Ireland

On 6 March, the Irish Supreme Court unanimously found that Unite was lawfully entitled to undertake strike action against mechanical engineering firm H A O'Neil, a division of Jones Engineering.

Your review of Irish political theory is spoilt by “alternative facts.” Some time ago you reviewed Kieran Allen’s book, 32 Counties: The Failure of Partition and the Case for a United Ireland. The review ( Solidarity 624 ) has just come to my attention. The piece, by Micheál MacEoin, suffers from a fatal flaw. Early in its introduction the reviewer replaces opinion with manufactured fact, fatally weakening the overall weight of what was otherwise a reasonable effort at polemic. Colons The section in question says: “Its chapter on the Protestant working class is of particular interest. It...

In my February 2022 review of Kieran Allen’s book 32 Counties: The Failure of Partition and the Case for a United Ireland I wrote that Allen’s chapter on the Protestant working-class “refutes the notion, expressed by Michael Farrell and others in People’s Democracy in the mid-1970s, that Ulster Protestants are equivalent to colons in Algeria, and can never be won to socialist ideas.” John McAnulty of Socialist Democracy (a successor organisation to People’s Democracy) objects that Allen’s book references Farrell in connection with the charge that “sections of working-class Protestants...

Following Northern Ireland’s huge public sector strike on 18 January over pay, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions has said that “industrial action will continue” until an offer is made “that workers can accept.” Pay awards for public sector workers have not been made since the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) collapsed the devolved government in October 2022, in protest against post-Brexit trading arrangements. The Northern Ireland (NI) Assembly and Executive were restored on 3 February, with public sector pay placed high on the agenda of incoming ministers. ICTU’s comments came after a meeting...

Stormont, the Northern Ireland parliament, was restored on Saturday 3 February. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) ended its two year boycott in protest against post-Brexit trading arrangements. A Tory-DUP deal has led to the restoration of the institutions and the nomination of Sinn Féin’s vice president Michelle O’Neill as the very first Irish republican First Minister. Though symbolic (the powers of the First Minister are no greater than those of the Deputy First Minister, a post which SF has held before), this marks a real change from the one-party Orange State that existed before 1972...

An estimated 150,000 workers took part in 24 hours strike in the North of Ireland on 18 January, including nurses, teachers, bus drivers, carers, cleaners and civil servants from 16 unions. Their core demand was aimed at the British government: to release the £0.6m for public sector pay uplifts which it is holding back as a gambit to pressure the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to end its boycott of Stormont. The party collapsed the Northern Ireland power-sharing regime in February 2022 in protest against the Northern Ireland Protocol. Around 10,000 joined a rally in Belfast, with...

Around 120 members of the DUP Executive met on the evening of 29 January to agree the outlines of a deal between the party and the British Government to resolve the stand-off over the Windsor Framework and restore the power-sharing executive at Stormont. The DUP Executive meeting descended into farce at some points, with the “top secret” location being leaked within hours and protestors gathering outside. More ominously, those in the DUP who oppose Donaldson’s compromise also apparently streamed the audio of the meeting to the loyalist activist Jamie Bryson, who tweeted updates live on Twitter...