This year’s James Connolly festival opens on Thursday 9th May 2024 with a panel discussion titled ‘Land And The People’. We ask the question: what is our relationship to land and resources? We’ll be joined by Sinead Mercier, Patrick Bresnihan, Róisn Ní Chinnéide and Rory Rowan. Friday 10th May will […]
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The Assembly and Mobilising Northern Workers
The Socialist Voice is to be commended for providing the only party medium on the Irish left that supports critical debate. Such debate was evident in the February, March, and April editions on unions in the North. These articles reflected on the Assembly and its potential for worker rights. One […]
Genocide and Resistance
For over 6 months, the imperialists who trumpet the virtues of their so-called “rules-based international order” continue to support the genocide of Gaza. The US, Britain, Germany, and France continue to sponsor and sell arms to their settler-colonial Zionist state. Even the Irish government, who talk big on Gaza, have […]
Understanding History
The historical narrative that we are taught has been consciously constructed by the ruling class. This historical narrative is constructed so that those of the ruling class are seen as the driving force of history and those of us who make up the working class are merely dragged along. This […]
Climate crisis: a product of capitalism
Liberal environmentalism is in a perpetual crisis; it is unsurprising that the crisis is a chance to escape the individualist traps with which it is riddled. A pamphlet I recently read illustrates well where boundaries of such environmentalism lie. Two points were particularly illustrative and left ample space for Marxist-Leninist […]
The Good Friday Agreement – Constructive Ambiguity
Over the past quarter century, there has existed in the North of Ireland a political policy known as “constructive ambiguity”. A stratagem long practiced by British colonial administrators, it first emerged in public discourse during the negotiations leading to the Good Friday Agreement. More than a little patronising, the underlying […]
Build Workers’ Power
With the developing narrative around the EU directive on adequate minimum wages, workers should not be duped into believing that the EU is some sort of a benign benefactor for workers’ rights. The EU directive on adequate minimum wage claims to be an effort to reduce working poverty and inequality […]
Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington, a prominent figure in music and cultural history, especially in jazz, died fifty years ago on May 24, 1974. Edward Kennedy Ellington was born into a lower middle-class family in Washington on April 29, 1899. His mother was the daughter of a former slave. Ellington’s childhood was marked […]
Palestine Exhaustion
There’s been a word on every activist’s lips recently; burnout. For the last 7 months, thousands of people who typically spend their evenings or weekends stopping illegal evictions, tackling environmental collapse, unionising workplaces, undermining the recently empowered far-right and a plethora of political and altruistic endeavours, have added the genocide […]
May Day 2024 Statement
The Communist Party of Ireland sends May Day greetings to the Irish working class, to all anti-imperialist and progressive organisations, to the international Communist movement, to all those struggling against imperialism, colonialism, and native capitalism, and to those actively struggling to build socialism. In particular, we send greetings to the […]
Lough Neagh – the eye of capitalist climate destruction
Lough Neagh, just outside Belfast, has often been described as the “eye of the bear” that is the outline shape of the island of Ireland. It is the largest fresh-water lake in Ireland or England. The lake is 20 miles long, about 10 miles wide and is about the size […]
Lord Alderdice and the North
Two rival positions are circulating regarding the British and the North. The first is the British have no interest in maintaining the North. Lord Alderdice recently revived this argument in an interview online, claiming the Irish government, not the British, block unity. The second is that the British want to […]
Without fear, without hope
In an often mentioned quote from the Italian partisan and later president, Sandro Pertini exclaimed that “sometimes in life it’s necessary to fight, not just without fear, but also without hope.” Today, as we have access to a wide range of media reports on the major crises around the world, […]
Byron and the “Satanic School”
George Gordon Lord Byron was born in London on 22 January 1788. In 1794, he inherited the title Baron Byron on the death of his great uncle, and was titled Lord Byron in 1798. He attended Harrow and went on to study at Cambridge in 1805. Here he published his […]
On the need for a Popular Front
In March I wrote a piece suggesting it is time for a new Popular Front, given the many multifaceted and related crisis humanity faces, but one that must be both eco-socialist and anti-capitalist given ecological and military developments since the 1930s. In our 26th Congress document we have already called […]
Triple-Lock – The betrayal of a solemn promise to the Irish People
In one of the most disturbing recent Irish government announcements, Mícheál Martin has repeated his administration’s intention to press ahead with legislation to get rid of the triple-lock dealing with Irish military involvement abroad. Designed to protect this country’s neutrality, the triple-lock curtails the unrestricted deployment of Irish troops in […]