Belfast public meeting on organising against austerity

Nollaig Shona Daoibh

To readers and supporters of this blog, Nollaig shona daoibh agus athbhliain faoi mhaise daoibh.

The last six months of 2014 have been extremely hectic for me personally and one result is that this blog has taken a bit of a back seat.  Lots of stuff I had hoped to do simply didn’t get done.

In the New Year I will be extremely busy personally for maybe 4-6 weeks, but hope to get a few new pieces up on the blog.  After that, I’m hoping the blog will finally return to ‘normal’, with more in the way of feature pieces on Ireland today, especially politics and economy, as well as continuing historical stuff.

On the history side, for instance, I want to do some stuff on Fintan Lalor.

And I will continue to be lobbying for socialist-republicans to form joint committees to organise major activities around the 100th anniversary of the Rising.

Phil

1916, 2016: them and us

This first went up on the site back on April 28 this year; I’m putting it back up on the home page because it remains relevant.  I’ll be highlighting it continuously as long as I need to!

One of the products of the end of the Provisionals’ armed struggle in the six counties and their signing up to, and enthusiastic participation in, an internal settlement there is that the kind of historical revisionism that was officially-backed from about the mid-1970s until the end of the 1990s has become outmoded.  The kind of nonsense delivered up by the likes of a would-be Sebastian Flyte such as Roy Foster is now surplus to requirements.

Instead, there is a new war over ‘1916 and all that’.  The southern establishment is much more relaxed about recognising and celebrating the importance of 1916 than they have been at any time since the explosion in the six counties at the end of the 1960s and start of the 1970s.  On the other hand, the establishment is vitally keen on tying the 1916 rebellion and subsequent war for independence into its own history.  They want to present the events of 1916-21 as finding their natural and logical conclusion in the establishment and development of the 26-county state.

Moreover, they want to show that this state and its population, or certainly its ruling elite, have ‘matured’ to the level of putting the old ‘enmity’ with England behind them.  ‘We’ can now recognise the ‘sacrifices’ made by Orangemen in the First World War and also commemorate men from nationalist Ireland who joined the British imperialist army and died on the slaughter fields of that war.  It’s all just part of Ireland’s rich and diverse

éirígí calls for building of radical campaign against cuts in the 6 Counties

The following statement has been released by éirígí

In December 2010 Stormont agreed a budget that would see £1,500,000,000 (£1.5Billion) slashed from our public expenditure. They have implemented this budget without hesitation and wreaked havoc across working-class communities in the Six Counties, with one Stormont Minister commenting that, “It would be a good Christmas present for the people…”.

The Stormont coalition partners, Sinn Féin and the DUP, oversaw an economy where more than 100,000 people currently want meaningful work but cannot get it. 1 in every 4 young people aged 18-24 are without a job. 1 in every 5 children lives below the poverty line – this figure increases to 43% of children in West Belfast. Families struggle to pay for basic necessities such as food, heating or clothing. 21% of Pensioners also live in poverty. Nearly 40,000 households sit on housing waiting lists. They have closed the City Hospital Accident & Emergency department and the MS respite unit at Dalriada. Further closures are to come for minor injury units in Armagh, Whiteabbey and Bangor. Beds at the Mid-Ulster Hospital, Downe Hospital and Lagan Valley will be axed, adding additional strain across the board.

Not content, and in order to squeeze every remaining penny from the working class people of the Six Counties, Sinn Féin and the DUP are now in the process of