Nobody relying on the news media in Ireland can have any understanding of events in Venezuela. They take their line from the international corporate media (primarily North American, British and Spanish) which is waging a media war against the government. According to them, Venezuela’s economy is collapsing due to the […]
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Unity is strength
The job of trade unionists is to fight the cause of the workers “An Act to Make Further and Better Provision for Promoting Harmonious Relations between Workers and Employers . . .” reads the long title of the Industrial Relations Act (1990), and its predecessors and amendments. The use of the phrase […]
Not seeing the wood for the trees – A technocratic solution to a political problem
The problems facing organised labour in Ireland—declining density, lack of younger members, difficulty engaging contract workers, depleted funds, hostile media coverage, etc.—are well known and familiar to all those involved in the movement today. Many people have posed rather sensible responses to these issues, such as a better use of […]
Workers in struggle – Lloyd’s Pharmacy: Fighting for union recognition
Mandate has called on Lloyd’s Pharmacy to respect its employees’ right to trade union representation before the management does even more damage to the business. The union responded to a press statement issued by the company to correct serious flaws in its presentation of what is happening and to expose […]
External powers strive to exert control
On a wet night in February 1912, Winston Churchill, first lord of the admiralty, addressed a cheering crowd of more than seven thousand nationalists gathered in the old Celtic Park football ground in Belfast. He was there to promote the third Government of Ireland Bill (often called the Home Rule […]
United Bodenstown Commemoration, 2018
The second United Bodenstown Commemoration to honour Theobald Wolfe Tone and the United Irish movement, organised by the Peadar O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forum, took place on 19 August. Activists came from all over the country—from Dublin, Belfast, Newry, Fermanagh, Tyrone, Cavan, Monaghan, Armagh, Wicklow, and Waterford. A delegation from Scotland […]
EU myths and Greek reality
Sadly, the journey travelled by the Greek people since 2010 was not some Homeric odyssey, filled with adventure, but rather a living nightmare for millions of Greek people. In particular, Greek workers and their families, as well as small family farmers, have paid a very heavy price at the hands […]
Organising and mental health
“At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality . . . We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed into […]
Pensions: another stealth tax
In the last issue of Socialist Voice it was shown that, as part of the liberal agenda, the period of wage-slavery was being extended to the degree that it is unlikely that most people forced to work until seventy years of age or beyond will be able to enjoy their […]
A summer of change
This summer has indeed been very different from summers of the past—and it wasn’t just the long period of hot weather. There has been a sustained period of civil disobedience by ordinary citizens, who have been marginalised by high rents and low pay as a result of the neo-liberal policies […]
Victor Jara sings on
Forty-five years ago, on 11 September 1973, the Chilean military, under the command of General Augusto Pinochet and backed by the United States, overthrew the democratically elected socialist government of Salvador Allende. Allende, who had won the election in September 1970, was faced even before taking office with the enmity […]
Films- Provoking viewers to think about fascism
Winner of the Golden Globe for best foreign-language film, In the Fade, by the Turkish-German director Fatih Akın, is one of the more important new political films on the state of Germany today. It is loosely based on the NSU (National Socialist Underground—i.e. fascist) trials, which were concluded this summer […]
Films – Some harsh truths about American police and politics
BlacKkKlansman is Spike Lee’s latest cinematic offering, a dramatic dark comedy that is based on a true story of a black detective who goes undercover in the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s. The film has suffered criticism for being “anti-white” (the irony is tangible on that one) and for […]
I Come And Stand At Every Door
Originally a poem by the great Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet and translated into English by Jeannette Turner. Here Gabriel Rosenstock translates Pete Seeger’s version of this great antiwar song (https://tinyurl.com/pnyykae). Im’ sheasamh ar gach tairseach bím Im’ sheasamh ar gach tairseach bím Ní chloistear áfach mo choiscéim An […]
Tressell’s work is a timeless piece of working class literature
Robert Tressell’s book The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists is the first important working-class novel in English literature, written between 1906 and 1910 and first published posthumously, and very abridged, in 1914. The working class has championed this novel about their experience and written from their own point-of-view like no other working-class novel […]
The anti-fascism of Georgi Dimitrov
Georgi Dimitrov led the Communist International from 1934 to 1943. During that time, he contributed to the Communist understanding of fascism, more so than any other Marxist theorist. Dimitrov outlined the origins and purpose of fascism as well as the strategy the Communist movement had to adopt in order to […]