Access for All Ireland is an advocacy group that highlights the difficulties faced by anyone in Ireland with mobility issues. I sat with Brendan Mulvaney, co-founder of the group, to discuss what the organisation’s goals are, how Ireland ranks internationally, and how politics intersects with the issue of accessibility. A: […]
Author: Alan Farrell
Crisis is brought about by the endless quest for profit
As we begin a new year we remain static in the progress of society, entrapped in the system of capitalism. 2022 ended with many people from the Cost of Living Coalition taking part in a protest outside the Dáil on the 17th of December. The protest was against Leo Varadkar […]
Right-wing threat requires united response
How serious is the far-right threat in Ireland today? The question is being widely discussed because of a series of high-profile protests. At first these were outside asylum-seekers’ accommodation, and more recently they targeted Sinn Féin TDs. Prominent members of fascist organisations have taken part in these demonstrations. It is […]
Unions: Organs of struggle or an insurance policy?
Comrade Doran in the last Voice made several thoughtful observations. To this reader, his remark that Irish union members are “infected with a petty-bourgeois outlook, one that views trade union membership as an insurance policy or a last resort, not as organs of solidarity and struggle,” stood out most. His […]
Do not manage poverty
As inflation is making essential goods ever more expensive, increasing numbers of people are relying on food banks. Politicians and the ruling class blame covid-19 and the war in Ukraine for the “cost of living crisis.” Working-class people know otherwise.
Decolonisation
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 […]
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 […]