Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
Up to 2017, 8,300 million tonnes of virgin plastics have been produced, exceeding the quantity of almost all other human-made materials. The production of plastics, and petrochemicals in general, like the testing of nuclear weapons, represents a qualitative shift in human relations with the earth. It has resulted in the […]
My ten-year-old granddaughter announced to me recently that she was going on her first shopping trip with her mother. Apparently it was a counterbalance to a trip her younger brother had to Manchester to see Man U (as those in the know call them). I enquired, playfully, what type of […]
The decision of the EU Court of Justice on 27 October ordering Poland to pay the EU Commission a daily penalty of €1 million for failing to comply with an order of the court in July was welcomed by the slavishly pro-EU Irish media as a victory for “democracy” and […]
Governments are not formed on the basis of opinion polls. Nevertheless it would be unwise to discard their findings, especially when a consistent trend is emerging. With this in mind, it is difficult to deny that Sinn Féin is gaining ground and establishing a strong, some might argue unassailable, position. […]
As increased “lockdown” measures by the Government are on the horizon again, it appears that the extent of the bourgeois state’s ingenuity as regards battling the novel-coronavirus pandemic remains to repeat the same failed tactic over and over again: more vaccines and restrictions, no capital investment, no infrastructure, no sickness […]
The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 witnessed the signing of the armistice, bringing an end to the First World War, which later resulted in unconditional surrender by Germany. The day is now celebrated as Poppy Day in Britain, Canada and Australia and as […]
The leaders of the world gathered their propaganda machine last month to discuss what lies to tell the working class about how they will combat climate change. Britain was among those at the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (nicknamed COP26) in October and November. With a history […]
We have two health services in Ireland, and both are on the verge of collapse. Since Covid exposed their existing inadequacies, very little capacity has been added to either service in preparation for the next wave. We should have been building and training staff for several new hospitals. In fact […]
Another year has passed, and Brexit, like the pandemic, appears to be with us for ever. The Government, in the person of the minister for foreign affairs, Simon Coveney, continues to speak and act as if the Southern establishment have real or significant influence in the negotiations between the European […]
Nicaragua is a country with some 40,000 Indigenous families, who benefit from the region’s most ambitious system of decentralised Indigenous government. Three hundred Indigenous communities legally own approximately a third of Nicaragua’s national territory. Within four years of returning to power in January 2007, President Daniel Ortega’s Sandinista government had granted Nicaragua’s […]
The 32: An Anthology of Irish Working-Class Voices, edited by Paul McVeigh, 2021 (€12.50 / £8.75) Working-class writing is coming to the fore in Ireland. The 32 follows the publication of two anthologies of working people’s writing, The Children of the Nation (Culture Matters, 2019) and From the Plough to the Stars (Culture Matters, 2020). All three […]
Sally Rooney’s hotly anticipated latest novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You, frames a taut interpersonal drama of interlinked friendships and romance against the wider context of history, class, and labour, exploring the inherent ridiculousness of millennial existence in an increasingly fraught, complicated world. Rooney’s self-avowed Marxist credentials are apparent in this most […]
The Trade Union Left Forum has been campaigning for the last four years to have the restrictions on workers’ rights contained in the Industrial Relations Act (1990) abolished. At the biennial delegate conference of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions in October this campaign took a step closer to achieving […]
The case of Julian Assange is an important one regarding press freedom. Apart from fighting for the economic demands of workers, the Trade Union Left Forum and various trade unions engaged in a political struggle in organising a day of action in support of Assange on 23 October throughout Ireland. […]
In a personal interview printed in the Irish Times on 25 September the present leader of the DUP proclaimed that he was a “Mourne man” and went on to say that he has neighbours who carry an Irish passport while he carries a British passport, that they live on the same road […]
Respect (2021) is a biographical musical drama about the life of the African-American singer and civil rights campaigner Aretha Franklin, which features Jennifer Hudson. “Respect,” Aretha’s signature song, was released in April 1967 and reached number 1 in the music charts and was later hailed as a civil rights and feminist […]