“Tá dualgas ar gach saoránach Gaeilge a labhairt.” [“Every citizen has a duty to speak Irish.”] These words of Máirtín Ó Cadhain, spoken in an earlier era of struggle, are finding new resonance in today’s Ireland. Across the nation, and particularly among the younger generations, a quiet but determined reconquest […]
Culture
Book Review: From the Bog to the Cloud: A Bestseller We Need
From the Bog to the Cloud is the bestselling book Ireland needs—a rigorous analysis of the nation’s place in the world and a strategic guide for how to change it through principled, anti-imperialist struggle. Authors Patrick Bresnihan and Patrick Brodie dissect an Ireland locked snugly between the competing yet collaborative […]
Book Review: The Open Wound – Liadán Ní Chuinn’s Anatomy of Intergenerational Trauma
Liadán Ní Chuinn’s stunning short story collection is a courageous, unflinching diagnosis of an open wound. That wound is the legacy of the conflict in the British-occupied Six Counties. Ní Chuinn’s genius is to move beyond the strictly political to explore its precise, cellular-level damage within the nationalist community—how state […]
Music, poetry, comedy and theatre performances at Connolly Books during December.
Music, poetry, comedy and theatre performances at Connolly Books during December. Leading musicians, comedians and actors will perform live shows in Connolly Books, and its associated New Theatre, every Thursday, Friday and Saturday in December. Launching on the 4th, it is a celebration of the largely youth-driven renaissance in Irish […]
Festival Granma Rebelde
The 3rd International Meeting of the Theoretical Publications of Leftist Parties and Movements (15–17 October) and the 1st Festival Granma Rebelde (17–19 October) constituted an important programme leading to the Cuban National Culture Day on 20 October this year. Organised in a period of extreme difficulty for the people of […]
Shostakovich’s 13th Symphony ‘Babi Yar’: A Profound Reflection on Soviet Society, History, and Humanism
In 1962, Shostakovich composed his 13th Symphony, based on five poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko. These poems reflect on Soviet society during the 1950s and 60s, exploring themes ranging from the suffering caused by Nazi Germany and the resilience found in humour, to the trauma of Stalinism and the strength of […]
Crime, Drugs, and Class: Breaking Ireland’s Cycle of Despair
Ireland’s working-class communities have lived with the shadow of the drug trade for decades. From the heroin epidemic of the 1980s to today’s cocaine economy, drugs have carved deep scars through families, schools, and neighbourhoods. Entire generations were written off, while governments looked away. Today, the problem remains as sharp as ever. […]
Book Review: The Searchers: Five Rebels, Their Dream of a Different Britain, and Their Many Enemies – Andy Beckett, Allen Lane, 2024
Ten years on from the unlikely victory of Jeremy Corbyn in the British Labour Party leadership contest, and his subsequent exile from the Labour Party following a Zionist-led smear campaign over accusations of antisemitism, it has to be asked if there’s anything new to say about that brief moment when […]
Capitalism with Labubu Characteristics
Forbes magazine is calling them a “good investment”, a “strong market collectible for years to come”. From K-pop superstars Blackpink, to Karl Marx’s grave in London’s Highgate Cemetery, Labubus (small, rabbit-eared plush toys) are taking the world by storm. With the rarest varieties selling for up to $150,000, fans have […]
Book Review: Nuclear War – A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen
The existential threat posed against humans are climate change, nuclear war and AI, all three are linked to a capitalist mode of production and the production relation it entails. The last time an apocalypse happened was 65 million years ago when an asteroid collided with earth before the emergence of […]
Book Review: Pink Roses, Green by Clíodhna Bhreatnach
It was about time. Clíodhna Bhreatnach’s Pink roses, green is a collection of poems about working time. While that may, at first, seem as a reductive description of the broad set of themes Bhreatnach captures in her verse, this collection reminds us just how wide and all-encompassing the concept is. […]
Shostakovich’s 13th Symphony ‘Babi Yar’: A Profound Reflection on Soviet Society, History, and Humanism
In 1962, Shostakovich composed his 13th Symphony, based on five poems by Yevtushenko. These poems reflect on Soviet society during the 1950s and 60s, exploring themes ranging from the suffering caused by Nazi Germany and the resilience found in humour, to the trauma of Stalinism and the strength of suffering […]
Palestinian GAA is a shared experience
From at least the 11th Century, Irish people have lived experience of genocide, imprisonment, starvation and expulsion from their land; and Ireland. Outside of Ireland, they have also experienced racism, inequality and exploitation. Countless Irish people have been excluded, banned and even deported from countries, just because they were Irish […]
Kneecap - Soundtrack to the Struggle, But Not the Struggle Itself
In an era of cultural homogenisation and sanitised commercial music, Irish language, punk-rap trio Kneecap stand out as a raw, unapologetic expression of working-class resistance and international solidarity with the oppressed. Their explosive rise to fame is not just a musical phenomenon but a political one—rooted in anti-imperialism, socialist struggle, and […]
Book Review: Blue Collar Empire by Jeff Schuhrke
Trade unions resist capitalism but do not abolish it. However, Lenin said trade unions are the schools for revolution: it is from there the communist parties traditionally draw their cadres. For a worker, trade union consciousness is natural because they fight for wages to survive, but the fight for socialism […]
Glastonbury
A poem in Irish and English by Gabriel Rosenstock (for Kneecap) Glastonbury Legend has it that Jesus himself came here With Joseph of Arimathea. Jesus the Carpenter lent a hand to build a church Of clay and wattles made Incitement of love was His desire […]
