Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
In the 26 Counties there is a housing crisis, a shamefully inadequate two-tier health service, a decrepit public transport system, and a grave shortage of affordable accommodation for third-level students. As always, the impact of this failure by the state is felt most acutely by working people. It raises the […]
Students of the coup d’état of 1922 will be interested in the following letter, which appeared in the Freeman’s Journal of 5 August 1922 under the headline “Irregulars’ Eager Allies | Policy of the Communist Party of Ireland.” The following excerpts from The Workers’ Republic of 28th July—the “official organ […]
This year marks a century since the foundation of the 26-County state. Difficult as it may be to believe, the powers that be are now preparing to celebrate what they will describe as a successful political entity. There will be no mention of the hundreds of thousands forced into […]
We are living in difficult and dangerous times, with every chance that things may get worse. Global inflation is driving up the cost of living, the impact of which is felt most severely in working-class communities. Against this backdrop of economic hardship there looms the spectre of war in Ukraine […]
This is not the first time the citizens of Ireland have been faced with a housing emergency. Back in the 1930s and 40s it was solved by building public housing—and it can be done again. From the 1930s until the 1950s, 55 per cent of all housing was built by […]
“Is it hard to see death when it is disguised and tricked out in the surface trappings of life?” John Healy, Death of an Irish Town. If most Irish people think of the country’s Irish-speaking regions in Cos. Donegal, Galway and Kerry at all, they largely think of them in […]
On 27 June 1974 ten brave souls marched from the Department of Justice in St Stephen’s Green to the British embassy in Merrion Road to highlight the criminalisation of homosexuality in Ireland. This was Dublin’s first pride march. The laws they marched against were the Offences Against the Person Act […]
A historic step forward was taken on the road to Irish freedom when the nationalist party Sinn Féin won more seats in the recent Northern Ireland Assembly than the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party. Sinn Féin secured 29 per cent of the popular vote, to become the largest party, with 27 […]
The recent announcement that the state plans to allow local councils to buy homes in order to house refugees from Ukraine is another example of the class interests responsible for the present housing “crisis.” In reality there are more than enough housing units—90,158 vacant dwellings in 2021, according to the […]
The despicable treatment of Clare Daly and Mick Wallace by the Irish Times in its Easter Saturday edition is more than simply evidence of the wretched state of the Irish mainstream media: it is also a reflection of concerns gripping the 26-County establishment. The sanctimonious piece by Naomi O’Leary was […]
“Gallant little Belgium must be saved from the swinish Hun” was the cry in 1914. So intense was the propaganda deploring and berating the Kaiser’s Germany, and so heart-rending the story of a small European country being violated, that millions enlisted to fight and to die. Among the fallen in […]
A growing number of trade unions are joining the call for measures to control the increasing numbers being infected by the omicron variant of covid. At the end of March the general secretary of the Irish Nurses’ and Midwives’ Organisation, Phil Ní Shéaghdha, in a letter to the ICTU, explained […]
Imagine your child who you love so much suffering mental distress. You would literally do anything for them. Their anxiety reaches a point where they become so frustrated it turns to anger and rage. Violence erupts. You act in self-defence, and the family home is up-ended, debris everywhere. The Gardaí […]
There it goes, down again. Holed below the waterline, the leaking vessel Stormont is floundering once more. Yet, in spite of its official role as an integral part of overall United Kingdom governance, the British establishment cares little about the political apparatus in Belfast. Underlining this reality was the spectacle […]
At the recent biennial delegate conference of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions a motion from Dublin Council of Trade Unions was passed to seek alternative legislation to restore all rights lost as a result of the Industrial Relations Act (1990). The 1990 act was a direct result of the […]
Hostile architecture is familiar to most people as dramatic instances of anti-homelessness spikes, sprinkler systems, or directional speakers. These devices are placed outside shops and businesses to discourage people who sleep in the street from choosing this particular nook to shelter in, or to prevent teenagers from gathering. Egregious examples […]