Previous Articles

Culture Play

Shaw sides with working-class women

The immediate social background to George Bernard Shaw’s most famous comedy, Pygmalion (1912), is the growing British women’s suffrage movement at the time. The play is as much about class relations as it is about women’s rights. For Shaw, the two are inseparable. Pygmalion is about practical, intelligent women from […]

Ecology Socialism

The gaslighting of the Anthropocene

In geology, the periods and smaller epochs of Earth’s past are named by the region in which they were first determined as such, or by their characteristics. Well-known periods are the Carboniferous, for its ample coal deposits, and the Jurassic, for the Jura Mountains, where it was first identified. The […]

Campaigns Current Affairs Socialism

Left unity

The Cost of Living Coalition had many people taking to the streets during the protest march on the 24th of September. The coalition was a broad range of left-wing organisations, such as People Before Profit, the CPI, the Connolly Youth Movement and other grass-roots movements, such as activists from mica […]

International

Denmark’s ‘red-bloc’ maintains majority

Denmark’s most decisive election for many years on November 1 st , triggered by the SocialLiberal’s threat to topple the government with a vote of no confidence, proved nonethelesssuccessful for the left-wing bloc led by the Social Democrats, winning 90 of the parliament’s179 seats. Although the Social Democrats ran its […]

Culture Music

The return of Anderson

Badhands, the musical project from Dublin, were the backing group at the Workman’s Club Cellar on Saturday 10 September for Anderson’s first live show in over four years. It was standing room only for a show with no set breaks as they cranked out tune after tune. You could have […]

Letters

Vaccination

“Covid vaccination: A more radical solution needed,” written by Raymond Ó Dubhghaill on 3 October 2021. I applaud Raymond for this article. I used to describe myself as left/anarchist/animal liberationist/punk. As a vegan I have been interested in the connection of medicine and animal based research for 30 years. As […]

International Socialism

Religious freedom in Cuba: A constitutional right

Innumerable religious organisations, institutions and fraternal associations exist and function in the Republic of Cuba which have structures at the national, provincial and local levels. For their work they group their members, both in an evangelising function as well as a social and ethical one, in defence of peace, solidarity […]

Culture Poetry

War and Peace

A bilingual 31-syllable tanka (5-7-5-7-7 syllables) in Irish and English, in response to a work of street art. Street Poster, Liverpool, by Guy Denning cad atá ar siúlis deacair é a thuiscintcuir in iúl dom écén cuspóir atá againnní thuigim a thuilleadh é what are we doing it is hard […]

Trade Unionism

An opportunity, not a panacea

The recent report by the High-Level Group on Collective Bargaining is an opportunity for the trade union movement, and for workers seeking to collectively organise and unionise. It will absolutely not solve the declining density and power of the movement, but if made use of it may present an additional […]

Housing Ireland Political Economy

Privatising the Northern Ireland Housing Executive
—against evidence, against the working class

A major victory for the civil rights struggle in Northern Ireland was the removal of public housing from sectarian control through the creation of the Northern Ireland Housing Executive. The NIHE built up a reputation for building some of the best public housing in western Europe, and developing progressive engagement […]

International

CPI in Brussels

The Communist Party of Ireland, along with other activists from Ireland, recently received an invitation from MEPs Clare Daly and Mick Wallace to attend the EU Parliament in Brussels to participate in two events. First, a film showing of Ithaka, a documentary highlighting the ongoing persecution of journalist Julian Assange and the […]

Culture Play

O’Casey’s dark comedy

Sean O’Casey’s dark comedy Cock-a-Doodle Dandy (1949) is set in Ireland about 1940 and is rarely performed. Witchcraft is haunting the village of Nyadnanave ever since Marthraun’s daughter by his first wife, Loreleen, arrived from London. A rooster causes commotion and embodies indomitable joie de vivre and rebelliousness. The setting in the backwoods suggests […]

Ireland

Irish decolonisation

There is nothing more foreign to Ireland than capitalism. While the primitive Irish communist system was not perfect, the feudal and capitalist systems of production were brought to this country by an English bayonet. The Irish left has struggled to understand this contradiction within Irish capitalism, instead seeing the class […]

Ireland

Marxist hedge school in the Aran Islands

There were Lord of the Rings references aplenty earlier this month as participants of all shapes and persuasions—representing organisations often refusing to openly collaborate—were ferried to the postcard setting of Inis Oírr. In between ancient ruins and tourist traps, the media platform Left Bloc, with support from Trademark (Belfast) and others, held […]