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Irish history


John Kells Ingram and "The Memory of the Dead" ("Ninety Eight")

Irish history
Author: 
John Kells Ingram

The Memory of the Dead, better known as Ninety Eight, one of the best-known of Irish Republican songs, was first published in Thomas Davis’ paper, The Nation in 1842. It was written overnight after its author John Kells Ingram had spent an evening arguing Irish politics and history with a group of fellow Protestant students at Trinity College Dublin. Ingrams dared to speak of 98!


1798: Ireland’s year of liberty

Irish history
Author: 
Pat Murphy

Who fears to speak of Ninety-Eight?
Who blushes at the name?
When cowards mock the patriot’s fate
Who hangs his head for shame?


(full poem)
From May to September of 1798 the power of Britain in Ireland was threatened by fierce rebellion. The rising had the character of a forest fire. It was rarely clear where the main centre was. When any significant source of unrest was identified and attacked it appeared that the real danger lay somewhere else.


When the IRA ceased fire

Irish history
Author: 
Sean Matgamna

In August 1994 the Provisional IRA declared a ceasefire in its “Long War”, which by then had lasted 24 years (interspersed with some previous, temporary ceasefires). The 1994 ceasefire was interrupted by a partial return to bombing between February 1996 and July 1997, but eventually the ceasefire proved permanent. The Provisionals entered negotiations.


Lessons of the Great Belfast Strike of 1919

History
Author: 
Michael Farrell

1919 was a year of turmoil all over Europe.


Jim Larkin: the Irish Apostle of Labour Solidarity

History
Author: 
John O’Mahony

In March 1947, an immense crowd of people, 200,000 of them, many of the men bare-headed in freakishly Arctic weather, marched through Dublin behind the coffin of Jim Larkin, the founder of the modern


1969: When IS and PD turned to tailing after the Republicans

Ireland
Author: 
Sean Matgamna

For earlier articles in this series, covering the breakdown in 1968-9 of the old Northern Ireland political system — the biggest crisis in the UK state for many decades — and the reactions of the left, see www.workersliberty.org/node/10010.


Anti-Imperialism and the trap of "paint by numbers" — Part 2 of "AWL's Record on Ireland"

Ireland
Author: 
Sean Matgamna

What is the socialist movement?... To a contemporary Socialist the socialist movement does not look anything like it did to a [utopian] Socialist in the [18]30s [for whom] 'future history resolves itself into propaganda and the practical implementation of their social plans...


SWP (IS) and Northern Ireland in 1968-9: Advocating civil war — until it starts! (Part 6, section 1)

SWP
Author: 
Sean Matgamna

This article reviews the way that the biggest activist-left group of the last 35 years or so in Britain — the SWP, then called IS — dealt with the biggest internal crisis the British state has seen since the early 1920s, the breakdown of Northern Ireland into civil war in 1969. It continues a series about the British left and the decisive early stages of the nearly 40 years of “Troubles” in Northern Ireland.

[This is an edited and augmented version of the text in Solidarity. It includes excerpts from the minutes of the leading committees of the International Socialist organisation, which are not in the version printed in Solidarity.]


Who Was James Connolly?

James Connolly
Author: 
Sean Matgamna

One thousand men and a few women, one quarter of them the trade union militants of the Citizen Army, badly armed and with little training, went out into the streets of Dublin to challenge and to fight the greatest empire the world had seen. Many of them knew — certainly the leaders knew — that, given the isolation of Dublin, they had little chance of success.


Northern Ireland 1969: When Socialists Looked to "Catholic Power"

Ireland
Author: 
Sean Matgamna

(First section: click here for continuation)
This article is the fifth in a series by Sean Matgamna about the British left and the events in Northern Ireland in 1968-9 — the biggest internal crisis the British state has seen since the early 1920s.


When socialists looked to "Catholic power" (continuation)

Ireland
Author: 
Sean Matgamna

Click here for section one of this article

McCann: We have failed to get our position across. We keep saying parrot-like that we are fighting on working-class issues for working-class unity, that our objective is a workers’ and farmers’ socialist republic.


1969: Ireland and the British Left part 4 — When “militant” sloganeering meant promoting communal war

SWP
Author: 
Sean Matgamna

The last three issues of Solidarity have carried Sean Matgamna’s series about the British left and the events in Northern Ireland in 1968-9 — arguably the biggest internal crisis the British state has seen since the early 1920s. The last article (Solidarity 3/120) summed up the turning-point debate at the National Committee of IS (forerunner of the SWP) in January 1969, and the initial positions mapped out by the IS/SWP majority and by the Trotskyist Tendency within IS (forerunner of Solidarity and Workers’ Liberty).

1969: Why Northern Ireland split on communal, not class, lines

SWP
Author: 
Sean Matgamna

IS AND IRELAND

Continuing the series about the events in Northern Ireland in 1968-9 — the start of the long-running turmoil there, still not resolved today — and the debates and disputes as the left tried to orient itself.


The Irish Workers' Group, IS and the "Trotskyist Tendency": The Irish Crisis and the British Left 1968-70 — part 2

SWP
Author: 
Sean Matgamna

In Solidarity 3/118 we began a series of articles about the events in Northern Ireland in 1969 — when the nearly 50 year old Northern Ireland state broke down, and the British Army went on the streets to hold it together — and the debates and disputes which that provoked in the British left.


The History of the International Socialists: The British Left and the Irish Crisis 1968-70 Part 1

Ireland
Author: 
Sean Matgamna

Part 1: How and Why the Six-County State Broke Down

Recently the British army in Northern Ireland was withdrawn to where it was in relation to Northern Ireland society before 14 August 1969, when it was put on the streets to be an emergency scaffolding for a state and society that had begun to break down into Protestant/ Catholic civil war.


1798: Ireland's Year of Liberty

Irish history

By Pat Murphy

The story of the United Irishmen, and the uprising of 1798.

Who fears to speak of ‘98?
Who blushes at the name?
When cowards mock the patriot’s fate
Who hangs his head for shame?


Paisley-Sinn Fein-IRA coalition—Partition remains the big problem - background Six-County politics

Ireland

By John O’Mahony
Ian Paisley calls himself the "Leader of the Ulster People". By that he means, leader of the Protestant-Unionist 56 per cent, or thereabouts, of the people living in the 6-Counties. Now Paisley looks set to form a 6-County coalition government in partnership with Sinn Fein-IRA.


On our side

Women

By John O'Mahony

Constance Gore-Booth led the well-off life of an “Anglo-Irish” ruling class family until she was 40 — introduced as a debutante to Queen Victoria in the late 1880s, art student in Paris, part of the aristocratic hunting fraternity in her home county of Sligo.


The Green above the Red! Constance Markievicz, socialist and nationalist

Women

By Sean Matgamna

The well-known author Tim Pat Coogan once made the true comment that Irish history has the only example of Communists and bourgeois nationalists joining together against imperialism, in which it was the Communists who were gobbled up.


Dora B Montefiore on saving the children of the Dublin strikers in 1913

Women

Against the priests and the bosses

By Sean Matgamna

In the years before the First World War, the great Jim Larkin organised the savagely oppressed workers of Ireland's capital city and made them a power in Ireland.


The Partition of Ireland

Ireland

The events of 1912-22, and their consequences for Ireland today.


1968-85: what happened and why

Ireland

Introduction

From the mid-1960s a sizeable minority of the people of the USA turned against the war their government was waging in Vietnam. They marched, demonstrated and lobbied to force their government to stop the war.


The Ballad of James Larkin

Ireland

by Donagh MacDonagh

In Dublin City in 1913 the boss was rich and the poor were slaves

The women working, the children starving, then on came Larkin like a mighty wave


Ninety years since the Easter Rising

Ireland

April 23 marks the 90th anniversary of the Easter Rising, in many ways the defining event in modern Irish history. The Rising, its consequences and aftermath shaped the situation Ireland faces today. It offers important lessons for the Irish workers today against both imperialism and indigenous exploitation and reaction. Mike Rowley tells the story.


Women in the Irish nationalist movement 1900-1916

Women

From Workers' Libety 56, June/July 1999

Constance Markievicz and the other women who fought in the Easter Rising struggled to be accepted on equal terms by the Irish labour movement and among nationalists. Their experience holds many lessons for today's socialists and feminists.


Socialists and the Good Friday Agreement part 1

Ireland

The peace agreement drawn up after hours of exhausting talks in Belfast on 10 April holds out the pospect of an end to the 30 years war in Northern Ireland. That should recommend it to socialists even though little else about it does. It certainly isn’t a solution to the conflict. At worst, what it does is institutionalise the sectarian conflict at the heart of Northern Ireland society. At best it provides a new framework within which the leading communal politicians on each side can manage that conflict.


The trouble with Northern Ireland: part 1

Ireland

In the election to the Westminster Parliament, the “moderate” Ulster Unionist Party led by David Trimble — who lost his seat plus four others — was almost wiped out by the Paisleyite Democratic Unionist Party.


Eamonn McCann, Trotskyism and Irish Republican militarism

Ireland
Author: 
Sean Matgamna

Parables for Socialists 17


From Emmet to O’Connell

Irish history

Thomas Carolan continues his series on the history of Irish republicanism


Savage Violence in Irish Schools: Why Did They Stand For It?

Schools
Author: 
John O'Mahony

The little boy, Tommy, perhaps eight years old, watched the schoolmaster, Sean Gormley, prepare to flog his brother, Mickey. Mickey was a year or two older than Tommy, but smaller.


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