Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
Two bastions of unionist domination of employment in the North, Harland and Wolff and Wrightbus, are threatened with closure. The demise of the shipyard is a direct result of the geopolitical struggle to control the price of oil, in which the present owners, Dolphin Drilling, have been heavily exposed. Workers […]
When the latest phase of the global crisis of capitalism manifested itself through the financial markets in 2007–09, the “Celtic Tiger” collapsed. The Irish establishment, under direct pressure from the European Union, took responsibility for 42 per cent of the total of European banking debt. We bailed out German, French […]
Monagear, Co. Wexford7 September 2019Address by Gearóid Ó Machail, Peadar O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forum A chomrádaithe, I dtús báire, ba mhaith liom buíochas a gabháil le Cumann Pheadair Uí Dhálaigh as an chuireadh labhairt libh anseo i Móin na gCaor, Contae Loch Garman, inniu mar ionadaí d’Fhóram Pheadair Uí Dhónaill […]
The National Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Ireland at its regular meeting in late September discussed and evaluated both the national and the international situation. There are growing signs of a deepening global economic slowdown. The system may be facing into a new recession, with a combination of […]
Thanks, capitalism. You started off all right and all, but I’m afraid you have to leave! You’ve eaten, binned or hidden all the food, you’ve drunk all the drink or poured it down the sink, you’ve blocked all the toilets and used up all the paper. You’ve left the taps […]
Supermarkets are steadily installing more and more self-service check-outs (and even boasting about it), at the same time getting rid of workers, or at least not replacing those who leave. In some branches an assistant is given the job of collaring shoppers in the queue for the check-out and persuading […]
The party of law and order “Mussolini—incomparably the greatest of living statesmen …”—Desmond Fitzgerald TD, Irish Independent, 8 July 1927 On the Wearing of Uniform Bill (intended to ban the paramilitary uniform of the Blueshirts, passed in March 1934 but defeated in the Seanad): “… the Blackshirts were victorious in […]
Following the Bolsonaro regime’s fascist assault on the Amazon, Macron and his loyal mimic Varadkar had to look like they were being tough on the Brazilian strongman. The mechanism they chose to use to show their new-found environmental conscience was to threaten to withhold the Mercosur trade deal unless it […]
On the night of the census in 2016 there were 429 homeless students in Ireland, making up over 8 per cent of the total homeless numbers. When the Government’s student accommodation strategy was launched in July 2017 there was an excess demand in purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) of over 23,000 […]
The November 2015 issue of Socialist Voice reported on the closure of Clery’s department store in Dublin in June 2015 with the loss of 130 jobs and about 300 operators of franchises. The background is as follows. Gordon Brothers had bought the store in 2012, when it had bank debt […]
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was one of the greatest Enlightenment painters. He died 350 years ago this month at the age of sixty-three. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the Flemish cloth trade had developed into the strongest competitor of Florentine cloth-makers and traders, giving rise to a growing Dutch […]
After the victory of the right wing in the elections of 1990, the Sandinistas began a period of what they called “governing from below.” The new neo-liberal government increased the already massive foreign debt, cut wages, privatised industries, and slashed funds for health and education. In 2003 the former president […]
Have you ever wondered why the Fine Gael government, supported by its Fianna Fáil bedfellows, decided to publish the budget a few short days before it was expected that Britain would leave the European Union? Let’s face it, who in Dublin could have anticipated the mess Boris Johnson created for […]
The world is at a crossroads. We can change the system, or the system will change our climate catastrophically. A recent study by the World Meteorological Organisation has shown that global warming is increasing in pace—along with the growth in capitalism—despite measures being taken to stop it. As a result […]
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 […]
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 […]