Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
Séamus Murphy, Having It Away: A story of Freedom, Friendship and IRA Jailbreak (Bray, Co. Wicklow: Castledermot Press, 2019; €10).
“Having it away” was a slang term in the English prisons of the 1950s for making an escape. It is the title of Séamus Murphy’s account of his imprisonment in Wakefield Prison, Yorkshire.
Jenny Farrell (editor), The Children of the Nation: An Anthology of Working People’s Poetry from Contemporary Ireland (Newcastle upon Tyne: Culture Matters, 2019).
This anthology deals with the identity of the working class, the marginalised, people in precarious employment, the unemployed, the homeless. The title of the collection recalls the pledge made in the Proclamation of 1916.
Gabriel Rosenstock, Walk with Gandhi / Bóthar na Saoirse, illustrated by Masood Hussain (Dublin: Gandhi 150 Ireland, 2019, paperback, hardback, and Ebook).
This is a beautiful book to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi on 2 October 1869. The book is a collection of haiga—a style of Japanese painting often accompanied by a haiku poem.
Great Carthage waged three wars. It was still powerful after the first, habitable still after the second. Gone without trace after the third.—Bertolt Brecht (1951).
Samuel Backett died thirty years ago, on 22 December 1989. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature fifty years ago, in 1969.
Arguably Beckett’s most famous play is Waiting for Godot. Typically, when this play today is presented today the comedy of it is emphasised, as is its “absurdist” label, suggesting that life is meaningless. Beckett had moved permanently to France in the late 1930s.
Towards the end of November the Irish media published reports of comments made by Prof. Christian Kastrop, a former associate of the German minister of finance, Wolfgang Schäuble, one of the architects of the debt crisis. Kastrop now works for the Bertelsmann Foundation, a think tank sponsored by the Bertelsmann Group, one of the principal German transnational
corporations.
A route to privatisation?
As pointed out in Socialist Voice in August 2018, Bus Connects appears to have a much higher frequency from the suburbs into the city centre; but in fact the frequency is often reduced, or citizens…
A militant trade union campaign launched A WELL ATTENDED meeting organised by Unite in the Community, in conjunction with Communities Against Low Pay, was held in Dublin recently.
DAN TARAGHAN: THE BUDGET for next year was presented to the Dáil on 8 October. In his speech the minister for finance, Paschal Donohoe, made much of the threat from a no-deal Brexit. This would have dire consequences for Ireland, as Britain is our main trading partner in the EU.
THE CONSTANT NARRATIVE in the Brexit debate, be it in Ireland or Britain, from politicians, especially those elected who are supposedly of a progressive slant, is how they are opposed to Brexit because “the EU protects workers’ rights.” These views are also expressed by leading figures in the NGO sector.
NOT THAT IT should come as a surprise, but the political establishment, north and south, is offering us still further evidence of its mendacious venality. A few recent examples will illustrate the point. Let’s begin with shady behaviour being practised by the folk in Leinster House.
THE “BRITISH REBATE” is known: the reduction in British contributions to the EU budget that Margaret Thatcher pushed through in 1984. She pointed out at the time that a large part of the EU funds had gone into agriculture, and that the United Kingdom had a comparatively small
HARRY HOUDINI, probably the world’s most famous illusionist, when performing his acts would mesmerise his audience with feats that defied all logic or reason. He would make the impossible possible. Audiences would be left speechless at his escape routines, and he toured the world displaying his death-defying acts.