The campaign for an all-Ireland public health service, fully funded and free at the point of entry, is gaining momentum around the country. Already three district councils in the North have supported the demand
Tag: Ireland
Little reason to celebrate the state of Northern Ireland
The six county state of Northern Ireland will reach its hundredth birthday in May. The British government, with enthusiastic support from Northern unionists, is making preparations to celebrate the anniversary.
Though claiming to emphasise the future rather than its history, it is inevitable that the nature of the Northern state, past, present, and future, must come under scrutiny. With even the best will in the world it is …
Nothing to celebrate
HUNDRED years after the partition of Ireland, a survey carried out by the Nevin Economic Research Institute on the annual earnings of workers in the North has exposed the reality for workers living in this British colony.
Wages in the North are much lower than any region in Britain, as are those of workers on low pay, with a quarter of all workers earning less than the living wage.
The sectarian virus
NEXT YEAR the unashamedly right- wing and sectarian Orange Order will mark the centenary of the creation of the Northern Ireland statelet with “a massive number of events,” the centrepiece of which will be a huge parade from Stormont in May 2021.
Licensed to kill
ACCORDING TO the BBC, “MI5 has up to 700 staff in Northern Ireland based at regional headquarters in Holywood, County Down. It took over the lead role in intelligence gathering on ‘dissident republicans’ from the police in 2007. The operational framework was set out as part of the St Andrews Agreement a year earlier.”
A changing of the guard?
Admittedly we can only ever be certain of death and taxes. With that caution in mind, though, it’s safe to say there is abundant evidence that the once all-powerful Fianna Fáil is sitting on the edge of a political precipice. Over the past decade, its share of the vote at […]
Power to the working people
Robert Owen, the nineteenth-century philanthropist, was by any standard a decent sort of bloke. He believed workers should be treated compassionately and that they deserved a reasonable standard of living. In fact he went a step further and attempted to build ideal societies in different countries, including one at Ralahine […]
Capitalist agriculture and the culling of small farms
Capital accumulation is one outcome of the irrational motor that drives our economic system. This is no less true for the agricultural sector than it is for industry. As capitalist production advances over time we witness a greater and greater accumulation of capital in fewer and fewer hands. Let’s consider […]
The IRA and the Nazis
In July 1940, after the fall of France and with a German invasion of Britain seeming imminent, the IRA leadership explained their attitude to the war in a public statement. In it they made it clear that if German forces arrived in Ireland they would come “as friends and liberators […]
The health of the nation – Part 2
This is the second part of a discussion article offering a detailed look at the effects of partition, at the continued role of British imperialism in Ireland and the effect it has had and continues to have on our people. The focus on public health in the Six Counties argues […]
That old national question—still refusing to go away
The hard-boiled readers of this paper rarely recognise the huge difficulties encountered by a right-wing coalition as it endeavours to govern this republic. There is the problem of ensuring that the rich are pampered, and that the middle class receives favourable treatment, and all the while guaranteeing that the working […]
Unionism redefined—but partition remains
The “Republican Party” of Fianna Fáil is back in government. Its leader has laid out a pragmatic approach to the national question that rules out a border poll, meaning that a united Ireland is out of the question. How very republican indeed! Instead Micheál Martin has advocated a policy “much […]
Socialism and feminism From Ireland to Cuba and beyond
Grúpa na mBan Réablóideacha—the Women’s Committee of the Communist Party of Ireland and the Connolly Youth Movement—recently hosted an event to highlight the significant role of women during and following the Cuban Revolution, which continues to be an inspiration to so many of us. As we continue our fight against […]
National liberation: The United States and Ireland
Mainstream culture and politics is invested in the idea that the age of nationalism has ended. Liberals proclaim that the world economy has been thoroughly globalised, and therefore nations are no longer of importance. Yet, as usual, reality serves to upset the declarations and pronouncements of liberal commentators. The question […]
The covid crisis demands a new beginning
The covid crisis demands a new beginning – Tommy McKearneyDownload People of Ireland, all is well! Your Taoiseach loves you. Wasn’t this what he told us in his St Patrick’s Day address to the nation (that part of it living south of the border)? His concerned yet confident demeanour was […]
Ireland without her people
“Ireland without her people is nothing to me,” James Connolly wrote in 1900. This phrase has been repeatedly quoted, in isolation, especially by those who wish to promote a workerist and non-national (or anti-national) view of James Connolly. Anyone who reads the sentence intelligently can see that Connolly condemned those […]