Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
The Trade Union Left Forum has been campaigning for the last four years to have the restrictions on workers’ rights contained in the Industrial Relations Act (1990) abolished. At the biennial delegate conference of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions in October this campaign took a step closer to achieving […]
Respect (2021) is a biographical musical drama about the life of the African-American singer and civil rights campaigner Aretha Franklin, which features Jennifer Hudson. “Respect,” Aretha’s signature song, was released in April 1967 and reached number 1 in the music charts and was later hailed as a civil rights and feminist […]
In a personal interview printed in the Irish Times on 25 September the present leader of the DUP proclaimed that he was a “Mourne man” and went on to say that he has neighbours who carry an Irish passport while he carries a British passport, that they live on the same road […]
The case of Julian Assange is an important one regarding press freedom. Apart from fighting for the economic demands of workers, the Trade Union Left Forum and various trade unions engaged in a political struggle in organising a day of action in support of Assange on 23 October throughout Ireland. […]
The production process of computer games hides the built-in exploitation of both workers and customers Games workers in Ireland and all over the world have begun unionising. First of all they established their own Game Workers Unite, a loose movement of workers internationally; this has since developed in a number […]
One of the most common attacks against us by anti-communists, in Ireland and elsewhere, is that communist parties were little more than “pawns of Moscow.” This line of attack was used against the CPI, both by the right and by some on the so-called left, in an effort to use establishment anti-Sovietism as well as to paint the party as…
The list of groups in Ireland, even today, that campaign, pressure, expose, support or oppose an endless list of issues is mind-boggling. In a lot of cases it is an industry grant-aided by the state – the so-called “third sector” of society. Community groups, social groups, pressure groups, protest movements, […]
The constant growth of capitalism, fuelled by exploitation, has resulted in an energy crisis in the European Union. Oil prices have risen by 60 per cent this year, while natural gas has risen by 500 per cent, and coal prices in China are at a record. The increase in gas […]
Rally for Irish Unity, Newtown Butler, Co. Fermanagh, 24 October 2021 A chairde Gael, Bailíonn muid anseo ar bhruach na hainnise a dtugtar an teorainn air. An chríochdheighilt sheicteach ghránna is cúis le hár is uafás in Éirinn le céad bliain anuas. Tá muid bailithe anseo in Achadh na Gé […]
The spectre of a democratic and progressive country What on earth was that event last month in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh, all about? We were told that it wasn’t a celebration of partition, nor a commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the Six-County political entity. Rather, it […]
In her column in the Business Post on 3 October the former Blueshirt minister Lucinda Creighton argued in favour of further EU expansion into the Balkans. She did so in terms that would have been familiar to those drafting English or British policy on Ireland any time in the past […]
If you were to do an online search for “richest countries” you would quickly find lists where Ireland features prominently, by some estimates sometimes as high as the third-richest in the entire world. At the same time you would understand anecdotally, or perhaps personally, the difficulty with which people manage […]
Low pay is defined by the OECD as the pay of a full-time worker whose earnings are below two-thirds of a country’s median income. The proportion of workers on low pay ranges from 4 per cent in Belgium to 24 per cent in the United States. The Republic, at 23 […]
The housing crisis has laid bare the ruthless nature of capitalism, its parasitic and exploitative nature. There is simply no lengths it will not go to to secure its interests, to secure profits and the further accumulation of capital. But the housing crisis has exposed not only the real nature […]
“Yes, friends, governments in capitalist society are but committees of the rich to manage the affairs of the capitalist class.” James Connolly The earliest recorded form of government is said to have been that of the Sumerians in fourth-century Mesopotamia (Iraq). This development led, in the fifth century in Athens, […]
A pension propaganda war has broken out, with selective leaks from the soon-to-be published report of the Pension Commission. The first leak suggested that the increase in pension age to 67 and 68 would be delayed by seven years. This was followed by a suggestion in the submission of the […]