The 8th of March each year has continued to grow in popularity around the world as a day on which to recognise and celebrate women in general. But this increase in popularity stems from a growing disconnection from the radical socialist roots of what was once widely known as International […]
History
“A social order worthy of the human race”
The 150th birthday of Rosa Luxemburg On 5 March 2021 we celebrate the 150th anniversary of Rosa Luxemburg’s birth. No-one who wishes to get a sense of Rosa Luxemburg as a person, both political and private, will regret watching Margarethe von Trotta’s meticulously researched film of the same name, made […]
Memorial to a forgotten revolution
Suomenlinna is a beautiful little island off the coast of Helsinki. A regular boat service (part of the public transport system) ferries residents, navy cadets and tourists alike to the island in about fifteen minutes. On the trip across, depending on the time of year, you can be met by […]
The natives are restless
One of the defining marks of a colony (or neo-colony) is its adoption of the ideology, and especially the language, of the conqueror.
The birth and growth of the Connolly Youth Movement
THERE HAS been a lot of discussion lately in left circles about the relationship between the Connolly Youth Movement and the Communist Party of Ireland, a relationship, it must be said, that is going through a difficult time at the moment.
In an attempt to give some context and to clarify some historical aspects of the relationship, Socialist Voice asked Seán Edwards (CPI international convenor and a founder-member of the CYM) and Eddie Glackin (CPI education convenor and a former general secretary of the CYM) for their recollections of the formation and early years of the CYM and its relationship with the party.
O’Donnell Forum weekend of webinar to celebrate “War for Independence”
For anyone interested in politics, the last weekend in November’s online festival, organised by the Peadar O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forum, offered a wide range of views…
From the Plough to the stars
■ From the Plough to the Stars: An Anthology of Working People’s Prose from Contemporary Ireland “The cooks, the cleaners, the porters: Unsung heroes on the frontline,” the Irish Times declared in early May 2020, suddenly recognising that a society cannot function without the working class, for just a brief […]
Beethoven and the Ode to Joy
Like few other composers, Beethoven expresses the will for freedom, the democratic longing of the people. His music is the continuation of the French Revolution through the means of art; his Ninth Symphony is a hymn to the humanist utopia of the equality of all humankind. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony The […]
Engels and marriage
FRIEDRICH ENGELS, whose 200th birthday falls on 28 November, had a very personal connection with Ireland. Soon after being sent to help run the family textile factory in Manchester in 1842 he met twenty-year-old Mary Burns, daughter of an Irish dyer. Engels’s friend the revolutionary German poet Georg Weerth wrote a poem about Mary after he met the couple.
Celebrating the people’s struggle for a progressive republic
COVID-19 has not been all bad news for those who govern Ireland’s 26-county state. Apart from giving Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin continuing opportunities to pose solemnly in front of the television cameras it has allowed the Irish establishment to quietly ignore seminal events of a century ago.
The origins of the climate crisis
The origins of the climate crisis – Joe FlemingDownload Out of the green fields of southern England, in the same century in which Shakespeare penned his pastoral comedies and the Tudors initiated a new phase of Ireland’s conquest, a novel form of economics arose. A terrible force, only nascent, long […]
No limit to servility
There appears to be simply no depth to which the establishment will not sink to show what faithful servants they are to imperialism and in particular to British imperialism. The Irish people endured centuries of colonial and imperialist domination. They endured mass starvation, violent oppression, the destruction of our language […]
The return of the “German spirit”
A NUMBER OF misconceptions are perpetuated when it comes to the dismantling of the inner-German border as the first step to the annexation of the German Democratic Republic by the Federal Republic of Germany. It has been deceptively described as a “peaceful revolution.” True, the GDR state did not oppress the protesters, and it carried out one of the demands, which was to open the border between East and West. However, the West German state began to campaign aggressively
Peter Daly Commemoration
Monagear, Co. Wexford7 September 2019Address by Gearóid Ó Machail, Peadar O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forum A chomrádaithe, I dtús báire, ba mhaith liom buíochas a gabháil le Cumann Pheadair Uí Dhálaigh as an chuireadh labhairt libh anseo i Móin na gCaor, Contae Loch Garman, inniu mar ionadaí d’Fhóram Pheadair Uí Dhónaill […]
Pages from history
The party of law and order “Mussolini—incomparably the greatest of living statesmen …”—Desmond Fitzgerald TD, Irish Independent, 8 July 1927 On the Wearing of Uniform Bill (intended to ban the paramilitary uniform of the Blueshirts, passed in March 1934 but defeated in the Seanad): “… the Blackshirts were victorious in […]
Forty years of the Nicaraguan Revolution – Part 2
After the victory of the right wing in the elections of 1990, the Sandinistas began a period of what they called “governing from below.” The new neo-liberal government increased the already massive foreign debt, cut wages, privatised industries, and slashed funds for health and education. In 2003 the former president […]