Ireland

Requiring a trans woman to show she suffered from a “disorder” is an unnecessary affront to her dignity, the Northern Ireland High Court has ruled. The obligation required in order to secure official recognition of her preferred identity is incompatible with human rights, said the ruling. Judicial review proceedings brought against the Government Equalities Office (GEA) focused on the terms of the Gender Recognition Act 2004. The woman, who has chosen to stay anonymous, began her transition more than 20 years ago, and took legal action in a bid to obtain a new birth certificate. In order to...

When loyalist violence erupted in Northern Ireland in April, the Morning Star responded with an article (15 April) by one Lynda Walker that concluded: “The cause of the problems which the unionist and loyalist communities have cited, the border and policing, must be solved politically. In addition to those orchestrating the violence, the British and Irish governments, the EU and the DUP should be held responsible for this situation.” The words “statement” and “bleedin’ obvious” spring to mind. At least Walker’s article includes the British government in its roll-call of those to blame. Back in...

See also Ireland: theory, debate, history for articles on related issues. Series: What is Irish Republicanism? by John O' Mahony (Sean Matgamna) Part one Part two Part three Part four What is Irish Republicanism? continued (various authors): Where is Republicanism going? What happened when The CPI calls for civil war The Comintern on the Treaty The fifth congress Trotsky on worker-peasant parties Series: the history of Irish Republicanism by Thomas Carolan (Sean Matgamna) Part 1: The past, present and future of Irish republicanism Part 2: The gunmen in power Part 3: The IRA's all-time low Part...

Northern Ireland has been rocked by over a week of rioting, predominantly in loyalist working-class areas in several towns and cities including Belfast, Carrickfergus, Ballymena and Newtownabbey.

This year marks the unhappy centenary of the foundation of the state of Northern Ireland, which was born amid sectarian violence in 1921. The Brexit debacle and, most recently, the hastily withdrawn threat from the European Commission to trigger ‘Article 16’ of the Northern Ireland Protocol, have brought into sharp relief the dysfunctional nature of the Six Counties, and the underlying weaknesses of the post-1998 ‘peace process’. Amid growing calls for a ‘border poll’ on a United Ireland, socialists must address the situation head on, if an entrenchment of sectarian politics and growing...

Esther Roper and Eva Gore Booth had lived and worked together for twenty years when they, along with three others, launched their magazine Urania. It was 1916, the middle of the First World War. Less than three months earlier, 485 people had been killed in the Easter Rising in Dublin and Eva’s sister, Constance Markiewvicz, had escaped execution for her part in the rebellion on the grounds of her sex. Urania , however, was not an outlet for Esther and Eva’s anti-war activism. Nor was it a magazine targeting the tens of thousands of working-class women they had organised with in the suffrage...

A place I lost I scarcely knew, The childhood land I never outgrew, My father’s life, my mother’s tales Of hungers, wars, workhouses, jails, The memories not quite my own To which my memories are sewn: Inextricably in Erin’s net, I am what I refuse to forget.

“We are not a government party; we are the party of irreconcilable opposition… Our tasks... we realise not through the medium of bourgeois governments... but exclusively through the education of the masses through agitation, through explaining to the workers what they should defend and what they should overthrow. Such a “defence” cannot give immediate miraculous results. But we do not even pretend to be miracle workers. As things stand, we are a revolutionary minority. Our work must be directed so that the workers on whom we have influence should correctly appraise events, not permit...

The Irish election results have seen an unprecedented surge of support for Sinn Féin, overtaking both the establishment parties to win the popular vote with 24.5% of first preference votes, to Fianna Fáil’s 22.2% and Fine Gael’s 20.9%. SF’s vote was a rejection of the two-party system, which has seen FF and FG rotate in power since the early 1930s. This rejection was overwhelmingly fuelled by anger about issues such as housing, homelessness and health. Whatever SF’s willingness and capacity to deliver fundamental change on these issues, or its credentials as a genuinely left-wing party, the...

Three years after Stormont collapsed, following the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI), power-sharing returned to Northern Ireland on 11 January and a new Executive was formed. The general election on 12 December punished both the main parties, the DUP and SF. There was growing anger at the continuing deadlock, which saw a crisis in public services — NI has the longest NHS waiting lists in the UK and schools are under huge financial pressure — while legislators still received their salaries. A well-supported health workers’ strike for the restoration of pay parity with UK NHS staff (broken by the...