Current Affairs

Current Affairs

Cost of living or cost of survival?

Sashi Tharoor, the Indian politician who wrote a book on British colonial plunder, An Era of Darkness (2016), once made a satirical remark: “They say the sun never sets on the British empire; that’s because even the god did not trust the British in the dark.” The Queen’s death and mourning have […]

Current Affairs

A budget to reinforce inequality

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. […]

Current Affairs Featured

Inflation and starvation

Capitalism is a system that has an innate tendency to get into a cul-de-sac of crisis, and the only way it knows for coming out of crisis is by further exploitation of the working class.      The cost-of-living crisis—caused by inflation, which eats up the earnings of the working class […]

Current Affairs Trade Unionism

Workers’ world

On 12 May the Local Authority Professional Officers’ (LAPO) section of SIPTU adopted a motion calling for a constitutional referendum to enshrine public ownership of water services in the Constitution of Ireland, to counter the threat of the privatisation of water services. LAPO organises approximately 2,000 local authority professional officers […]

Current Affairs History

On another man’s wound

In a Facebook post on 13 May condemning the Israeli military’s attack on the funeral of the murdered Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, the Connolly Youth Movement made the following claim: “As Irish Republicans we know what it is like to be harassed and attacked while mourning our dead.” During […]

Current Affairs

James Connolly Festival, 2022

In 2022 the James Connolly Festival returned to in-person meetings following disruptions forced upon us through covid restrictions over the past two years. Nearly all events attracted a full house, and this year the festival consolidated itself as an important cultural and political event in the Irish political calendar. The […]