Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
In the July Voice, Nicola Lawlor proposed that “individual unions should concentrate on… strengthening themselves and militantly pursuing big pay claims.” She argues that unions should not be “remov[ed from] pay bargaining [at the workplace] site of struggle and mobilisation.” Localised bargaining is “an instrument… for increasing class-consciousness and militancy […]
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 […]
It is often said that to know how things work you need to live that experience. Over the last number of years, be it on my holidays in the occupied Six Counties or listening to friends and family, I have heard so many stories of a system that isn’t working […]
On Saturday 25 June members and comrades of the CPI joined a protest organised by the Connolly Youth Movement on Rosie Hackett Bridge to protest against the take-over of pride by companies that solely see us as a means to profit, by people who have historically oppressed LGBT minorities and […]
This month Connolly Books will play host to two book launches. On 15 July, at 7pm, Conor Magahy will launch his first book, Posh Mackers, a moving and at times humorous account of his early childhood in Dublin, set between the years 1978 and 1988. It tells the story […]
The short life of Sidney Keyes (1922–1943) is in itself a striking metaphor for the cruelty and futility of war. He was killed in action before his twenty-first birthday in Tunisia. His book The Cruel Solstice (1944) can be read on Faded Page (tinyurl.com/4282dd4u). Keyes was an unusual poet, […]
Engels said about Shelley: “Byron and Shelley are read almost exclusively by the lower classes; no ‘respectable’ man is likely to have the latter’s work on his table without coming into the most terrible disrepute.” Born shortly after the French Revolution, Shelley was heir to a substantial estate and […]
Recently I had the good fortune to travel to the United States for a week. It was, to say the least, an eye-opener. Among the grandeur of the superwealth that I witnessed in New York I saw sights that for me were emotionally draining and shocking. I went […]
The electoral victory of Gustavo Petro in Colombia is, without a doubt, one of the most significant political developments in Latin America in the last decade. Colombia has traditionally been a stronghold of conservatism. The left and social movements have been routinely devastated for seven decades of unabashed right-wing […]
Recently, right-wing and liberal media have been attacking trans people in increasingly vicious ways. How can we analyse this from a left-wing viewpoint? In 1919 Lenin said the following in a speech on anti-Semitism: “The hate of the workers and peasants, the landowners and capitalists tried to divert against […]
If the old adage that “you can know a man by the company he keeps” is true, then it seems the New Connolly Youth Movement is in a very confused place. On 18 June the New CYM attended the gathering of the Belfast-based Unity group, which has “reconstituted” itself as […]
As the cost of living grows ever higher, and more families are choosing between eating and paying bills—with some parents skipping meals so their children can eat—we continue to produce an over-abundance. We produce such an over-abundance of food that no one should be without food. Roughly a third […]
The Communist Party of Ireland was not long formed when it had to grapple with the creation of the Irish Free State by British imperialism. The party was the first to recognise the class nature of the Treaty, and believed that the republicans could win, but only if they adopted […]
Capitalism is a system that has an innate tendency to get into a cul-de-sac of crisis, and the only way it knows for coming out of crisis is by further exploitation of the working class. The cost-of-living crisis—caused by inflation, which eats up the earnings of the working class […]
An interesting but not entirely new debate has begun in Socialist Voice in recent issues on the question of “social partnership” and national wage agreements. On the one hand, Jimmy Doran has condemned “social partnership” outright as class betrayal, with strong statements that it is anti-democratic, embodies insider dealing, […]
The world still applauds the great effort that our government made in advocating negotiations for peace that led to a settlement, and the 1998 Good Friday Agreement on this island. So why is our present government rejecting neutrality and refusing to lead the campaign for negotiations for peace to […]