Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
Marxist writer, thinker, activist The death of Tomás Mac Síomóin has caused much sadness to comrades and his large circle of friends as well as his family members, but his full, worthy life is a cause for celebration. He bequeathed to coming generations a legacy of powerful writing and thought. […]
Government housing policy is the cause of the housing crisis. Homelessness, waiting-lists and extortionate levels of private rent are the symptoms of policy designed to benefit speculators, landlords, and hedge funds—the business class. The number of homes available to rent has fallen close to a historical record, while rents have […]
The illusion of food democracy There are many things in life that we can do without—but food is not one of them. Along with food we need water, shelter, clothes and warmth to have any chance of survival as a species. And yet we often take food for granted, and […]
Hostile architecture is familiar to most people as dramatic instances of anti-homelessness spikes, sprinkler systems, or directional speakers. These devices are placed outside shops and businesses to discourage people who sleep in the street from choosing this particular nook to shelter in, or to prevent teenagers from gathering. Egregious examples […]
At the recent biennial delegate conference of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions a motion from Dublin Council of Trade Unions was passed to seek alternative legislation to restore all rights lost as a result of the Industrial Relations Act (1990). The 1990 act was a direct result of the […]
Before covid-19, “normal” was homelessness, a two-tier health service, waiting-lists, precarious work, poverty pay, no sickness pay, a gig economy, pension-age extensions, lack of workers’ rights, exploitation, bogus self-employment and inequality for the majority of people in Ireland while the parasitic elite profiteered off this misery. “Back to normal” must […]
The UN secretary-general, António Guterres, during the peak of the covid pandemic, said that “we are all in this together.” But, on the contrary, two newspaper articles provide evidence to believe otherwise. The Irish Examiner reported that the wealth of nine Irish billionaires increased by 58 per cent since the […]
The continued eastward expansion of NATO is increasing tensions between Russia and the Western imperialist bloc. It has also caused concern to the Sunday Business Post, a newspaper that vies with the Irish Times to be the main proponent of Atlanticism in the Irish media. In line with the adage […]
Prison abolitionism is often viewed as a utopian idea, but when we examine the root causes of crime, and the victims of the legal system, it’s clear that if abolitionism is utopianism we are living in a dystopia. When a particularly heinous crime is committed it is the typical reaction […]
We have become accustomed in recent years to manipulative language, such as the absurd euphemisms intended to inflate the prestige of really quite ordinary people and things but especially to disguise more unpleasant ones, such as “law enforcement” (police) and “correctional facility” (prison). Some of this kind of thing has […]
“More right-wing than Genghis Khan” is an expression often used to describe how far to the right someone is. Whatever about the accuracy of this statement, communists, socialist republicans and the left generally have a particular antipathy to right-wing ideology, and for a myriad of reasons. The first response is […]
The murder of Aisling Murphy on 12 January on a walking trail known as Fiona’s Way (in memory of the missing woman Fiona Pender) was the most recent case of femicide in Ireland. Women can’t feel safe while walking in the dark, have to watch their drinks in bars, and […]
The title of Robert Ballagh’s painting The Thirtieth of January makes clear its connection to Goya’s The Third of May. But of course the visual language is also compelling. While in Goya’s picture the outline of Madrid sets the location of the executions in 1808, in Ballagh’s it is the […]
An Croí Ró-Naofa san India A bilingual tanka (5-7-5-7-7 syllables), in response to a mural in Chennai. The tanka is the oldest form of verse still being cultivated today, stretching back 1,300 years to its beginnings in Japan. an Croí Ró-Naofa ar lasadh i ngach cistin fadó in Éirinn ar […]
The recent RTE series “Crimes and Confessions” raises a number of important issues. The programmes dealt with three miscarriages of justice, suggesting that the wider context for these events lay in the fall-out from the Northern conflict then taking place. This self-serving explanation may please some but is actually dangerously […]
Statement by the Communist Party of Ireland