Ireland
The rise and fall of the Irish Greens
By Joseph Healy
Avril Boyne, more than eight months' pregnant, who has nine years' service at Thomas Cook, protesting at the closure of the travel agency and the redundancy package offered to staff at the Thomas Cook office, Grafton Street, Dublin. Thomas Cook is offering five weeks' pay for each year of service but workers are holding out for eight weeks. Photograph by Matt Kavanagh/Irish Times.
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STOP PRESS: Thomas Cook sit-in raided by police, workers arrested!
Send protest/solidarity emails to wendy@thomascook.ie and fennj@tssa.org.uk
Ireland: Socialist Workers Party calls for a `broad radical left party'
By the Socialist Workers Party (Ireland)
June 11, 2009 -- The election of Joe Higgins as MEP and the defeat of Fianna Fail in Dublin indicates that the political landscape is changing. The recent elections represent a seismic shift in Irish politics. Ever since 1927, Fianna Fail has dominated the working-class vote but this has now changed -- most probably forever.
Even before the current economic crisis, the Fianna Fail vote had entered a long slow decline. At the height of the Celtic Tiger, for example, Bertie Ahern scored less votes than Charlie Haughey. When the crash hit, Fianna Fail dropped all pretence of populism and launched an aggressive attack on working-class conditions.They have now paid dearly for this.
The electoral base of the Greens has also been decimated. The Greens claimed that they are in government to help save the planet from environmental decay. But they have stood over decisions which have cut the public bus service. They have also voted for cuts in education spending, even while defending the absurd bail out of the banks. Their removal from local authority councils is therefore well deserved.
(Updated May 3) Ireland & Britain: Car workers occupy plants over jobs -- Support Visteon workers!
May 3, 2009 -- Workers at Visteon, following a four-week battle, have gained a victory. After the occupation of the Visteon plants and 24-hour picketing when the company announced its liquidation, Ford/Visteon bosses were finally forced to concede to the workers' demands. Workers in Enfield and Basildon have already voted in favour of the deal, while those at Belfast will be voting soon. Below are reports and videos that recount events as they unfolded.
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(Updated March 17) Irish left responses to recent armed attacks in northern Ireland
By Kerry Fitzpatrick
Belfast, March 13, 2009 -- Green Left Weekly -- The killing of two British soldiers and a Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) officer by Irish republicans opposed to the peace process have threatened to destabilise the political situation in the six counties in the north of Ireland still claimed by Britain.
British soldiers Mark Quinsey and Patrick Azimkar were shot dead on March 7 in an attack on Massereene Barracks in county Antrim, with responsibility claimed by the Real Irish Republican Army, which split from the IRA in 1997 in opposition to the peace process that sought the end the decades-long armed conflict.
This was the first political killing of a British soldier or security force member in the six counties since 1998.
The soldiers, hours away from being deployed to Afghanistan, were collecting a pizza delivery at the barracks gate when they were shot. Two other soldiers and the two pizza delivery men were also shot and injured.
Irish nationalism and the peace process
Interview with Bernadette McAliskey
This interview appeared in the May 1999 German-language Irland Almanach, edited by Jürgen Schneider. It was conducted on April 6, 1999, in Coalisland, County Tyrone, by Ralf Sotscheck, Irish and British correspondent for the German daily newspaper Die Tageszeitung. Bernadette McAliskey, a leader of the Northern Ireland civil rights movement of the 1960s, was a Westminster MP in the early 1970s and is a long-time human rights activist.
You stated some time ago that the peace process cannot and will not lead to the achievement of the just and democratic ideals to which people gave their liberty and their lives. Do you reject the peace process, or what's your position now?
I still have exactly the same analysis of the peace process. I think that over the period of time in which it has been played out, the analysis has proved to be correct. I do not take any great joy in that.