Archives

The last
year has marked a huge turning point in the Irish economy and most
importantly a huge shift in the relations between the classes in
Ireland. While the Celtic Tiger had been on life support for a while,
2009 saw a huge crisis that has had massive economic consequences and
political change that will play out for a whole period. This year
represented a shift from one historical period to another; a whole new
perspective has opened up for Irish society, not just in the 26
counties, but increasingly across the whole island as the impact of the
capitalist crisis begins to be felt to its full extent in the north.

In the freezing cold on Saturday December
19^th members of the UNITE union from the threatened Ericsson plant
at Ansty near Coventry were out in 
Coventry city centre distributing leaflets to the public as part of the
campaign to keep the plant open.

The last day for wellred book orders to be placed from UK customers so that they arrive before Xmas is lunchtime 21st December. We have a load of new titles (including some added last week) so why not pay us a visit at www.wellred.marxist.com.

More than a few ‘commentators’ on the defacto cuts announced on
Thursday by UK Chancellor Darling, as part of the plan to make the public
sector pay for the banks’ bailout, sought to praise the ruthless cuts
announced on the same day in Ireland. The message is clear so far as
these characters are concerned – we need to cut and cut hard. We reproduce a statement issued by the Irish Marxists on the day the cuts were made public.

Land Registry have sacked PCS Rep Jane Brooke.  Jane is based at Weymouth
Land Registry and it appears her only offence was to make an industrial
injury complaint against Land Registry.
Surveillance
was conducted on six members of staff at the Weymouth Office. A campaign meeting has been organised by SW PCS for this Friday.

The talks between the government and
ICTU have collapsed following pressure from the FF back benches. Apparently
they had been pressured from “the private sector” to oppose plans for unpaid
leave proposed by the union leaderships. Make no bones about it. What this
really means is that the Irish bourgeoisie and the multinationals are putting
on the pressure and demanding that the public sector takes huge cuts. It raises
the temperature in what is already a charged situation. If the Irish Congress
of Trade Unions had a fighting Socialist leadership; Ireland would be on the
brink of a general strike. But that is far from the case.

The Ryan and Murphy
reports have exposed the extent of the abuse carried out against children by
Catholic priests in the Dublin Diocese between 1975 and 2004. It is also clear
that such abuses have occurred in practically all parishes of the Roman
Catholic Church in the whole island. Physical and sexual abuses also occurred
in industrial schools, orphanages, and the “Magdalene laundries run by orders
of nuns.   It’s not our intention to
dwell on the detail of the investigations, but we feel that it is important to
look at the political and social ramifications of the reports.

This article originally appeared in "The Red Plough," an
independent Email journal of Republican Marxist opinion. It takes a
clear position against the arguments of the capitalist press around the
strikes on the 24th of November. In particular it deals with the
question of "the national interest". The bosses are always keen to try
and mask the class nature of society and here Gerry Ruddy points out
the contradictions in their arguments and offers a class alternative.

Thursday’s planned public sector strike has
been suspended after the government and the union leaders announced that a
breakthrough had been made. The "agreement" means that some of the
cost of wages would be offset by the workers taking "unpaid leave".
As we pointed out on more than one occasion recently, the political and
economic situation in the state is such that any agreement that has been
reached on the basis of "social partnership" will inevitably mean cuts
in worker’s wages and increased work load and pressure on already stretched
services. Effectively it means that the public sector is being put on short
time.

Socialist Appeal issue number 180 (December 2009) is now out and ready to order.

Click here to order your copy or click on the heading to read more.

Stock
exchanges and commodity prices are on their way up. The world economy is
showing faltering signs of recovery. There’s no doubt that it’ll be a long
haul. Millions of people all over the world have had their lives devastated by
the economic tsunami. It will take years to clean up all the mess. But one
major national economy after another has announced that the recession is
officially over – France, Germany, Japan
and even the USA.
All except Britain.
Why is British capitalism still stubbornly stuck in the mire?

Well over
250,000 Irish workers in the public sector were on strike on the 24th
of this month. There would have been many more, but the unions
guaranteed emergency cover including flood relief in the west, the
midlands and the Shannon area and in Cork City. It’s a feature of every
major strike, not just here, but throughout the world, that the well
fed representatives of the bourgeois and particularly  the mean
spirited and greedy petty bourgeois attempt to criticise and attack the
worker’s movement. These fine gentlemen and ladies are always the first
to reach for the box of tissues as they weep crocodile tears about the
poor and the vulnerable who they claim (wringing their hands in woe)
are being let down by the strikers. The fact that the government have
been slashing and burning public services for the last year and
attacking the vulnerable seems conveniently to have been forgotten.