Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
As we enter 2023, working people are still affected by long-standing problems: shortage of housing, crumbling health service, low wages, precarious work, spiralling rents, and growing inequality. Many of these conditions plague people in the Six Counties, with the added complication caused by British-imposed partition: sectarianism, a built-in unstable political […]
“Buggins’s turn” is a disparaging term meaning appointment to positions by rotation rather than by merit. No Brownie points for identifying Leo “the-classified-file-sharer” Varadkar as the Dáil’s current Mr Buggins. Even the chronically right-wing Fine Gael-supporting Sunday Independent was unable to get excited about him swapping chairs with Micheál Martin. […]
The health of any nation can be measured in many ways. Life expectancy, infant mortality and mental health statistics are just some of the main measures. All those statistics are in turn linked to the levels of inequality and exploitation in any society. The level of poverty, as a consequence, […]
Getting off the bus in O’Connell Street, considered the main street in Dublin, can be a shock for tourists and people new to the city alike. In between the new hotels and shopping centres, the decay in the older buildings is clearly visible, which is sad for such an otherwise […]
As we approach the middle of winter the number of homeless people in Ireland climbs above 10,000, more than 3,000 of whom are children. The number of homeless people has grown by 2,593 since august 2021 and by 237 since July this year. In whose interest is it to […]
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 […]
■ This article is by a family farmer actively trying to bring people together in the Westmeath-Roscommon region. Socialist Voice welcomes contributions to this important and necessary debate. The true issue in farming today is the lack of awareness of the crisis they are now in. The Dutch farmers, alongside […]
The continuing stalemate in northern Irish politics is not simply due to the Brexit protocol or tendentious rumours of joint Dublin–London authority: the underlying cause of chronic political deadlock is the result of unionist anxiety. There is a growing realisation throughout the region that the future of the Six-County […]
A chairde, Dublin City Council does indeed think that Ireland, and specifically Dublin, needs more British army WWI Memorials. Apparently the concept of Irish neutrality, not to speak of the concreting of public green areas and destruction of public spaces, does not trouble Dublin City Council. The councillors, led […]
A spectre is haunting sections of the Irish left: the spectre of Irish reunification. Ever since Britain voted for Brexit—a position supported by the CPI—the political tectonic plates upon which the partition of Ireland rests have become unstable. The emergence of Sinn Féin as the largest party in the Stormont […]
Once again the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly have failed to elect a first minister and deputy first minister and have now been mothballed pending the ability of the British secretary of state for “Northern Ireland” to pull a rabbit out of the hat regarding the Protocols, or to persuade […]
There’s great talk these days and crunching of numbers in relation to the new census results in the north of Ireland. Mostly it is being portrayed as the beginning of the end of the control of the North by and for Protestants—and a forlorn hope for the “united Ireland at […]
A major victory for the civil rights struggle in Northern Ireland was the removal of public housing from sectarian control through the creation of the Northern Ireland Housing Executive. The NIHE built up a reputation for building some of the best public housing in western Europe, and developing progressive engagement […]
There were Lord of the Rings references aplenty earlier this month as participants of all shapes and persuasions—representing organisations often refusing to openly collaborate—were ferried to the postcard setting of Inis Oírr. In between ancient ruins and tourist traps, the media platform Left Bloc, with support from Trademark (Belfast) and others, held […]
There is nothing more foreign to Ireland than capitalism. While the primitive Irish communist system was not perfect, the feudal and capitalist systems of production were brought to this country by an English bayonet. The Irish left has struggled to understand this contradiction within Irish capitalism, instead seeing the class […]
There has been a lot surmising of over the recently announced results of the census in the North of Ireland. For the first time since partition, Catholics now outnumber Protestants there. The census found that 42 per cent of people in the North are Catholics, 37 per cent are Protestants, […]