Ireland

Bus Eireann workers launch all-out indefinite strike

On Friday 24 March, workers at Irish bus and coach operator Bus Eireann began an indefinite all-out strike. Five trade unions representing 2,600 workers, including SIPTU and the National Bus & Rail Union (NBRU) have called the action. Pickets outside bus stations were organised throughout the Republic. On the first day of action rail services […]

Workers Power  ·  31 March 2017

Obituary: Martin McGuinness, 1950-2017

Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness, ex deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland and ex IRA leader, has died. He played a hugely influential role in the long armed struggle against the Unionist and British state and in negotiating the subsequent 1998 Good Friday Agreement that ended the war.  For the former the British media and politicians […]

Workers Power  ·  22 March 2017

Ireland: hard Brexit, hard border

Brexit will have enormous political and economic ramifications on both Northern Ireland and the Republic. Since the EU referendum, for example, Irish food and drink exports to the UK have fallen by €570 million, according to the Republic of Ireland’s Bord Bia. Food and drink account for 41% of Ireland’s exports to the UK, while […]

Bernie McAdam  ·  07 February 2017

The Easter Rising, Ireland 1916

By Chris Clough Dublin, Easter weekend 2016, saw tens of thousands of people line the streets. Flags, banners and photos of martyrs were displayed on every street corner, shop and building. Socialists and Republicans marched through the city while the government held a military parade, complete with a fly over. Graffiti and stickers called for […]

Workers Power  ·  25 May 2016

The changing face of Irish politics

  The Irish general election result has delivered a huge blow to the outgoing Fine Gael-Labour coalition government. Although Fine Gael will still be marginally the largest party, despite losing around a third of their seats, the plunge in the Labour vote from 19 to just below 7 per cent rules out a repeat coalition. […]

Workers Power  ·  06 March 2016

Snap Election in Ireland: no compromise with Sinn Fein

Taoiseach Enda Kenny has called a General Election for February 26. This will be the shortest election campaign in the history of the state, just three weeks. In response to this indecent haste a Sinn Fein TD’s comment summed it up well as ‘a pathetic end to a pathetic Dail’. Indeed it was a pathetic […]

Workers Power  ·  10 February 2016

Ireland: the Socialist Party's dangerous times

By Bernie McAdam 20 April 2015 The Socialist Party in Ireland is deeply worried. Senior trade union officials like Irish Congress of Trade Unions President John Douglas and Jack O’Connor, leader of the south’s biggest union SIPTU, are courting Sinn Fein. They have responded by producing the article ‘Trade Unions and Sinn Fein: Dangerous Times’ […]

Workers Power  ·  20 April 2015

Stop the Stormont House Agreement

By Bernie McAdam 16 March 2015 A mass strike involving up to 50,000 public sector workers was held across the north of Ireland on Friday 13 March. NIPSA, UNITE, INTO, GMB and UNISON called out members in transport, health, social services, education and the civil service against the Stormont Executive’s plans to cut the Budget […]

Workers Power  ·  16 March 2015

Ireland revolts against water tax

By Bernie McAdam and Darren O’Coghaidhin Ireland is in the midst of a massive revolt against its government’s attempts to slap water charges on the Irish people. On October 11, at least 100,000 marched in Dublin to protest against this regressive tax. On November 1, a total of some 200,000 marched in over one hundred […]

Workers Power  ·  11 November 2014

Six counties: Britain's sectarian and racist colony

The recent surge in racist attacks in the six counties of ‘Northern Ireland’ is a shocking indictment of the British backed sectarian state. Bernie McAdam reports on this development against a background of further strains on the Good Friday Agreement as Unionist and Loyalist leaders insist on Orangemen marching their way back through a Catholic […]

Workers Power  ·  11 August 2014

The Dublin lockout of 1913

In 1913 Dublin workers waged a heroic battle against their employers, the church and the police. Despite being defeated, argues Bernie McAdam, the lockout lives on as the most inspirational act of working class resistance in Irish history.

Workers Power  ·  17 September 2013

Ireland: United Left Alliance disintegrates

The Socialist Party of Ireland has announced its withdrawal from the United Left Alliance (ULA). The Workers and Unemployed Action Group (WUAG) departed last year and only the People before Profit Alliance/Socialist Workers Party, along with non aligned activists, remain in the depleted ranks of the ULA. The General Election 2011 had seen the recently […]

Workers Power  ·  13 February 2013

Organise self-defence against loyalist flag riots

The task of the day is to organise citizens’ defence committees to defend the Short Strand and Catholic communities, says Bernie McAdam. These could then become the basis of a political alternative to the government’s cuts programme and the continuing repression

Workers Power  ·  20 January 2013

Ireland: Finucane report a sham

Finally, Desmond de Silva’s report into the murder of Pat Finucane, the Belfast solicitor, has been released. The Report found that there were ‘shocking levels of state collusion’ in the murder. It told of the ‘wilful and abject failure by successive governments’ to run agents lawfully. It confirmed that Pat Finucane had been murdered by […]

Workers Power  ·  14 January 2013

Free abortion on demand

Joy Macready reports on the growing backlash against a women’s right to choose In September, a woman was jailed for terminating her pregnancy in its final stage. Sarah Catt took a drug that she purchased on the Internet to cause an abortion in 2009, and now faces eight years in prison for it. To give […]

Workers Power  ·  13 October 2012

Free Marian Price

VETERAN IRISH Republican Marian Price has been imprisoned without trial since May 2011. This harks back to the British government’s widespread use of internment in the 1970’s as a way of silencing opposition to its rule in the north of Ireland. This repressive policy only succeeded in broadening the scale of the anti-Unionist and anti-British […]

Workers Power  ·  12 May 2012

Northern Ireland: Omagh killing no way forward

The explosion that claimed the life of Omagh policeman Ronan Kerr does not further the struggle against British occupation in Ireland one jot, writes Bernie McAdam.

Workers Power  ·  13 April 2011

Left makes breakthrough as Fianna Fáil suffers historic collapse in Irish elections

A new political situation has emerged in Ireland with real opportunities for the left to lead the anti cuts struggle. Bernie McAdam reports

Workers Power  ·  06 March 2011

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