history

¡No Pasarán!

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85 years ago today a war began that would result in the working men and women of the world leaving the comfort of their homes and travelling to the Iberian Peninsula where many sacrificed their lives in the fight to uphold the ideals of the Second Spanish Republic. The Spanish Civil War is often described as a warm-up for the Second World War; this is not only disingenuous but completely false. The conflict deserves its own place in history as a worker’s struggle, of solidarity and sacrifice against a foe whose interests lay at the antipode from that our class.

Why James Connolly was Executed

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The crisis of 2020 can be a rupture in the status-quo of capitalism as much as the First World War and the 1916 Rising was. We must look at his contributions to applying Marxism to the Irish context, and his unique ability to recognise the political moment he was living in. For Connolly, Marxism was not an abstract theoretical position to be talked about in universities, nor a dogma to be appealed to as an authority. Marxism was simply a key to be used to unlock Irish History.

Why Teenagers Died Fighting Fascism in Spain

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During the Spanish civil war (1936-1939), nearly 60,000 men and women of 53 different countries, grouped in the International Brigades, came to Spain in order to help the republican government. Never before in history had such an extraordinary, internationalist and solidarity cause existed. Young people traveled abroad, willing to give their lives to the Spanish … Read more

Tone Reloaded: Commemoration of a Revolutionary Legacy

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On the 19th of August, the Peadar O’Donnell Socialist Republican Forum will be holding an event to commemorate Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen in Bodenstown, Co. Kildare. This will be the second annual event hosted by the forum with several political parties and organisations, women’s groups, youth organisations, cultural and sporting bodies coming together … Read more

A Brief History of the Irish Labour Party

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The Labour party has attempted an extensive rebranding since its utter devastation in the 2016 election. It occupies the perverse position of decrying the homelessness it facilitated and simultaneously calling for a public health system which it made no attempt to implement while in government, leaving us with thousands of austerity related deaths per annum. … Read more

A Response to a UCC Historical Society Event in 2016

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FT, Corcaigh There is a paradigm shift being promoted in Ireland today – but by whose hand and in whose interest? Organised labour with a shared national identity and a pool of democratic heroes and martyrs to draw from to inspire their contemporary struggles is difficult to subjugate, divide or to be utilized in the … Read more