“More right-wing than Genghis Khan” is an expression often used to describe how far to the right someone is. Whatever about the accuracy of this statement, communists, socialist republicans and the left generally have a particular antipathy to right-wing ideology, and for a myriad of reasons. The first response is […]
Author: Barry Murray
No citizen of Ireland should live in fear
The murder of Aisling Murphy on 12 January on a walking trail known as Fiona’s Way (in memory of the missing woman Fiona Pender) was the most recent case of femicide in Ireland. Women can’t feel safe while walking in the dark, have to watch their drinks in bars, and […]
When artists take the side of the people
The title of Robert Ballagh’s painting The Thirtieth of January makes clear its connection to Goya’s The Third of May. But of course the visual language is also compelling. While in Goya’s picture the outline of Madrid sets the location of the executions in 1808, in Ballagh’s it is the […]
Haiku and tankas
An Croí Ró-Naofa san India A bilingual tanka (5-7-5-7-7 syllables), in response to a mural in Chennai. The tanka is the oldest form of verse still being cultivated today, stretching back 1,300 years to its beginnings in Japan. an Croí Ró-Naofa ar lasadh i ngach cistin fadó in Éirinn ar […]
Time to redefine citizenship
The recent RTE series “Crimes and Confessions” raises a number of important issues. The programmes dealt with three miscarriages of justice, suggesting that the wider context for these events lay in the fall-out from the Northern conflict then taking place. This self-serving explanation may please some but is actually dangerously […]
The Irish establishment are collaborators in NATO military strategies
Statement by the Communist Party of Ireland
Bloody Sunday, 1972: Imperialism’s response to peaceful demands for democratic reforms
Statement by the Communist Party of Ireland
Individualism versus the common good | Covid-19
Throughout the West, since the onset of the covid pandemic, extreme right-wing forces have given political leadership and muscle to much of the anti-mask-wearing, anti-lockdown and anti-vaccination protests. They do so by trading on a genuine distrust of Big Pharma and on an increasing alienation from bourgeois democracy, which is […]
Where to now for union organising and bargaining?
This article will update readers on a couple of interesting and important developments for unionised workers in both the South and the North of Ireland. Two position papers have been published in the last couple of months on union recognition, collective bargaining, and the right to organise, and one piece […]
Green shoots
As we leave behind 2021 and the continuing pandemic, some green shoots have appeared on the industrial front. Workers at Dunne’s Stores represented by Mandate have received a 10 per cent pay increase, which could only have been dreamed about a couple of years ago. Unite had significant victories, securing […]
We can’t go on like this
Two years into the novel coronavirus pandemic and the end seems further away than ever. At the same time it is clearer than ever that the capitalist economic system is hampering our ability both to live with the virus and to mitigate its worst effects. Decades of government policy have […]
Covid and mask-ulinity
The impact of capitalism on women has been discussed in these pages previously, as has the increased risks that women face, both on a personal and a social level, during times of crisis. Women face increased risk of violence from intimate partners during large sports events, are disproportionately affected by […]
A victory against fascism – India
One of the largest and longest mass mobilisations the world has ever seen has forced the right-wing government of the Indian People’s Party (BJP) to repeal the three agriculture laws, and forced the prime minister, Narendra Modi, to apologise to the nation. It is evident that the apology is only […]
Rogha Ghabriel
Sleachta as saothar Ghabriel Rosenstock Extracts from the works of Gabriel Rosenstock Zuckerberg Zuckerberg Zuckerberg! Sliabh siúcra. An ordaíonn do shloinne dhuit an tseirbhe a fholú orainn? Ní searbh a bhí na déagóirí sin sular tháinís-se, tú féin is do chomlachtsa, Instagram, a d’fhág suaite faoina gcolainn féin iad. Mark, […]
Land of the Ever Young
■ Jenny Farrell (editor), Land of the Ever Young: An Anthology of Writing for Children by Working People from Contemporary Ireland (Culture Matters, 2021; €12) If the cultural mainstream is an expression of the ruling ideas in a society, and therefore the ideas of the ruling class, then children’s literature […]
EU court is not an upholder of democracy
The decision of the EU Court of Justice on 27 October ordering Poland to pay the EU Commission a daily penalty of €1 million for failing to comply with an order of the court in July was welcomed by the slavishly pro-EU Irish media as a victory for “democracy” and […]