Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
■ 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 […]
Over recent years a discernible pattern has been emerging in many of those countries that the BBC likes to describe as “parliamentary democracies.” Long-established precedents are being flouted by elected power-brokers in the leading capitalist states. While those who govern on behalf of capitalism have never been reluctant to subvert […]
The 1990 Industrial Relations Act act puts the balance of power firmly on the side of employers and leaves workers powerless during industrial disputes and dependent on the judiciary finding in their favour. Jimmy Doran reports
NEXT YEAR the unashamedly right- wing and sectarian Orange Order will mark the centenary of the creation of the Northern Ireland statelet with “a massive number of events,” the centrepiece of which will be a huge parade from Stormont in May 2021.
ACCORDING TO the BBC, “MI5 has up to 700 staff in Northern Ireland based at regional headquarters in Holywood, County Down. It took over the lead role in intelligence gathering on ‘dissident republicans’ from the police in 2007. The operational framework was set out as part of the St Andrews Agreement a year earlier.”
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 economic crisis facing the Government continues to grow. While economic data paints a much rosier picture of the economy, thanks to the dominance of foreign direct investment (i.e. transnational corporations), the pandemic is having a wider and more lasting impact on the domestic economy, in particular on small and […]
Admittedly we can only ever be certain of death and taxes. With that caution in mind, though, it’s safe to say there is abundant evidence that the once all-powerful Fianna Fáil is sitting on the edge of a political precipice. Over the past decade, its share of the vote at […]
Capital accumulation is one outcome of the irrational motor that drives our economic system. This is no less true for the agricultural sector than it is for industry. As capitalist production advances over time we witness a greater and greater accumulation of capital in fewer and fewer hands. Let’s consider […]
In 2019 there were 37,859 applicants on the social housing list in the north of Ireland. 26,387 of those were deemed to be in priority need of housing, described as housing stress; 74 per cent of those were considered officially homeless. These grim statistics are compounded by the fact that […]
Covid-19 continues to wreak its ill-effects round the globe. Here in Ireland, as in many capitalist countries, the most vulnerable in society have been hardest hit by the virus. In addition to the scandal of the meat-processing plants in the midlands, which saw the pro-business, anti-worker 26-county government “lock down” […]
Covid-19 did not cause overcrowding in schools, but it has exposed it. Schools are reopening with up to thirty people in a confined space for extended periods. There are almost a million children, teenagers and teachers in four thousand schools. In the two weeks before reopening, more than a hundred […]
Articles 1 and 2, “Health of a Nation” (June and August) violate democratic centralism. Both are public attacks on CPI policy. I wrote a 2,500-word article criticising the inadequacy of article 1; article 2 is no better. Between congresses and coming up to congress it is protocol that we discuss […]
Like a game of fantasy football, the establishment media and media pundits fill the pages and the air waves with speculation about how long the present coalition government may last. The coalition of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party, while only in office since 27 June, stumbles and […]
This is the second part of a discussion article offering a detailed look at the effects of partition, at the continued role of British imperialism in Ireland and the effect it has had and continues to have on our people. The focus on public health in the Six Counties argues […]
The hard-boiled readers of this paper rarely recognise the huge difficulties encountered by a right-wing coalition as it endeavours to govern this republic. There is the problem of ensuring that the rich are pampered, and that the middle class receives favourable treatment, and all the while guaranteeing that the working […]