Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
The Industrial Relations Act (1990) was designed to control workers, and it attacked the trade union movement at its very core by making solidarity between workers illegal. This was done by restricting workers taking industrial action together, dividing work-places into separate grades, and banning support strikes. Solidarity is the foundation […]
Following a protest organised by the Communist Party of Ireland outside the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin to condemn the Government’s decision to provide weapons training to the Ukrainian armed forces, the following letter was handed in to the minister for foreign affairs, Micheál Martin. The Communist Party of […]
The issue of Irish neutrality has begun to gain political traction. In August the Communist Party of Ireland organised a public meeting on neutrality in Belfast, took part in a protest against the pro-NATO theme of the MacGill Summer School in Co. Donegal, and held a demonstration outside the Department […]
■ James Plunkett, Strumpet City (London: Hutchinson, 1969) The years from 1907 to 1914 are the subject of James Plunkett’s book Strumpet City. Set in this period before Irish independence, the collective hero of the novel is the working class, as it enters a new phase of its class struggle. […]
Part 1 In this first part of a two-part report, Gearóid Ó Machail, member of the CPI National Political Committee, who travelled to China accompanied by the CPI general secretary, Jimmy Corcoran, provides an account of the delegation’s time spent in China and makes some observations based on his experience […]
The farming and rural community is in uproar with the news of the latest assault on farmers: the proposed plan to cull 200,000 cows out of the national herd. This, we are told by the government and mainstream media, is to help Ireland meet its climate goals. From what I […]
To my eternal embarrassment, it’s only in very recent times that I realised that, in the scale of human existence, capitalism was actually a very young system of living—or existing. For some reason, I never thought to see it in terms of age. It would seem obvious now, but it […]
The film Oppenheimer begins with a mention of Prometheus, the Greek god who is cursed by Zeus for not abiding by the law, stealing fire and giving it to humans in the form of knowledge. Oppenheimer is portrayed as a present-day Prometheus who is applauded for using his knowledge of […]
Following my previous article on ChatGPT and machine learning models, I would like to shed some further light on why those models should be heavily scrutinised and monitored. So I’m going to share with you a personal story to demonstrate how they can end up being used to expropriate free […]
Sinéad O’Connor, who died on 26 July, was well known for her music career but was also a committed activist and republican. At one of her concerts in 1990 in the United States she approached officials to demand that the US national anthem not be played. This resulted in several […]
On 22 June, RTE announced that it had overpaid Ryan Tubridy of the “Late Late Show” by a figure of €345,000. This was done through secretive deals and barter accounts, and resulted in Tubridy earning more than €500,000 each year. The following weeks saw wall-to-wall coverage of the scandal in […]
It is expected that by the time we go to press the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill will have been passed into law. The new legislation will establish what is described as an Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery, under the leadership of the former lord chief […]
On 13 July, An Taisce hosted Kevin Anderson’s talk “A Velvet or Violent Climate Revolution: Which Will We Choose?” in the Tailors’ Hall, Dublin. Anderson was introduced as a climate scientist “telling it as it is”—a tagline reinforced by his opening slide, in which he warned the audience that his […]
On 21 June the French government dissolved the environmental group Les Soulèvements de la Terre. The immediate cause cited in the decision was a clash of the activists with the police while resisting the construction of a reservoir in the west of the country. The group was dissolved as a […]
The draft All-Ireland Strategic Rail Review is an excellent start to the changes that must be implemented if we are to reach our emissions targets and seriously tackle climate change. The review can only be published in draft form, as the Stormont Assembly is not sitting, and it will be […]
The threat to completely abandon what remains of Irish neutrality is a continuing and increasing one. The recent intervention of President Higgins may have slowed down Micheál Martin’s march to NATO, but the threat remains. Rather than applying for NATO membership immediately, the ruling class have set their sights as […]