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Kevin Henry

14 posts
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100 years since the Belfast Pogroms: A warning from history

This week marks 100 years since the outbreak of the Belfast pogroms, when the city saw significant sectarian violence and the expulsion of an estimated 10,000 men and 1,000 women from their workplaces, starting in the shipyards and spreading to other workplaces. The violence also spread to the Belfast slums with 22 killed and hundreds wounded. It was the start of a period known as the first ‘Troubles.’ Between June 1920 and June 1922, 428 people were killed and tens of thousands kicked out of their homes, similar to the early phase of the later ‘Troubles.’

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Socialist classic ‘Divide and Rule’ republished

This year, the Socialist Party intends to re-print some of Peter Hadden's key works, which we think will be an assist for a new generation looking towards socialist ideas as an alternative to sectarian division. Our first re-print will be of Divide and Rule, written in 1980, in which Peter analyses the period leading up to the partition of Ireland. Below is the introduction to the new edition.

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Towards a United Ireland?

The week after the election in the South, which saw Sinn Féin win the popular vote as support for the two traditional establishment parties reduced to a historic low, the Economist magazine had a front cover asking if a United Ireland is possible.

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How workers ended the First World War

The old lie: dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” - It is sweet and honourable to die for ones country. This is how Wilfred Owen summed up the attitude of a generation sent to war under the illusion that it would be a short and glorious conflict. Owen himself was one of the last killed in a war that saw an estimated 40 million soldiers and civilians die as a bloody stalemate ensued over four years. Both sides only ever managed to advance of couple of kilometres against their respective enemies.
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Loughinisland journalists arrested for exposing collusion

In the quest for truth, however, we believe it is necessary to look to the forces which in the course of the Troubles can genuinely lay claim to standing against sectarian division and violence - that is the labour and trade union movement, particularly its rank-and-file activists. It is this force today, alongside a new generation of young people who want to fight for equality, that can provide the basis for a different future. Part of their task will be to bring to light the reality of the Troubles and seek to provide justice for its victims.