Browsing Tag

sectarianism

23 posts
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After last week’s protest in Omagh – building a movement against sectarianism

Last Saturday (25th March 2023), 1000 people gathered in Omagh following a call from Omagh Trade Union Council. The call by trade unionists was made because earlier that week dissident republican paramilitaries had shot and critically injured an off-duty police officer outside a sports complex which at the time was attended by many young people. The vast majority of those in attendance were working-class people of all backgrounds, from Omagh and the surrounding areas. A "solidarity march" was also held by a local sports club, attracting several hundred people of all ages.
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1990s: How workers resisted sectarian bloodshed

The 1992 attack on the Sean Graham bookmakers on the Ormeau Road was part of a wider series of “tit-for-tat” killings carried out by loyalist and republican paramilitaries in this period. In response to these killings, time and again, workers came together through their trade unions to oppose sectarian violence and intimidation.

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Resist sectarian turf war

These are public spaces and people have the right to engage in cultural and sporting activities free from intimidation. This incident is one reflection of a process people across the North, particularly from working-class communities, will know all too well - the attempt to mark and claim territory. As is common, these actions can lead to tit-for-tat retaliation, with reports of young people attacking the small Protestant estate of Westland Drive. The marking of territory can lead to attacks to intimidate people out of areas, as one ‘mixed’ couple discovered recently in Coleraine.

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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.