Current Affairs

Current Affairs

Ye are many—they are few Percy Bysshe Shelley and the struggle against tyranny

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On 16 August 1819 tens of thousands of working men and women demonstrated at a place known as St Peter’s Field in Manchester, demanding reform and the repeal of the Corn Laws. The yeomanry and then hussars were ordered to attack, killing eighteen people and injuring more than four hundred. With the recent memory of the Battle of Waterloo, this slaughter went down in history as Peterloo. Shelley reacted with one of the earliest works of socialist literature, his famous ballad “The Mask of Anarchy.” This month we mark the 200th anniversary of those events and of Shelley’s great poem.

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Current Affairs History Ireland

Féile na bhFlaitheartach, 2019

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Tom O’Flaherty, who helped to organise trade unions in the United States in the 1930s and became an accomplished writer in both English and Irish, will be honoured at Féile na bhFlaitheartach, which takes place on Árainn on the weekend of 24 and 25 August. The festival, now in its seventh year, celebrates the writings and work of Liam and Tom O’Flaherty.

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Current Affairs Ireland Socialism

CPI summer school: An assessment

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The recent CPI national school on 21–23 June began with the national chairperson giving a good introduction, which was followed by a brief talk on Irish history, with a different slant on the roles played by the state and its allies the church and its sycophantic followers.
Questions were posed to the audience about how we can change the tide of political discourse and about recent phenomena

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Current Affairs Housing Ireland

Raise the roof!

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Last month we saw the largest housing demonstration in Dublin so far, under the banner of Raise the Roof, as more than 20,000 citizens took to the streets. This campaign, launched by the ICTU, is going from strength to strength as the trade union movement takes the lead, uniting with […]

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Current Affairs Ireland

The next property crash is looming

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The last property crash was brought about by a combination of banks lending on the basis of spurious calculations, massaging their own financial data, and inflated property prices that were completely divorced from reality. Following the collapse, property prices adjusted back to more realistic values. The Government bailed out the […]

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Current Affairs

Vote left!

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This month we face a number of electoral choices: local elections, elections for the EU Parliament, and a proposed amendment to the Constitution. The local elections have produced a staggering number of small parties and independents, hoping to be elected to what is in fact powerless local government. Real power […]

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