eye-opener.      Among the grandeur of the superwealth that I witnessed in New York I saw sights that for me were emotionally draining and shocking.      I went […]

Featured International

Left victory in Colombia

The electoral victory of Gustavo Petro in Colombia is, without a doubt, one of the most significant political developments in Latin America in the last decade.      Colombia has traditionally been a stronghold of conservatism. The left and social movements have been routinely devastated for seven decades of unabashed right-wing […]

Featured Socialism

On transphobia

Recently, right-wing and liberal media have been attacking trans people in increasingly vicious ways. How can we analyse this from a left-wing viewpoint?      In 1919 Lenin said the following in a speech on anti-Semitism: “The hate of the workers and peasants, the landowners and capitalists tried to divert against […]

Opinion

Another blind alley

If the old adage that “you can know a man by the company he keeps” is true, then it seems the New Connolly Youth Movement is in a very confused place. On 18 June the New CYM attended the gathering of the Belfast-based Unity group, which has “reconstituted” itself as […]

Current Affairs Featured

Inflation and starvation

Capitalism is a system that has an innate tendency to get into a cul-de-sac of crisis, and the only way it knows for coming out of crisis is by further exploitation of the working class.      The cost-of-living crisis—caused by inflation, which eats up the earnings of the working class […]

Featured International Political Statements

Why does Ireland refuse to campaign for peace in Ukraine?

The world still applauds the great effort that our government made in advocating negotiations for peace that led to a settlement, and the 1998 Good Friday Agreement on this island.      So why is our present government rejecting neutrality and refusing to lead the campaign for negotiations for peace to […]