Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
In the July and August issues of Socialist Voice, Jimmy Doran and Niall Cullinane debated the merits of reforming the Industrial Relations Act (1990). While Jimmy was enthusiastic for reform, Niall was more sceptical. In elaborating this scepticism he raised many interesting and important points. Limitations of space prevent a […]
Mícheál Martin’s Fianna Fáil is in a bind. The man once described by the Irish Times columnist Miriam Lord as the Grand Old Duke of Cork is still impaled on the horns of a dilemma. He has led his party into a perilous position, leaving it stranded in political no-man’s […]
In September’s Socialist Voice, two articles (“Not seeing the wood for the trees” by Ernst Schreiber and “Unity is strength” by Laura Duggan) raised issue with a piece written by this contributor in the August issue (“The wrong act?”). I will confine my response to the former, because, in contrast […]
The true class nature of the Irish state was exposed recently at the eviction of the Take Back the City group from a house in North Frederick Street, Dublin, when employees of a private security firm, masked and armed with sledgehammers and cutting equipment, smashed into the occupied premises while […]
The Communist Party of Ireland condemns the attempt at further privatisation by putting out to public tender another 10 per cent of Bus Éireann routes. We are not fooled by the standard neo-liberal dual strategy of starving and running down their target, in this case Bus Éireann, through lack of […]
Social property will be the main basis for production in Cuba after the adoption next year of a new constitution, and this will continue to be the governing principle of the country’s social and economic life. This was the main message of the Cuban deputy minister of foreign affairs, Ana […]
Thomas Paine’s famous work Rights of Man was published in 1791. It was written as a reply to Reflections on the Revolution in France by the Anglo-Irish politician Edmund Burke. Burke’s book was an attack on the principles of the French Revolution, written by a representative of the ruling class […]
Nobody relying on the news media in Ireland can have any understanding of events in Venezuela. They take their line from the international corporate media (primarily North American, British, and Spanish), which are waging a media war against the government. According to them, Venezuela’s economy is collapsing because of the […]
Thro’ the shattered mainstream of life the waste land bears testimony to the shadow Hear mothers wail for dead children whose fathers slave to re-erect the rubble Upon the rubble their fathers erected This alter for sacrificed generations Build fast! Build furious! Erect the citadels of despair Light high in […]
Twenty years ago, on 8 October 1998, the communist writer José Saramago became the first Portuguese author to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. The first fifty years of Saramago’s life were defined by the fascist dictatorship that ruled Portugal from 1926 to 1974 and his active resistance against it. […]
Robin Hood, the legendary outlaw known throughout the world, has an unusual connection with Ireland, and an even stranger connection with the communist movement. No-one knows for certain whether Robin Hood ever existed or was based on a real individual. There are records of people named Robin Hood or similar […]
A Star Is Born has been remade for the fourth time and was released in Irish cinemas on 5 October. The retelling follows the familiar story of an aging male star—this time the country singer Jackson Maine (played by Bradley Cooper)—who happens across an ordinary woman whose talent is being […]
Nobody relying on the news media in Ireland can have any understanding of events in Venezuela. They take their line from the international corporate media (primarily North American, British and Spanish) which is waging a media war against the government. According to them, Venezuela’s economy is collapsing due to the […]
Mandate has called on Lloyd’s Pharmacy to respect its employees’ right to trade union representation before the management does even more damage to the business. The union responded to a press statement issued by the company to correct serious flaws in its presentation of what is happening and to expose […]
The problems facing organised labour in Ireland—declining density, lack of younger members, difficulty engaging contract workers, depleted funds, hostile media coverage, etc.—are well known and familiar to all those involved in the movement today. Many people have posed rather sensible responses to these issues, such as a better use of […]
The job of trade unionists is to fight the cause of the workers “An Act to Make Further and Better Provision for Promoting Harmonious Relations between Workers and Employers . . .” reads the long title of the Industrial Relations Act (1990), and its predecessors and amendments. The use of the phrase […]