On Friday 2nd June in Droichead Nua Community Library, Dr. Ruán O’Donnell will give a talk on the history of two lesser-known republican groups Saor Uladh and Saor Éire. The authorities believed such groups, dominated by radical and left-wing elements, to be a front for communist, physical-force republicans. Saor Uladh, […]
History
A story of global terrorism
12 January 2019: The US ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, writes to companies involved in the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, urging them to stop working on the project and threatening them with sanctions if they continue. 2019: The RAND Corporation (an American think tank), in a report […]
Republicans, Marxist-Leninists, and class fighters: The CPI in the 1930s
“The CPI . . . has connected the economic struggles of the workers with the national struggle, drawing militant trade unionists into the national struggle and revolutionary national fighters into the economic struggles.”—An Appeal to IRA Volunteers, published in the Irish Communist, 1934 The Communist Party of Ireland managed to […]
Red Books Day
A group of working men assembled in a bar in London but for a different reason: they were in a hurry to put together a programme for their organisation, the Communist League, which consisted mostly of German migrant workers. They delegated Marx and Engels to carry out the task. The […]
Britain’s role in Palestine and Ireland
105 years of the Balfour Declaration Despite Britain’s current state of political turmoil, with three very different Conservative prime ministers in the same year, there seems to be one constant: they all give unwavering support to Israel in its attempts to crush the Palestinian people. But that should be no […]
Modern McCarthyism and anti-Palestinian racism
In an open letter, 170 British artists reacted angrily to the withdrawal of the European Drama Prize from Caryl Churchill: We are appalled that the Lifetime Achievement Prize awarded to playwright Caryl Churchill for the European Drama Prize 2022 has been rescinded by the jury of the Schauspiel Stuttgart, on […]
Wrongful imprisonment of an Irish communist
In November 2022 it was fifty years since the wrongful imprisonment of Noel Jenkinson, an Irish communist sentenced to life imprisonment, with little or no evidence against him other than his left-wing political beliefs. The charge against him was the Official IRA bomb explosion at the headquarters of the […]
Ninety years of Connolly Books
Since the 1930s, New Books and Connolly Books have been publishing the writings of James Connolly (1868–1916), Ireland’s Marxist pioneer and martyr. Thousands of people first encountered Connolly through the re-publication of his writings in pamphlet and book form by New Books, including Labour in Irish History, Erin’s Hope and […]
“Shooting by roster”
The British and Irish media have been singing the praises of Field-Marshal (retired) Henry Wilson, assassinated outside his home in London on 22 June 1922 by two members of the IRA, seemingly on the orders of the IRB (i.e. Michael Collins). Wilson was a former chief of staff of British […]
The Free Staters’ Red nightmare
Students of the coup d’état of 1922 will be interested in the following letter, which appeared in the Freeman’s Journal of 5 August 1922 under the headline “Irregulars’ Eager Allies | Policy of the Communist Party of Ireland.” The following excerpts from The Workers’ Republic of 28th July—the “official organ […]
The CPI and the Republic
The Communist Party of Ireland was not long formed when it had to grapple with the creation of the Irish Free State by British imperialism. The party was the first to recognise the class nature of the Treaty, and believed that the republicans could win, but only if they adopted […]
Housing: Crisis caused by design
This is not the first time the citizens of Ireland have been faced with a housing emergency. Back in the 1930s and 40s it was solved by building public housing—and it can be done again. From the 1930s until the 1950s, 55 per cent of all housing was built by […]
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 […]
LGBTQ: A united struggle
On 27 June 1974 ten brave souls marched from the Department of Justice in St Stephen’s Green to the British embassy in Merrion Road to highlight the criminalisation of homosexuality in Ireland. This was Dublin’s first pride march. The laws they marched against were the Offences Against the Person Act […]
Imperialism is incompatible with humanism
The New York Times has published a “revelation” about the involvement of French and US imperialism in Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere. Imperialism in form can change from time to time, but in essence it is the extraction of surplus value. During the colonial period the force […]
The first woman in space
On 16 June 1963, only two years after Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, Valentina Tereshkova made world history and became the first woman in space. This was during the height of the Cold War and during the space race, in which the Soviet Union achieved tremendous feats, […]