I was just wondering if someone could pass my compliments on to Graham Harrington for his latest article (“Irish decolonisation,” 4 October 2022). It was a great exploration of the all too commonplace “colonised” Irish mindset/psyche through the lens of Marxism, with especially welcome emphasis on the Irish language. Graham’s […]
Month: November 2022
Partition grinding to a close
Once again the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly have failed to elect a first minister and deputy first minister and have now been mothballed pending the ability of the British secretary of state for “Northern Ireland” to pull a rabbit out of the hat regarding the Protocols, or to persuade […]
Building the unity of our class
A spectre is haunting sections of the Irish left: the spectre of Irish reunification. Ever since Britain voted for Brexit—a position supported by the CPI—the political tectonic plates upon which the partition of Ireland rests have become unstable. The emergence of Sinn Féin as the largest party in the Stormont […]
Capitalism—Red in tooth and claw
There is a German word, schadenfreude, meaning to take pleasure from another’s misfortunes. Watching the convulsions wracking the British Conservative Party, this writer is surely not alone in experiencing a large degree of that same feeling. Not since the Suez crisis of 1956 has a British government found itself in […]
Ideological struggle and party education
Party education is a continuous process. It is like riding a bicycle: we have to keep pedalling to maintain balance; if we don’t, the momentum will only take us a certain distance, after which we will fall. As the capitalist crisis becomes deeper there will be greater ideological attack on […]
Refugees, neutrality, and growing militarism
At the outbreak of the US-NATO proxy war with Russia fought out in the streets, towns and villages of Ukraine after the Russian invasion of that country, the Government gave a fulsome commitment to taking in up to 100,000 refugees—despite the fact that for decades they have been saying that […]
NATO and nuclear weapons
On 29 October 1983, 550,000 people gathered in the middle of the Hague to protest against nuclear weapons being placed in the Netherlands. This is still the biggest protest the country has ever seen, and was a clear mandate against nuclear weapons. As a result of this and other mass […]
Northern census ignores class, imperialism, and the 99%
There’s great talk these days and crunching of numbers in relation to the new census results in the north of Ireland. Mostly it is being portrayed as the beginning of the end of the control of the North by and for Protestants—and a forlorn hope for the “united Ireland at […]
Donie Corcoran
(1959–2022)
It is with great sadness that the Communist Party of Ireland learnt of the death of Comrade Donie Corcoran, late of Gurranabraher on Cork city’s north side. We offer our deepest sympathy to his family and friends. Donie had been a member of the party since 1983 and was treasurer […]
Shaw sides with working-class women
The immediate social background to George Bernard Shaw’s most famous comedy, Pygmalion (1912), is the growing British women’s suffrage movement at the time. The play is as much about class relations as it is about women’s rights. For Shaw, the two are inseparable. Pygmalion is about practical, intelligent women from […]
The gaslighting of the Anthropocene
In geology, the periods and smaller epochs of Earth’s past are named by the region in which they were first determined as such, or by their characteristics. Well-known periods are the Carboniferous, for its ample coal deposits, and the Jurassic, for the Jura Mountains, where it was first identified. The […]
Left unity
The Cost of Living Coalition had many people taking to the streets during the protest march on the 24th of September. The coalition was a broad range of left-wing organisations, such as People Before Profit, the CPI, the Connolly Youth Movement and other grass-roots movements, such as activists from mica […]
Denmark’s ‘red-bloc’ maintains majority
Denmark’s most decisive election for many years on November 1 st , triggered by the SocialLiberal’s threat to topple the government with a vote of no confidence, proved nonethelesssuccessful for the left-wing bloc led by the Social Democrats, winning 90 of the parliament’s179 seats. Although the Social Democrats ran its […]
The return of Anderson
Badhands, the musical project from Dublin, were the backing group at the Workman’s Club Cellar on Saturday 10 September for Anderson’s first live show in over four years. It was standing room only for a show with no set breaks as they cranked out tune after tune. You could have […]
Vaccination
“Covid vaccination: A more radical solution needed,” written by Raymond Ó Dubhghaill on 3 October 2021. I applaud Raymond for this article. I used to describe myself as left/anarchist/animal liberationist/punk. As a vegan I have been interested in the connection of medicine and animal based research for 30 years. As […]
Religious freedom in Cuba: A constitutional right
Innumerable religious organisations, institutions and fraternal associations exist and function in the Republic of Cuba which have structures at the national, provincial and local levels. For their work they group their members, both in an evangelising function as well as a social and ethical one, in defence of peace, solidarity […]