Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century
 
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Ireland

Ireland today: interview with Goretti Horgan and Eamonn McCann

Pat Stack talks to Derry based socialists Goretti Horgan and Eamonn McCann

Take back the lake – a report on the Ireland climate camp

A report from the climate camp at Lough Neagh.

About the Dublin riots: some explanations and responses

Juliana Sassi, a member of the Community Action Tenants Union (CATU), looks beyond simplistic explanations of the recent riots in Dublin to deeper causes, and explains how anti-racists and community campaigners have responded.

#IrelandForAll and the anti-racist tradition in Ireland

Recent months have witnessed a growth in far-right organising in Ireland, but also the spread of major anti-racist mobilisations in response. Pádraig Mac Oscair examines these developments and puts them in historical context. In recent months, the inner-city Dublin community of East Wall has seen a series of protests against the potential housing of refugees […]

View from the city walls as Loyalists prepare a bonfire in the Fountain estate in Derry

What’s behind the riots in the North of Ireland?

The riots in the North of Ireland must be understood in the context of continued sectarian division and state repression.

Getting away with murder

The Overseas Operations Bill, which effectively ‘decriminalises torture’, is an insult to all those who seek accountability for the crimes of British imperialism.

Photos of Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Jeremy Corbyn

Jeremy Corbyn and the IRA smears

Claims that Jeremy Corbyn was a supporter or even a member of the IRA were a prominent part of how he was demonised. But there was little discussion of the context for the IRA campaign or the left’s attitude.

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Video: What future for Ireland?

Eamonn McCann and Maev McDaid discuss the future of Ireland, 50 years after British troops went in, as the DUP prop up a Tory British government grappling with Brexit, and in the light of feminist struggles on both sides of the border.

Protesters with Save Our Shipyard banner

Harland and Wolff: occupying for nationalisation, jobs and the climate

Workers at Belfast’s Harland and Wolff shipyard are fighting to save their jobs and demanding nationalisation as the employer goes into administration.

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What future for Ireland, 50 years after British troops went in?

On 22 August Eamonn McCann and Maev McDaid will be speaking in London about the political situation in Ireland 50 years on from British troops going in.

Tories in crisis: what comes next? Neil Davidson

Video: Tories in crisis – what comes next?

Watch Marxist historian and author Neil Davidson discuss the establishment’s triple crisis of strategy, party and state – and its potential outcomes.

Hope and tragedy in April 1919

The Limerick Soviet (13 – 27 April 1919) was one manifestation of a wave of revolutionary crises that confronted British imperialism in the aftermath of WWI.

Bloody Sunday cover-up

Bloody Sunday prosecution: no justice, no peace

Not just one soldier, but the entire British state must be held to justice for its murderous record in the North of Ireland

Remembering Bloody Sunday

47 years ago the residents of Derry awoke to the aftermath of the Bloody Sunday massacre. The struggle for justice continues.

Neither Westminster nor Stormont

This week, buoyed by the #NowForNI campaign, Labour MPs have made multiple attempts to extend reproductive rights to the North of Ireland. On Tuesday 23 October, Diana Johnson’s largely symbolic ten-minute rule bill to scrap the 1861 Offences Against the Persons Act (the law used to criminalise abortion) passed its first reading by 208 to […]

AUDIO: My body, my choice

In a discussion held at rs21’s September 2018 National Meeting, Kate Bradley introduces pro-choice activist Maev McDaid (3:40) and transfeminist Joni Cohen (17:50) on reproductive rights and freedoms for cis and trans women. The recent referendum in the Republic of Ireland made headlines around the world, but much remains undone for reproductive rights in both Ireland […]

Repeal: A fight against misogyny and the legacy of imperialism

The British ‘resolution’ to conflict in Ireland was to entrench the power of the reactionary sectarian forces in Irish politics.

Review: Struggle or Starve

Pat Stack reviews Struggle or Starve: Working-Class Unity in Belfast’s 1932 Outdoor Relief Riots by Seán Mitchell, arguing that this look into Northern Ireland’s forgotten past has much to teach activists looking to build anti-sectarian working-class movements today. Struggle or Starve is published by Haymarket Books and available now at a reduced price through rs21.

Rainbow smoke

Pride not profit

The London Pride march takes place this coming weekend, on Saturday 8 July. Barclays, Tesco and Virgin Atlantic are all sponsors of an increasingly corporate event. But opposition to dominance of corporations and official state bodies is also emerging internationally. After Black Lives Matter, uniformed cops can’t march at Pride in Toronto, while on 10 […]

The real cost of the Tory-DUP deal

Seb Cooke comments on the deal struck between the Tory party and the Democratic Unionists. The UK government’s attitude to Northern Ireland, which is revealing itself as the Tory-DUP deal takes shape, should concern us all. On Tuesday of this week, Secretary of State Damien Green was asked whether he thinks the DUP deal – […]

Housing and women’s protests join forces against May

A protest in central London unites two groups fighting the Tories

The DUP – Last Refuge for Desperate Tories

Connor Kelly exposes the Ulster Democratic Unionist Party. The DUP are the largest unionist party in Northern Ireland. Led by the thoroughly corrupt and devious Arlene Foster, they are a deeply sectarian party who, when not stirring up hatred against Catholics and republicans, vilify gays, women, Muslims, and the poor. The party maintains links with the […]

Obituary: Martin McGuinness

Pat Stack looks at the struggles which shaped Martin McGuinness and calls out the double-standards of the British Establishment’s response to his death. The death of Martin McGuinness has allowed two fairly standard, and on the face of it contrasting, narratives to emerge. The official one – as espoused with greater or lesser enthusiasm by the likes […]

Ireland’s greatest revolutionary

For the centenary of the Easter Rising of 1916 we republish Shaun Harkin‘s account of the life of Irish Marxist and revolutionary James Connolly. James Connolly was executed by a British firing squad on May 12, 1916, in Dublin City along with other leaders of what became known as the Irish Easter Rising. At his […]

James Connolly: ‘Socialism and Irish Nationalism’

Connolly’s 1897 article from an issue of L’Irlande Libre addresses socialism versus the chauvinist conception of Irish nationalism. Marking the 100th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising, we are republishing this from the Marxist Internet Archive. It was transcribed by the James Connolly Society in 1997. The public life of Ireland has been generally so much identified with the struggle for political […]

The right to water: an interview with Mike Gonzalez

Mike Gonzalez and Marienella Yanes are the authors of The Last Drop: The Politics of Water (Pluto: 2015). Mike talked to Nick Evans about the fight to put the world’s water back under democratic control, and the wider connections between climate change and class struggle. Water Protests in Cochabamba, Bolivia in 2000 How does looking at […]

Lessons from Europe – Marina Prentoulis, Shane Fitzgerald, Cat Boyd

Video from the ‘Lessons from Europe’ session at They Don’t Represent Us featuring activists from Greece, Scotland and Ireland.

Yes to marriage equality in Ireland – an inspiration for battles to come

Irish socialist Jen O’Leary analyses the politics of the No and Yes campaigns, and argues that the Yes victory must be a step in the ongoing struggle for wider LGBTQ liberation.  We received Jen’s article after the polls closed, but before the results started coming in. Around Saturday lunchtime, it became clear not only that Yes had won, but […]

Platform for Renewal emerges from Irish anti water charges movement

Shane Fitzgerald, a socialist based in Dublin, who will be speaking at They Don’t Represent Us, reports on the emergence of the Platform for Renewal from the water campaigns in Ireland This Friday in Dublin, the five trade unions involved in the Right2Water campaign in the south of Ireland are hosting a May Day Conference […]

‘The rocky road ahead…’ The movement against Irish Water

Five activists from rs21 spent a weekend in Dublin and took part in a city-wide demonstration against the Irish Government’s recent Water Charges bill, and spoke to several activists on the Irish left.