Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
What on earth was going on here last month? To all appearances a supposedly sovereign independent republic immersed itself in sympathy and affection for the British monarchy. Within hours of the announcement of Elizabeth’s death, RTE had a crew broadcasting solemnly from London. The Government fell over backwards in its […]
The women of Iran have risen up, with cries of “Down with the dictator!” The catalyst has been the murder of Mahsa (Zhina) Amini, a 22-year-old woman murdered at the hands of the Gasht-e Ershād (Guidance Patrol), otherwise known as the morality police. She was arrested on 13 September for […]
In whose interests was the Nord Stream gas pipeline sabotaged? In the last week of September there were a number of leaks in Nord Stream 1 and 2, culminating on 29 September in a major rupture. The construction of the Nord Stream pipeline cost billions, to bring natural gas from […]
The coalition government of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party has announced its 2023 budget. This is taking place in a period of growing inflation, rising energy costs, and falling consumer confidence and spending. The increase in social welfare payments comes nowhere near meeting the rate of inflation. […]
As every worker knows, the cost of living is spiralling far beyond pay increases. More and more working families have their backs against the wall, trying to survive. In particular, the cost of energy has been rising for the last eighteen months or more, which has been added to from […]
This is an old story that is told in Marxist circles, still relevant, and never loses its novelty. It’s a conversation between a little girl and her mother during a cold winter evening in London when the father has not returned after going out in search of a job. The […]
On the 1st of February this year the Cuban government began drafting a new family code for the country’s constitution. This new family code will change how the state sees a family, which will broaden rights for many citizens, including children and the LGBTQ+ community. The drafting of the new […]
Two bilingual tanka, in Irish and English, “Hail the Deserters” and “Weeping in their Graves,” 31-syllable poems (5-7-5-7-7), in response to work by two Irish artists, William Orpen and Seán Keating. When the First World War broke out, Orpen’s assistant, Seán Keating, returned to Ireland, avoiding conscription, but Orpen stayed […]
At the end of July the Communist Party of Ireland participated in an on-line International Marxist Parties Forum organised by the Communist Party of China. The theme of the forum was “Adapting Marxism to the National Conditions and the Times of the 21st Century.” The CPI was represented by Eugene […]
It is often said that to know how things work you need to live that experience. Over the last number of years, be it on my holidays in the occupied Six Counties or listening to friends and family, I have heard so many stories of a system that isn’t working […]
This March 8th, we observe International Working Women’s Day or IWWD, but the first unofficial women’s day took place in America on the 28th of February 1909. In 1910 Clara Zetkin proposed that an international working women’s day would be observed every year at the Conference of Working Women. March […]
“The white man’s burden” was a phrase used to justify colonial aggression, which meant it was the duty of the white man to teach civilisation to the world. But what actually happened was unprecedented atrocities, unknown in the history of human civilisation. Now the United States has taken up the […]
Does anybody know what real purpose Seanad Éireann serves? Not only is its membership appointed by a flawed and undemocratic process but its programme is erratic and tendentious and frequently overlooks crucial issues. Little illustrates this better than its agenda last month. While giving prejudicial vent to its hostility towards […]
Irish republicanism has always had a weak spot when it comes to history. While we can name every battle, every martyr and graveyard in this country’s perennial struggle for sovereignty and independence, we fail to look at the bigger picture and learn the lessons of that history. Much will be […]
We are told that public education is free. However, you don’t need to look very far into how the public education system works to see that this simply isn’t true. The public school system, which is supposed to be financed by the tax that working people pay, is filled with […]
Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think […]