A recent study by the Think Tank for Action on Social Change (TASC), The State We Are In: Inequality in Ireland Today, throws up a lot of interesting facts about life in Ireland. The survey points out that Ireland’s low union density leads to low pay and high rates of […]
Ireland
Two failed states – A new and very different republic must emerge
Addressing his partners at the Fianna Fáil ard-fheis last month, the leader of the SDLP, Colum Eastwood, drew inspiration from the president of the EU Council, Donald Tusk, and told the audience that “there will be a special place reserved in Hell for those who call for a border poll […]
Build a People’s Dáil
Late in January some three hundred activists from all over Ireland gathered in Liberty Hall, Dublin, to celebrate the centenary of the first Dáil Éireann. The event, organised by the Peadar O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forum, attracted a wide range of forces, including trade union and community activists and women’s and […]
Not just ending partition but undoing the Conquest
Speech by Laura Duggan at the celebration of the first Dáil Éireann26 January 2019 Partition is the political arrangement created by British imperialism as a solution to the colonial crisis caused by the Irish Revolution. Partition and its institutions serve only the interests of imperialism, and we should not invest […]
All will change, change utterly—and for the better
“Oh, words are lightly spoken, said Pearse to Connolly.” This is a line from W. B. Yeats’s poem “The Rose Tree.” It is not, though, something always practised by the establishment in our 26-county republic. Their words are carefully chosen to deliver a message. Moreover, what they say and how […]
A century of unfulfilled aspirations
Much has been written and will be written about the establishment of Dáil Éireann in January 1919 and its adoption of the Democratic Programme. That programme offered the people a vision of a better and more just Ireland, presented as a natural progression from the Proclamation of the Irish Republic […]
Sombre assessments for unionism
“Oxford Union votes down motion on reunification of Ireland” read a recent headline in the Belfast Telegraph. It was the type of news story guaranteed to warm the hearts of delegates gathering in Belfast a few days later for the DUP’s annual conference. Coupled with the attendance at the event […]
Organising to halt our descent into misery
Theresa May once told a Tory party conference that people viewed Conservatives as “the nasty party.” She claimed this was an unfortunate misunderstanding, to be rectified by improving the party’s public-relations campaign. While few readers of Socialist Voice would fall for that type of self-serving nonsense, too many others accept […]
Presidential election – Sinn Féin the big loser
Sinn Féin is the big loser from the presidential election. Given a golden opportunity to present itself as the principal alternative to a triumvirate of Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, and the Labour Party, it offered the Republic’s electorate a package so bland that it blended in with the wallpaper. Surely […]
The Irish left and the European Union
Summary of the talk given by the general secretary of the CPI, Eugene McCartan, at the Desmond Greaves Summer School in September 2018
Fianna Fáil in a bind
Mícheál Martin’s Fianna Fáil is in a bind. The man once described by the Irish Times columnist Miriam Lord as the Grand Old Duke of Cork is still impaled on the horns of a dilemma. He has led his party into a perilous position, leaving it stranded in political no-man’s […]
Balaclavas, evictions, and the state
The true class nature of the Irish state was exposed recently at the eviction of the Take Back the City group from a house in North Frederick Street, Dublin, when employees of a private security firm, masked and armed with sledgehammers and cutting equipment, smashed into the occupied premises while […]
The attack on public transport must be resisted and defeated
The Communist Party of Ireland condemns the attempt at further privatisation by putting out to public tender another 10 per cent of Bus Éireann routes. We are not fooled by the standard neo-liberal dual strategy of starving and running down their target, in this case Bus Éireann, through lack of […]
External powers strive to exert control
On a wet night in February 1912, Winston Churchill, first lord of the admiralty, addressed a cheering crowd of more than seven thousand nationalists gathered in the old Celtic Park football ground in Belfast. He was there to promote the third Government of Ireland Bill (often called the Home Rule […]
Opinion – Border Poll
With demographic change, Brexit, and a deadlocked Northern Ireland Assembly, the call for a border poll has been raised more and more often. Under the terms of the Belfast Agreement, a border poll is the only way partition can be ended. It can be allowed to happen only if the […]
A different Ireland is in the making
What for long appeared unimaginable has seemingly now become inevitable. The Northern state, created with a built-in unionist majority and uncompromising regime, once seemed as permanent a fixture as its grandiose parliament building at Stormont. Not any longer, though. Britain’s Tory prime minister has voiced her doubts about its future […]