Ireland

Thursday 18 January has seen possibly the largest strike in the now century of Northern Ireland's history, discounting the paramilitary-enforced stoppage against powersharing in 1974.

The currency of Catholic-hierarchy and narrow-nationalist versions of anti-conscriptionism, and the absence of international-socialist versions, explains why the revulsion against the World War in 1917-8 could take Catholic-nationalist-militant but socially-conservative forms.

On 23 November buses and trams were burned in Dublin and many shops looted. Far-rightists also targeted a number of buildings used to house asylum seekers and other migrants.

The Easter Rising and Irish history: The two souls of Irish nationalism? An attempt at a Marxist account. An inspiration across the world? Or an eclipse of working-class socialism by narrow nationalism? Both were in the Easter Rising.

Connolly has become “a vessel into which each man can pour his dream.”

In 1984 the Irish Adminstrative and Distributive Trade Union (IDATU) passed policy for a boycott of South African goods. They instructed their members not to handle goods produced in the state, which from 1948 to 1994 mandated white-black segregation (apartheid). A young shop assistant Mary Manning, refused to serve a customer a grapefruit in Dunnes stores in Dublin. Result: an almost three-year strike, first against her suspension and then for the Irish government to boycott South African goods. Strike! , at Southwark Playhouse until 6 May tells the story of the young women and one man who...

According to the front page of the Morning Star (8-9 April): “Unions are warning that stability in Ireland could be threatened if workers’ rights are ‘ripped up’ under the Retained EU Law Bill.” The piece continues: “The TUC and NIC-ICTU (Northern Ireland Committee in the Irish Congress of Trade Unions) issued a statement ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement ... warn(ing) that under the Bill workplace rights such as holiday pay, rest breaks, health and safety rules and protections from discrimination will disappear”. TUC general secretary Paul Nowak was quoted, saying...

The Windsor Framework, negotiated between the UK and the EU to manage post-Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland, was debated by MPs on Wednesday 22 March 2023. The Framework patches up the Northern Ireland Protocol, which was designed to ensure the UK left the EU but without the creation of a "hard border" within the island of Ireland. Instead, a regulatory and customs border was drawn between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, leading to increased checks and the prospect of "east-west" regulatory divergence. The Framework does not alter the fundamentals, in that EU law continues to apply...

The Communist Party of Britain’s international secretary Kevan Nelson gave a report to the party’s political committee last month, published in the Morning Star of 25-26 February. Headed “Signs of Labour collusion with ruling-class attempts to sabotage Britain’s exit from the EU”, it was terrible, even by CPB- Morning Star standards. The statement opens by quoting James Connolly’s famous prediction that the partition of Ireland would mean a “carnival of reaction” and sought to apply it to Sunak’s attempt to ease friction on the British border in Ireland and to Ukraine’s military resistance to...

On 27 February, Rishi Sunak announced that the EU had agreed a wide range of easings to “overlay” the Northern Ireland Protocol attached to the 2019-20 UK-EU Withdrawal Agreement. The Protocol allows Northern Ireland both to be in the EU Single Market (and thus have no “hard” border with the South) and to be in the UK. Since the Tories plan to depart widely from EU regulations — Sunak still seems intent on that — the Protocol requires some border checks between Britain and Northern Ireland. The new agreement minimises those. The ultra-Brexiter Tories have backed Sunak’s deal. The DUP, the main...