Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
In the United States, uproar has surrounded the rolling back of access to reproductive health, in Britain thousands of women missed breast cancer screenings because of a technical hitch, and in Ireland we are still witnessing the fall-out from the cervical cancer screening debacle—each the result of policies that have reduced women’s health and well-being to secondary concerns of cost management and profit margins.
Ryanair attempts to break the union In mid-August Ryanair secured a court injunction to prevent its pilots based in Ireland from striking, even after they had followed the normal industrial procedures. The two-day strike had the support of a majority of the pilots directly employed by the company who are […]
It’s no surprise that the largest attendance at a fringe meeting at the ICTU delegate conference last month was the one organised by the Trade Union Left Forum, on the theme “Anti-union legislation and how it affects workers’ rights.”
While Boris Johnson has been elected leader of the British Conservative Party, thereby becoming prime minister of Britain, the deep crisis thrown up by Brexit continues to challenge the British ruling class
There is increasing talk of “social dialogue” and an EU directive as an ambition of the trade union movement, and we need to be concerned about this.
During a recent visit to Australia we dropped in to Palo’s bar in Hobart, home town of the music star Courtney Barnett, where Jay Jarome, definitely influenced by Curtis Mayfield and Prince’s blend of soul, performed the most incredible set. This young artist from Bribie Island in south-east Queensland won […]
With a new Tory prime minister committed to a Brexit deal that is unlikely to win support in the House of Commons, the odds are heavily in favour of a general election that by any normal calculation would be won by the Labour Party—not just any Labour Party but one led by a left-wing social democrat.
The scandalous situation exposed by the RTE programme “Prime Time Investigates” about abuses in the Hyde and Seek creche is just another in a long line of catastrophic failures by private businesses.
The investigation into the the Hyde and Seek corporate creche chain revealed the appalling conditions experienced by both the children and the staff. The priority of these private corporate bodies is to make a profit, and the needs of children and the staff are only a means to secure that profit
Is mó seans go mbeidh ar Veiniséala idirghabháil mhíleata a fhulaingt má theipeann ar chomhchainteanna Osló, mar a thugtar orthu. B’in a bhí le tuiscint ó chuntas a thug ambasadóir Veiniséala, Rocio Maneiro, do chruinniú de lucht tacaíochta a d’eagraigh Líonra Veiniséala na hÉireann i Halla na Saoirse an mhí seo caite.
In mid-July the British military detained an oil tanker, the Grace I, carrying crude oil from Iran as it was heading to Syria.
It’s over a hundred years since Upton Sinclair wrote his ground-breaking novel The Jungle (1906). It catapulted him to fame and set a fire under President Theodore Roosevelt to introduce food safety regulations, in response to which Sinclair worried that his original message had been missed. “I aimed at the public’s heart,” he famously remarked, “and by accident I hit it in the stomach.”
Regina Doherty’s latest proposals are designed to further undermine the state retirement system as it now stands. In effect the minister, and the bourgeois commentators, regard anything with the word “state” as being tainted and bad.
Tom O’Flaherty, who helped to organise trade unions in the United States in the 1930s and became an accomplished writer in both English and Irish, will be honoured at Féile na bhFlaitheartach, which takes place on Árainn on the weekend of 24 and 25 August. The festival, now in its seventh year, celebrates the writings and work of Liam and Tom O’Flaherty.
On 16 August 1819 tens of thousands of working men and women demonstrated at a place known as St Peter’s Field in Manchester, demanding reform and the repeal of the Corn Laws. The yeomanry and then hussars were ordered to attack, killing eighteen people and injuring more than four hundred. With the recent memory of the Battle of Waterloo, this slaughter went down in history as Peterloo. Shelley reacted with one of the earliest works of socialist literature, his famous ballad “The Mask of Anarchy.” This month we mark the 200th anniversary of those events and of Shelley’s great poem.
It is a reflection of where we are as a society, and where the balance of power exists between employers and workers, that legislation is needed to stop employers stealing this money from those it is intended for. The contempt in which the working class are held by sections of the ruling class is also exposed, as some politicians will actually vote against this bill, while others have to be lobbied and put under pressure to vote for it. Occasionally the politicians are forced into a compromise and have to vote against their own class interest.