The October issue of Socialist Voice is now available online: https://socialistvoice.ie/category/article/latest/

Contents:

The state and the unions by Jimmy Doran

Covid-19 did not cause the lack of workers’ rights in Ireland, but it most certainly exposed them.

The dispute at Debenham’s reveals the lack of workers’ rights, and the lack of actual experience among workers of disputes, struggle, organising and tactics as a result of the decline in union membership and union activity over the last thirty years, especially since the introduction of the Industrial Relations Act (1990).

A changing of the guard? Tommy Mc Kearney

https://socialistvoice.ie/2020/10/a-changing-of-the-guard/

Admittedly we can only ever be certain of death and taxes. With that caution in mind, though, it’s safe to say there is abundant evidence that the once all-powerful Fianna Fáil is sitting on the edge of a political precipice.

The possibility of a perfect storm grows

https://socialistvoice.ie/2020/10/the-possibility-of-a-perfect-storm-grows/

The economic crisis facing the Government continues to grow. While economic data paints a much rosier picture of the economy, thanks to the dominance of foreign direct investment (i.e. transnational corporations), the pandemic is having a wider and more lasting impact on the domestic economy, in particular on small and medium-sized businesses.

Understanding the crisis – and preparing for what is yet to come

11th October 2020 by Dorian Ó Seanáin

The CPI, in conjunction with Socialist Voice, streamed two talks in September under the title “Economics for Workers.” The guest speaker on each occasion was a leading Marxist economist. The thread that linked the interviews by Graham Harrington of the CPI was an attempt to understand the current crisis (or […]

Strengthen our fight for our rights!

11th October 2020 by World Federation of Trade Unions

Statement by the World Federation of Trade Unions The World Federation of Trade Unions, the world’s class-oriented, progressive trade union movement, considers the achievements of technology to be very important and positive, given that they are used to improve and facilitate the lives of workers and peoples, such as modern […]

The United States Strengthens Its Campaign Against Cuba’s International Medical Cooperation

11th October 2020 by Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Cuba

Declaration by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Cuba Havana, 30 September 2020 The Cuban people and the international community are aware of the dishonest campaign that the government of the United States has launched since 2019 to discredit Cuba’s international medical cooperation; exert pressure on the governments that have […]

Communist youth movement in action

11th October 2020 by Muhammed Shabeer

Members of the Democratic Youth Federation of India in the state of Kerala raised €1.2 million by running a recycling campaign in which they collected scrap from around the state and sold it for recycling. Ever since the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic, left-wing youth organisations around the world have […]

Who said that?

11th October 2020 by Declan McKenna

“The earth is not dying, it’s being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses.”—Utah Phillips, folk singer “The US has bombed no less than thirty countries since the end of World War II, killing millions of people, maiming tens of millions more, disrupting and destroying education, […]

Book Review:

Communist lives: Graham Harrington

https://socialistvoice.ie/2020/10/communist-lives/

Francis Devine and Patrick Smylie (editors), Left Lives in Twentieth-Century Ireland, vol. 3: Communist Lives, Dublin: Umiskin Press, 2020.

The Communist Party of Ireland will celebrate a hundred years of Irish communism in 2021. This book is a welcome contribution to the centenary of the party.

The last of Liam O’Flaherty’s banned novels to see the light: Jenny Farrell

Liam O’Flaherty, The Martyr, Nuascéalta, 2020

With this sensational republication of The Martyr, Nuascéalta completes its epic task of restoring the remaining three major O’Flaherty novels banned by the Irish state. The other two novels reprinted were the first book to be banned under the Censorship of Publications Act (1929), the Galway novel The House of Gold and O’Flaherty’s insightful and scathing Hollywood satire, Hollywood Cemetery

War on women: Laura Duggan

“Cogadh ar Mhná” [war on women], a documentary that TG4 broadcast at 9:30 p.m. on 23 September, describes how sexual violence was used against women during the War of Independence and the following Civil War.

More heartbreaking are the words of the women themselves, women who often didn’t have the language to describe what happened to them and were forced to resort to innuendo and implication