Ireland

Part 2 of series: The Northern Ireland crisis of 1968-9 and the left Part 1: Why Northern Ireland Broke Down Part 2: The Irish Workers' Group, IS and the "Trotskyist Tendency" Part 3: Why Northern Ireland Split on Communal, Not Class, Lines Part 4: When militant sloganeering meant promoting communal war Part 5: When socialists looked to "Catholic Power" ; and Part 5 Section 2 Part 6: SWP (IS) and Northern Ireland in 1968-9: Advocating civil war — until it starts! ; and Section 2 Part 7: The end of the old order in Northern Ireland ; Section 2 ; Section 3 Part 8: IS/SWP conference, September...

By Paddy Dollard The most important thing in the recent Republic of Ireland general election is what happened to Sinn Fein. Its leaders had boasted that they would at the very least, double their six seats in the Dail (parliament). In fact, though there was a slight increase in their total vote, they lost a seat. They now have only five. They might reasonably have expected that their recent success in Northern Ireland in forming a coalition with their equivalent on the Protestant-Unionist side, Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party, would boost them in the 26 County election. So would the...

By Helen Shaw A seventeen year old Irish woman has won a High Court battle in Dublin to be allowed to come to Britain for an abortion. The woman, known only as “Miss D”, was told in the fourth month of her pregnancy that her foetus had failed to develop properly and is suffering anencephaly, which means that a significant part of the skull and brain are missing. Babies born with this condition are expected to live a maximum of three days. Abortion is illegal in the Republic of Ireland except for cases where the mother’s life is threatened by a medical condition or she is a suicide risk because...

On 27 April a wildcat strike broke out in Musgrave warehouses in Dublin. The whole crew, around 80 people, both immigrant and natives, stopped their work after successive acts of discrimination by the management. Around 50% of the workforce in the warehouse are immigrants, officially employed by work agencies, and face continous discrimination – worse working conditions, lower pay and fewer rights. On the day of the strike, a new work schedule showed workers’ breaks were cut short, expecting them to work for four hours in a row, in temperatures of around 4 degrees Celsius! At the same time...

Nurses in Ireland are taking industrial action over pay and working hours. 40,000 members of the Irish Nurses’ Organisation and the Psychiatric Nurses’ Association, seeking a 10.6% pay rise alongside a 4-hour cut in their 39-hour working week, are in the third week of working-to-rule, refusing to do clerical or IT work. One-hour stoppages have taken place across the country, including in the largest hospital in Ireland, St. James’s in Dublin. Nurses are the only qualified group in Irish hospitals to work a 39-hour week – other grades work 35, with some clerical staff working 33. Hospital...

Discussion with Donal R: Part 2 Donal: Let's take the question of Protestant/Catholic unity. That's where you really show yourselves up. You accuse me of tail-ending the Republicans. Patrick: The neo-Republicans! Donal: Whatever. Yet you are the ones who are hag-ridden with right-wing Republican myths about the unity of the Irish people. Your talk about working-class unity is part of that Mick: Why right wing? Donal: Well, that's the stuff the old Republican leaders tried to base themselves on, the ones who wanted federalism so that they could continue to have their Catholic, backward...

By Paddy Dollard A news item about a small event of great symbolic importance appeared in the Irish Times the other day. The long-time enemy of everything Papist, Republican, or Catholic Nationalist Irish, Ian Paisley, has ordered five cotton clerical shirts (£30 each) from a shirt-maker in the Republic of Ireland, in Donegal. A sign of the times? The agreement made on 26 March to form a joint Six Counties government by Paisleyites and Provisional Sinn Fein, the communal polar opposites of Northern Ireland politics for the better part of four decades, was expected. It was also surprising...

Up to 40,000 nurses began a work-to-rule in Irish hospitals on 2 April as part of their fight over pay and hours — and said they will escalate their action if their demands are not met. The Irish Nurses Organisation and the Psychiatric Nurses Association launched the work-to-rule — which will mean, for instance, nurses refusing to answer phones, input medical records or attend meetings not about patient welfare — after talks with management broke down on 1 April. Their members will continue to provide normal direct care to patients. The nurses are demanding a reduction in their working week...