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For decades Lenin’s small body of work on Ireland, filtered through a number of Stalinist pamphlets purporting to expound the ideas of “Marx, Engels and Lenin” on Ireland, has helped shape socialists’ views. In this, the second article in a series, Sean Matgamna argues that this “Marxist dogmatism” has meant, in fact, giving up on any serious attempt at Marxist analysis of Ireland.
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Over the last decade, much has changed in the political culture of the lesbian ‘community’. Ten years ago, the dominant voices were those of ‘radical feminists’.
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Chan Ying reports from Hong Kong on the eve of the sixth anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre (4 June 1989).
The Chinese authorities are once again harassing and arresting journalists, intellectuals and dissidents. Wang Dan, the student leader of the 1989 events, has been arrested again. He has gone into a hunger strike. Wang had already served his prison sentence, although he has been under constant surveillance ever since his release. This time he is one of 27 signatories to a letter petitioning the government to launch a full inquiry into the ’89 events. Another signatory, Ding Zilin, assistant professor of philosophy of Beijing’s Chinese People’s University and mother of a June 4th victim, has been kept under surveillance since March 1994, after publishing an article about her work in compiling June 4th victims. She has recently been threatened by the authorities even though she has not been involved in any form of illegal or underground activity. More than 40 activists have been detained in the last two weeks.
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By Martin Thomas
In France’s municipal elections, on 11 and 18 June, the fascist National Front won control of its first big city, Toulon, in southern France.
It also won two smaller cities, Orange and Marignane, and generally scored well though patchily.
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By Liam Conway
On Thursday 22 June the Labour Party unveiled its a policy document on education: Diversity and Excellence. The report recommends the preservation of grant maintained schools (renaming them “foundation” schools), thus perpetuating the two tier-system of education the Tories introduced with their education reforms. The same document says does not recommend any increase in funds for education. This is, as one old-style Labourite, Roy Hattersley, has said, nothing short of a “repudiation of the principle of comprehensive education”. (See next page).
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By Colin Foster
According to Alexander Ivanko, a UN spokesperson in Sarajevo, “the Bosnian Serbs are calling most of the shots. I’m sure there are some shots they are not calling. I just can’t think of them at the moment”.
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By a BT engineer
Apart from general statements assuring the bosses that there will be “no return to the ’70s”, the Labour Frontbench has not been keen to spell out what, if anything, they will do to remove the legal shackles imposed on the unions by the Tories.
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By Joan Trevor
Greenpeace scored a big victory over international giant Shell in the Brent Spar affair. Shell had got government permission to abandon a 20 year old oil installation at sea, despite many scientists saying it would cause terrible environmental damage. But they had to abandon the plan after bad publicity, and a boycott by drivers of Shell petrol stations.
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John Major’s decision to resign as Tory leader and stand for re-election, challenging his critics to “sack me or back me”, is desperate rather than brave. Major probably faced a leadership election in the autumn anyway: this way he goes out to meet his enemies in an aura of resolution and leader-like purposefulness.
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Fifty years ago the Labour Party won an overwhelming victory in the general election that followed the defeat of Hitler.
