Ireland

Edward Carson signing the Ulster Covenant What the Presbyterians said “ Our civil and religious liberties imperilled”: Resolution of the Irish Presbyterian Convention of February 1912, reaffirmed by the General Assembly January 1913. That we, the members of this great Convention, representing the overwhelming majority of Irish Presbyterians, assembled irrespective of the diverse opinions which we individually hold upon the political questions of the day, having in view the early introduction by his Majesty’s Government in the coming session of a Bill to establish a Parliament in Dublin with an...

Winston Churchill (on the right) and his father Randolph Churchill, who coined the phrase "Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right" as part of opposition to the first proposals for Irish Home Rule in the 1880s. It is not necessary to take too seriously the wild and whirling words of Sir Edward Carson, Mr. Bonar Law and other inciters to riot and rebellion in order to recognise that there is in certain parts of Ulster a very strong popular feeling against Home Rule. This feeling may be unreasonable and unreasoning; with no ground whatever for it except blind prejudice due to social and...

As this Saturday is the 12th of July, and as I am supposed to be writing about the North of Ireland in particular, it becomes imperative that I say something about this great and glorious festival.

The Tories have set a course for a major confrontation with the EU, as the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill threatens to rip up large parts of the Brexit deal agreed between the UK and Europe. Long-awaited, the Bill, if passed, would remove the direct effect of parts of the Withdrawal Agreement in domestic law. This would prevent it from having supremacy over UK law, allowing the UK to override parts of the Protocol. UK authorities, including Parliament, ministers and the civil service, would therefore no longer have to comply with parts of the Protocol which have been disapplied. The Clause...

Unionist demonstration, 1912 I have so often animadverted upon the manner in which the Transport Unions of Great Britain have scabbed upon the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union in Dublin that I feel a real pleasure in being able to announce to the readers of Forward that a definite movement is now on foot among the same bodies to compel the proprietors of the Ulster Head Line of steamers to reinstate our members in Belfast and Dublin. The fact that the weakness of our Union owing to the aforementioned scabbing taking place at the end of our struggle had enabled the Shipping Federation...

The recent proposals of Messrs. Asquith, Devlin, Redmond and Co. for the settlement of the Home Rule question deserve the earnest attention of the working class democracy of this country. They reveal in a most striking and unmistakeable manner the depths of betrayal to which the so-called Nationalist politicians are willing to sink. For generations the conscience of the civilised world has been shocked by the historical record of the partition of Poland; publicists, poets, humanitarians, patriots, all lovers of their kind and of progress have wept over the unhappy lot of a country torn asunder...

The point made in last week’s Forward by Comrade Johnson, of Belfast, as to the effect upon English politics of the contemplated exclusion of Ulster cannot be too well driven home in Socialist circles. For that reason I make no apology for recurring to it. Socialists and Labour people generally in Great Britain have had good reason to deplore the existence of the Irish question, and to realise how disastrous upon the chances of their candidates has been the fact of the existence in the constituencies of a large mass of organised voters whose political activities were not influenced solely or...

Right-wing Unionist demonstration British government plans to rip up the Northern Ireland Protocol of the EU Withdrawal Agreement are in flux, even though Boris Johnson survived the 6 June confidence vote among Tory MPs. On 17 May Liz Truss made a statement to the House of Commons promising a Bill to unilaterally disapply certain elements of the Protocol. The Bill would lead to the creation of a “green channel” for goods going to Northern Ireland from Great Britain that would not go on to the Republic of Ireland, halting mandatory checks for these exports. Also expected is a trusted trader...

The Morning Star and its political masters at the Communist Party of Britain (CPB) continue with their formal opposition to the invasion of Ukraine. But is becoming more and more obvious that this “opposition” has nothing to do with defending Ukraine’s right to self-determination. It is just a calculation that the invasion was an “error of judgement” on Putin’s part. In an editorial on Friday 13 May, the Morning Star repeats its refrain that the invasion was an ill-judged but understandable response to Nato’s expansion. Finland and (probably) Sweden joining Nato “illustrates just how the...

Part of a series of articles on Connolly: workersliberty.org/connolly On 9 December 1913 a special congress of the TUC voted down a motion that trade unionists should refuse to handle goods from firms which had been locking out Dublin workers since August. The vote weakened the workers’ side in the “Labour War”, and by 19 January the union was advising workers to return to work on the best terms they could get. The isolation of Dublin , by James Connolly A lesson from Dublin , by James Connolly