There’s a saying on the Isle of Man, “Cha jean oo cosney ping lesh y Ghailick”, which roughly translates as “You won’t make a penny with Manx”. This perfectly illustrates how every minority language struggles to financially justify its existence. It’s hard enough to make a living as a writer […]
Ireland
Ulster Says No
On 18th January 2024, 150,000 public sector workers joined together in a wave of strikes across the North. The main reason for this strike was pay. Workers were demanding pay increases that match inflation. Public sector workers’ pay has been falling behind inflation for more than a decade: more than […]
Opinion: Sovereignty and Reunification
A recent article in December 2023 Socialist Voice (“Sovereignty and Reunification”) muses on the benefits of a united Ireland, offering many insights. One argument advanced is that a single island-wide political structure would offer benefits from unified infrastructures, eliminating “duplication” in health and education, for example. This argument raises problems. […]
Stormont Deadlock
After almost two years without a devolved administration, the northern state appears politically deadlocked. The latest round of talks in Hillsborough castle between the British government’s Chris Heaton-Harris and the five largest parties in Stormont have concluded without a definite restoration of the institutions. This in spite of the fact […]
Sovereignty and Reunification
In a recent interview with the Irish Times, arch-revisionist historian Roy Foster opined that Irish reunification is nearer than he would have thought a couple of decades ago. A week earlier the Irish News published results of an opinion poll indicating a majority of Alliance Party voters believed that, in […]
A Socialist Programme For Change
In notebook no. 4 from Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, “The World in Economic Depression: A Marxist Analysis of Crisis”, Marxist economists, E. Ahmet Tonak and Sungur Savran state that the present state of capitalism can best be described as a Great Depression starting in 2008. They point out that […]
The Triple-Lock, Neutrality, the UN and a Federal EU
The ink is barely dry on the report on Micheál Martin’s shambolic consultative forum where a rogues’ gallery of defence industry-funded “experts” decried the backwardness of the Irish public for having an “emotive attachment in some quarters to the concept of neutrality as part of our national identity.”[1] Martin, not […]
Dublin Riots
In its recent statement, the Communist Party of Ireland condemned in the strongest possible manner the Dublin riots and extended its deepest sympathies and well wishes to the victims and families of the stabbing and the subsequent violence that erupted on the 23rd of November. However, the CPI also correctly […]
Statement on Dublin Riots
First and foremost, the Communist Party of Ireland extends our deepest sympathies and well wishes to all the victims and their families of the horrendous stabbing and the subsequent violence in Dublin on 23rd November, and in the strongest possible terms, denounces the riots on the city centre’s streets later […]
Statement on Government Plans to Abandon the Triple Lock
The Communist Party of Ireland condemns the plans by the Irish government to abandon the “Triple Lock” on the deployment of Irish troops outside the state. The government does not have a mandate for this policy, it was not put to the public in a General Election and does not […]
The North’s political process is fundamentally flawed
Jeffrey Donaldson’s speech to the DUP annual conference last month generated more interest than is normally the case for this event. The mainstream media concentrated not only on his support for a devolved administration but also his tacit acceptance of a Sinn Féin First Minister. Nevertheless, when viewed in its […]
The politics of the Irish establishment
No historical Irish political figure sums up the politics of the Irish establishment today as much as John Redmond. The class and political interests Redmond embodied during his life have strengthened over recent decades and now appear to dominate most elements of the state, media, and political parties. Politics is […]
Statement in Solidarity with LGBTQ+ Community
The rights of LGBTQI people are under attack, we have seen regressive moves across Europe the latest being Italy’s right-wing government ordering state agencies to cease registration of children born to same-sex couples and the retroactive cancellation and re-issuance of birth certificates of lesbian couples’ children, with only the gestational […]
Orange and Green and blue-green algae
There have been poisonous Green and Orange algae in the six north-eastern counties of Ireland for more than a hundred years. But now there are new poisonous algae making the headlines here. It’s a blue-green alga that has infected Lough Neagh. And only a few minutes ago the local Fermanagh […]
Disturbing vision of a draconian police state
Paul Lynch’s novel Prophet Song has deservedly been short-listed for this year’s Booker Literary Award. The author spins a chillingly realistic tale of an Ireland governed by a fascistic regime in the throes of an armed conflict with its local opponents. The regime’s definition of public order is maintained by […]
A lumpenproletariat?
What is the nature of those elements now aligned to the anti-immigrant, anti-trans, “nationalistic” and conspiratorial movements seen in Ireland recently? Do such movements mobilise from within particular and consistent segments of the class structure? Are such mobilisations evidence of a risk of far-right elements moving towards mass influence? What […]
