Partisan • Patriotic • Internationalist
The biennial delegate conference of the ICTU is being held in Dublin on 2, 3 and 4 July. It will debate and formulate policy and goals for member-unions for the next couple of years.
There is no doubt that falling union density and the high age profile of the membership are serious concerns for unions. Major changes are needed to reverse this trend.
It is often claimed that the “War on Drugs” has failed, and that in response the use of illegal drugs should be permitted.
There are several serious issues with this thesis, the first being the question of what evidence exists that there has been a “war on drugs.” In fact the evidence suggests the opposite: that what has existed since the 1960s has been a war of drugs, used against the working class, in the service of monopoly capitalism.
On 14 June women throughout Switzerland took to the streets in a national women’s strike. It took place to coincide with negotiations at the International Labour Conference in Geneva on international rules for tackling violence and harassment at work.
In spite of lurid headlines about his private life, Boris Johnson remains the man most likely to be Britain’s next prime minister.
Tousled hair, pompous accent, indiscreet and bullying behaviour, not to mention taking part in egregious self-promoting photo opportunities—yet nothing appears to damage his popularity among the Tory faithful. There is often, though, a perception beyond the Conservative Party membership that “Bojo,” as he is sometimes called, is something of a clown and therefore not to be taken seriously.
Any such reading would be a mistake.
The recent CPI national school on 21–23 June began with the national chairperson giving a good introduction, which was followed by a brief talk on Irish history, with a different slant on the roles played by the state and its allies the church and its sycophantic followers.
Questions were posed to the audience about how we can change the tide of political discourse and about recent phenomena
By any relevant psephological indices, it is absolutely clear that Sinn Féin did exceedingly poorly—perhaps disastrously—in the recent local and European elections; and the results have clearly precipitated some reflective introspection by various party members.
Failing to see the irony, the Government and Fianna Fáil voted—on World Refugee Day, of all days!—to send fourteen members of the army’s Ranger Wing (Ireland’s SAS) to war in Mali.
The minister for defence, Paul Kehoe, told the Dáil that the country was a victim of “terrorism,” and we must play our part.
Mali is not just some poor country plagued by “terrorism.” It’s worse: it’s a poor country plagued by imperialism.
On Saturday 22 June, Christy Moore unveiled a plaque to the socialist republican Frank Conroy, a Kildare man killed in 1936 while fighting with the International Brigades in the Spanish war against fascism.
Courbet painted The Stone-Breakers in his home town of Ornans, in eastern France, in 1849. He was thirty years old. Marx and Engels had published the Communist Manifesto the previous year, which stated as its opening fanfare: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,” and “Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other—Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.” This is the defining insight of the middle of the nineteenth century.
The United States has been playing the role of the world’s economic bully. So far it has imposed sanctions against Afghanistan, Belarus, Burma, Burundi, Central African Republic, China, Democratic Republic of Congo, Crimea, Cuba, Cyprus, Eritrea, Haïti, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Lebanon, Libya, Russia, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela, Yemen, and Zimbabwe.
In the wake of the local and EU elections it was reported in the Irish Times (10 June) that up to 70,000 households could be charged for wasting water from next year. Charges could be as much as €500 for a household.
Vulture funds have become passé. The latest fad taking hold in the property market is the cuckoo fund—aptly named, as they push the individual or family buyer out of their potential nest.
All elections are but a snapshot of the degree of political or class consciousness of the mass of the people, in particular of working people. It is clear from the turnout in the recent elections, both north and south, that large numbers of people (more than half) decided not to […]
Over the course of the many referendums fought on the various EU treaties, the Irish establishment always sold the idea that neutrality and foreign-policy decisions would remain with the Irish state. But, as time progressed, those forces that strongly opposed these treaties and argued that there was only one direction […]
With the local election results just in, why is the left seen as a marginal and ignored voice among a majority of people? It seems that politics in Ireland is personality-based, and this has led to the situation where support for such politicians as Paul Murphy, Richard Boyd Barrett, Luke […]
I gceantar Bhaile na Lochlannach, ar bhruach thuaidh na Life, tá cnoc íseal a raibh coill bheag air tráth agus plásóg nó plásán ina lár. Thug na Sasanaigh “the Arbour” ar an bplásóg agus ansin Arbour Hill ar an gcnoc. Timpeall na bliana 1840 bhunaigh arm Shasana reilig ar an […]