Submitted on
Ennis, Christmas Eve 1933
On Christmas Eve, 24 December 1933, in the West of Ireland town of Ennis, County Clare, members of the Gardai visited 26 labourers. They handed each one of them a summons to appear in Court on charges of intimidation, assault, and conspiracy, in mid-January 1934.
Submitted on
Communism in Ireland
What of communism in Ireland? James Connolly, whose whole history suggests that he would have rallied to the Russian Revolution and joined in the work of building the new Communist International, was of course dead 18 months before the Bolshevik Revolution. Jim Larkin, who would join the Communist International, was in America, and in the last part of his stay there, in jail. He would not return to Ireland until 1923.
Submitted on
The Ennis bourgeoisie
The fact that the Irish national bourgeoisie did not lead the national movement in 1916 and after did not inhibit them from from creating a thickly mythological account of Irish history as a nationalist, or ethnic-sectarian, heroic and unrelenting struggle for freedom.
Submitted on
De Valera’s “Second Revolution” and the working class
In power after the war of independence and the civil war, the Irish bourgeoisie cut back on the elements of a welfare state that had been developed in the old United Kingdom.
Submitted on
1932
Workers in the Free State faced a world of economic stagnation. In Clare the farmers were the new aristocracy, even though there were poor farmers in the west. The state was most responsive to their needs.
Submitted on
Normally socialists would welcome a republican demonstration against the British monarchy.
Submitted on
This year, again, on the 95th anniversary of the Easter Rising of 1916 which triggered a series of events leading to Ireland’s war of independence, official celebrations in Dublin and elsewhere were low-key.
Submitted on
Introduction
When Margaret Thatcher's Tories outlawed "secondary" or solidarity strikes, they knew what they were doing.
Submitted on
It is true, as the leader of the biggest political party in the new Dail, Enda Kenny, boasted, that the 26 Counties Irish state has had a revolution by way of the ballot box in the 25 February general election.
Submitted on
Rioting has ceased in Belfast, but cases of intimidation of workers by Orange hooligans are still occurring.
