Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
The CAP talks have stalled. That means no new environmental schemes until the powers that be, the parties to the negotiations, are all in bed with big-money capitalism. The result, of course, will benefit large corporations and factories, not small or medium farmers, meat-factory workers, or all the rural workers. […]
As was reported in Socialist Voice in September 2020, the apparently systematic transfer of acute hospital patients to nursing homes, and the ensuing outbreaks and deaths, constitute a scandal of drastic proportions for the Irish state. The facts surrounding this tragic situation require analysis, while official reports have been criticised for taking […]
Manchán Magan, Thirty-Two Words for Field (Dublin: Gill Books, 2020). This acclaimed book ostensibly celebrates the Irish-speaking community in Co. Kerry, where the author spent his holidays as a young man. He explores the rich vocabulary of traditional Irish-speakers and their words for natural phenomena: the weather, the sea, plants, […]
Just as it did with St Patrick’s Day, the state has decided to take over the 1st of February—the beginning of spring, traditionally known as St Brigid’s Day—and convert it into another cheap stunt for promoting tourism and “selling Ireland.” (The only wonder is that there’s anything left to sell.) […]
The news that Britain has applied to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) is a big blow to Irish farmers and rural agri-business workers. The CPTPP is different from the EU, in that it has no customs union or single market. It is a free-trade organisation, […]
Part 1 In March 2017 the Government recognised Irish Travellers as an ethnic minority. This was the culmination of a long campaign by Traveller activists, and while it was a vast improvement on the attitude behind the Report of the Commission on Itinerancy (1963),[1] which saw them as “deviant, destitute […]
It’s easy to misinterpret what’s published in newspapers, and particularly so when the narrative appears favourable to a reader’s own point of view. However, when three pillars of the British establishment’s conservative press publish articles raising doubts about Northern Ireland’s future within the United Kingdom, and all published within the space of one week, it is at least worth reflecting on the significance of this phenomenon.
After nearly half a century of membership of the EEC and then the EU, Britain finally left on 1 January 2021. The period leading up to its departure was heavily choreographed, with displays of brinkmanship, the stock in trade of the European imperial powers of Britain, France and Germany and the other old imperial states of Europe that make up the core of the EU.
The fact that the particular characteristics of Brexit arose out of an inter-imperialist conflict and were determined by the most right-wing forces in Britain may have significantly
Housing policy in both jurisdictions in Ireland has failed the citizens abysmally. One of the sources of communal revolt in the North was the unfair distribution of housing. As only ratepayers and their spouses had a vote in local elections, priority in housing was given to the unionist community, to allow them to control the councils.
The campaign for an all-Ireland public health service, fully funded and free at the point of entry, is gaining momentum around the country. Already three district councils in the North have supported the demand
Ireland’s mental health crisis was already in a bad way before covid; now it’s getting even worse. Covid has not caused the crisis, it has only made it even more serious.
As quarantine conditions worsen, it’s becoming more apparent that isolation and alienation are a serious danger to human beings. Yet alienation is a central component of capitalism as a system.
Dónall Mac Amhlaigh Exiles. Translated by Mícheál Ó hAodha (Parthian, 2020) Awareness of working-class literature is only slowly growing in Ireland. This is not because it has not so far existed – far from it. Working-class people have known and cherished their tradition for a long time, as a source […]
We might see this as amusing, or a bit futuristic. Wrong! It’s here already. Amazon Health, Amazon Pharmacy and Babylon Health, among many others, are testing new “digital medical systems,” where you ask a computer about your health. This, in time, will spell the end of GPs as we know them.
The same systems could be used for cancer consultations or any
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 GOVERNMENT has been forced to postpone a controversial vote on the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA)—a free-trade agreement between the European Union and Canada—until the new year.
It had hoped to have it ratified by the Dáil after a 55-minute debate on 15 December. The vote had already been postponed from October to give the Green Party leader, Eamon Ryan, time to convince his members to support the treaty, which he has failed to do. A number of senior members still have concerns, and they are attempting to
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.