Features
The clearest precedent for the recent Garvaghy Road events is not of sectarian battles in the distant past but of the struggle for civil rights in the 1960s and 1970s. Thousands of Protestant working-class people then supported and participated in the civil rights movement, most via their membership of
Features
It’s an old adage but how do you know a government Minister is lying – their lips are moving! And so it is with Jack Chambers and Micheál Martin – both of whom are trying to justify the ongoing arrogance and ineptitude of this government. Government Lies Chambers thinks there isn’
Features
At the end of the giant student and worker demonstration in Paris on Thursday, October 8th, a banner was hung across the July Column in the Place de la Bastille. The banner read “Revolution 2.0, Rendez-vous October 17th”. The banner reflects the sentiment of thousands of mostly young
Features
At a Sunday service in June 1795, a Reverend George Maunsell, a magistrate and rector of Drumcree Church, called on his congregation ‘to celebrate the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne in the true spirit of the institution’, by attending a sermon to be given by a Rev. Devine
Features
If trade unions are serious about changing the conditions workers live and work under, they cannot confine themselves to the workplace – they must organise, mobilise and fight on the political issues that shape workers’ lives. As Rosa Luxemburg wrote, “There are not two different class struggles of the working class,
Ecosocialism
Could you start by telling us something about Kilmeaden and how people feel? Kilmeaden is a small village about seven miles from Waterford city. The surrounding area is primarily agricultural, and there used to be a cheese plant in the village before it moved to Kilkenny. Two new housing estates
Features
The Orange Order did not start as a gentry project but arose from clashes in Armagh between the mainly Catholic, Defenders, and Protestant Peep o’Day Boys, most famously in the battle of the Diamond in 1795. Around forty-eight Catholics were shot dead in this skirmish and many were
Features
The clashes in Portadown between Orange marchers and nationalist residents have widely been reported as reflecting sharp and essentially irreconcilable differences between “the two communities”. This is, at best, a distortion designed to accommodate the notion that Catholics and Protestants are gripped by 17th century ideas which pitch them against
Features
Last Sunday night, the Irish men’s football team played Israel. This was the first of two fixtures against Israel in the European Nations League, the least prestigious of the three regular international football tournaments Ireland participates in. Although it was an official home game for the Israeli team, the
Culture
Dolly Parton died on 25 August, at the age of 80, after a brief battle with cancer. It is genuinely hard to think of another figure in American popular culture who commanded such near-universal affection, cutting across almost every fault line in a bitterly polarised country – country music traditionalists
Ecosocialism
The reformist left play an irresponsible game. They claim to support progressive social change, but they often throw their weight behind policies that are regressive and shortsighted. The carbon tax is a good example. In Ireland, carbon taxes currently increase the price of a litre of petrol by 20 cents
Culture
We live in paradoxical times. You don’t have to convince many that Trump is terrible or the planet is burning or about the gross inequality in the world. Yet there is often a fatalism, a feeling that we cannot do much about it. How often have socialists heard the