Socialist Party (Ireland) Struggle, Democracy, Socialism

I note the article in today’s Irish Times and the coverage on some radio programmes regarding Sinn Féin’s call for co-operation from left parties for the coming general election. This appeal for unity with the left and anti-water charges activists comes very quickly after a leading spokesperson for Sinn Féin, Pádraig Mac Lochlainn, talked positively about co-operation and coalition with ...

#Refugeelivesmatter, Joe Higgins on the horrific plight facing refugees

During the last seven years of austerity, the Irish Congress of Trades Unions (ICTU) and its biggest component, Siptu, capitulated utterly in front of the diktats of the financial markets as imposed by the Troika resulting in working class people being forced to salvage the capitalist finance system. SIPTU and Labour betrayal The ICTU and Siptu leadership shamefully supported the ...

By Joe Higgins TD A General Election looms. It cannot be delayed beyond April of next year. However, with mass mobilisations against water charges and austerity, the Fine Gael/Labour Coalition government was shown to have clumsy feet of clay and there is no certainty that it will survive until next year especially if there is a renewed upsurge of anger ...

In December 1996, the now Labour Party Minister for Public Expenditure, Brendan Howlin – at that time Minister for the Environment in a Fine Gael/Labour Coalition government – announced the national abolition of Water Charges. This was a huge victory for the power of ordinary working class people, who had actively supported a massive three year campaign of boycott, protests ...

An opinion Poll in early June showed the Labour Party with 4% support nationally. This is a measure of how comprehensively that party has disappointed those who voted for it in the 2011 General Election.

The government’s actions in cobbling together a majority on the Committee has been unbelievably crude and hamfisted. However, while this has shown to the world the cynical manoeuvrings that go on among the establishment political parties in the Oireachtas as they jockey for advantage, it fundamentally changes nothing. All parties understood that the government was always going to use its Dáil majority to have a majority on the Committee.

The political and media rumpus created over issues relating to the Garda force has abated for the time being as the main issues have been kicked to various investigations. There were so many different strands in play that it was sometimes difficult to keep abreast of developments. It is however important with hindsight to analyse why the main protagonists such as the government and the Garda management reacted as they did, in order to clearly understand which interests they defend.

Who would have imagined that in a major American city, at a post election inauguration ceremony attended by 1,000 people, a new, directly elected Mayor and other members of the City Council would be completely eclipsed by the response of the attendance to a Socialist Councillor? That was the situation in Seattle on 6 January. Socialist Alternative Councillor Kshama Sawant, in her speech, roundly denounced the problems which ‘crisis ridden capitalism’ causes for working class people, called for workers to organise, for a new party of the working class as an alternative to the Republican and Democratic Party politicians and for socialist change.

Since the centenary of the Great Dublin Lockout has been preoccupying us in 2013, it would be remiss not to mark also the 220th anniversary of a dramatic movement of resistance to tyranny that took place in West Kerry.