Browsing Tag
Ciaran Mulholland
5 posts
Trade unionists: reclaim our history of workers’ unity
Workers face many problems in 2019 – from the ongoing effects of the cuts, years of below-inflation pay rises, and the ever present threat of sectarianism. In 1919, 1944 and 1969 the working class were given a powerful lead by militant workplace activists. In each period they also had trade union-linked political representation. We need to learn from these struggles, rebuild fighting trade unions, and recreate a socialist political alternative. We need to reclaim our past.
The Good Friday Agreement, Twenty Years On – It’s Time for a Real Peace Process
The Good Friday Agreement (GFA) is trumpeted as a resounding success to this day. Its twentieth anniversary was marked with great fanfare by the likes of Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, but the majority of the population of North ignored the celebrations and struggled on with their daily lives. The reason for this disinterest is clear: ordinary working people are thankful that the carnage which marked the three decades before 1998 has come to an end, but they are only too aware that genuine peace remains elusive, as low-level sectarian conflict and paramilitarism continue to blight their lives. They have also given up on the long-promised but never delivered “peace dividend” - the myth that an influx of investment and good jobs would cement the peace.
The real lessons of the civil rights movement
A public row has erupted since Sinn Féin National Chairman Declan Kearney claimed, in a series of newspaper…
Reclaiming Our History: Common History, Common Struggle – Peter Hadden
2018 marks the fiftieth anniversary of what is commonly accepted to be the start of the “Troubles”. In a few brief months in 1968 and 1969, Northern Ireland changed forever. A chain of events mobilised tens of thousands of young people, both Catholic and Protestant, in a mass movement which challenged the Unionist government and briefly posed the possibility of a revolutionary transformation of society.