Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
This year’s James Connolly Conversations return as face-to-face meetings. At the same time we will provide an opportunity for others to join in the conversation on line. The sessions will take place on four consecutive Saturdays, from 28 May to 18 June, at 11 a.m. The meetings are designed to […]
The Trade Union Left Forum announced on May Day that it is near to completing a draft bill to restore rights lost to workers as a result of anti-union legislation dating from the 1940s. The TULF has been campaigning against the Industrial Relations Act (1990) and also anti-worker legislation in […]
Quid est veritas? What is the truth? A question that has echoed down the centuries has increased relevance as we live through the greatest propaganda assault of all time. Western “news” media have mounted such a constant barrage of anti-Russian propaganda that it is almost impossible to hold an alternative […]
The politics and complex history of eastern Europe are not the focus of the Western media’s attempt to explain the war in Ukraine. Instead the personality of Russia’s president is the focus. A latent Russophobia has existed since the end of the Cold War, supplemented in the past three decades […]
Never miss the opportunities thrown up by a crisis to advance long-held goals! The Russian invasion of Ukraine has provided such an opportunity for the Irish establishment and the establishment media to push forward their long-held agenda to ditch Irish neutrality and to use the Ukrainian crisis to push for […]
“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 […]
In March 2015 a Saudi-led coalition of ten countries, backed by the United States, invaded Yemen, with the goal of restoring power to the government of President Hādī. This would be the start of a brutal war, which has been going on for the past seven years. As a result […]
All wars bring out the worst in humans. The war in Ukraine has shown us two ugly faces. One is the calamity of war itself; the other is racism. When European countries are welcoming Ukrainian refugees (with white skin and blue eyes) with open arms, the world also witnesses with […]
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 […]
Venezuela is close to reaching its maximum petroleum production capacity, since it has managed to double its crude production in recent months, thanks to Iran and other countries that have helped it evade US sanctions. Oil industry sources confirmed to the Spanish-language newspaper El Nuevo Herald, published in Florida, that […]
The James Connolly Festival is an annual, week-long series of events in radical arts, culture, and politics. It is a community-centred celebration of music, film, discussion and debate that brings together the ideas and thoughts of progressive and radical thinkers and organisations from around Ireland and beyond. Since the festival’s […]
The ruling class around the world have decided that the global economy must get back to normal, and that restrictions introduced to protect people in the so-called “developed world” from the covid-19 pandemic must be abandoned, despite the onset of a new wave of the virus. Governments have gone back […]
Alexandra Kollontai, born 150 years ago on 31 March 1872, was an outstanding figure in the Russian communist movement. Kollontai’s active political work began with workers’ evening classes, through which she became part of the Political Red Cross, an organisation supporting political prisoners. She participated in leafleting and fund-raising campaigns […]
Being There (a found poem from The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck) We’ll be ever’where —Wherever they’s a fightso hungry people can eat,we’ll be there. Wherever they’s a copbeatin’ up a guy,we’ll be there. We’ll be in the way kids laughwhen they’re hungryan’ they know supper’s ready.An’ when our folks […]
Part 1 On the 14th of March we observed the 139th anniversary of Karl Marx’s death. Marx devoted much of his life to writing about the social and economic problems that plague the working class of the world, and his words still hold true more than a hundred years later. […]
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 […]