For this year’s Madge Davison Memorial Lecture at Féile an Phobail we are celebrating the Life and Times of Sean Morrissey with Professor Sinéad Morrissey, Sean’s granddaughter, doing a presentation. In the chair this time will be Tommy Campbell, a long-time comrade of Sean’s, now living in Aberdeen.
John Molloy examines the role of mass media in warfare since Vietnam and how Western regimes have developed systematic approaches to control the popular narrative by platforming loyal journalists and killing those trying to bring their people’s experiences to light. Ireland and other nations cannot look away from the brutal reality of what happening in Gaza. We have to act now and choose Justice over Power.
Eoin Ó Murchú writes for Unity on last week’s ICTU conference in Belfast. Important motions on neutrality, a new economic model, and social solidarity were discussed and passed – but discussion alone will not bring the change needed. The Irish trade union requires laser-sharp focus and determined radicalism to advance an agenda favourable to workers in the face of relentless ruling class opposition and sustained political failure across social democracy.
A society’s priorities can quickly be gleaned from which rights it chooses to prioritise – and which rights it chooses to ignore. In Ireland, at least, the right to property continues to trump the right to a home as derelict buildings set a tone of urban decay. A surreal scenario where overpriced, out-of-reach new developments continue to spring up while potential homes collapse, underlining the anti-social behaviour of the wealthy within the market.
Profiteering from sale of houses, ownership by private landlords and housing associations is a major issue that is diametrically opposed to social housing, in that greed not need is the driving force. This issue will never be solved until we get a strategy which accepts that social housing is a human right and not a privilege–that it is acknowledged and acted upon.
While the British prime minister Keir Starmer preens himself over the reset of relations between the UK and the EU – a reset warmly welcomed by the capitalist government in Dublin – the stark reality remains that this reset offers nothing to workers in Ireland or Britain who are being squeezed by higher prices, social welfare cuts and missed employment opportunities.
This article recounts Dympne McGlade’s memory of a family experience which runs contrary to the grain of jingoistic commemorations of the Second World War, highlighting political repression of republicans in Ireland and communal suffering. Celebrations of victory contrast with the deep and abiding harm which was inflicted upon the colonial subjects of some of the victors, continuing to this day.
JAMES Connolly, born in Edinburgh of Irish parents, experienced and wrote about the struggles of workers against capitalism and imperialism. Taking part in those struggles in Ireland, Britain and America he worked for the unity of the working class. He was a socialist, a Marxist an internationalist and a patriot-committed to the real independence of Ireland.
Micheál O’Riordan, former General Secretary of the Communist Party of Ireland, fought with the XV International Brigade in the Spanish Anti-Fascist War and for the unity of Ireland and its working class.
Over 75 years ago, Nye Bevan declared the creation of a health service where “the rich and the poor are treated alike, that poverty is not a disability, and wealth is not advantaged.” The capitalist class are grinning as the carnival now begins and human life is debased into another commodity to play with. The working class now calls new champions to show their steel, protect our livelihoods and win the coming world.
The legacy of the second world war has become a combat zone in its own right with a conscious ideological effort in the West to re-write events to exclude the legacy of the Soviet Union. The sacrifices of the past cannot be warped to serve new wars of the present.