Socialist Democracy

Blood-Stained Shamrocks

17/03/24 (BLOSC blog)

Last year a cavalcade of war criminals landed in Belfast to celebrate the anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. Around that time, Brown University published a report that stated that more than 4.5 million people had died due to Washington’s wars since 9/11. Indeed, since the Second World War, the USA has carried out at least 81 overt and covert interventions to promote regime change in other people’s countries. Obviously, since the Good Friday Agreement’s 25th anniversary, the USA and its allies have notoriously given Israel carte blanche to carry out a genocide in Gaza.  (read more)

Starmer and Labour

14/03/24 

Keir Starmer recently made a speech about the goals of a future Labour government saying he aims to make Britain the highest growing economy in Europe. He has dropped all mention of reform or of improvement in the lives of workers. That means that his platform is the Brexit Tory one of driving down living standards in the interests of capital.   Voters who want to kick the Tories out should be in no doubt that Starmer will do nothing to upset business and the neo liberal status quo. (read more)

Report on Belfast IWD 2024 rally

13/03/24 

Last year’s IWD rally in Belfast was marred by controversy when one of the speakers was silenced after expressing a gender critical position.  Mabel Chah, a black migrant woman from Cameroon, was barracked by a section of the crowd and her address cut short by the compere. Afterwards the organisers issued a statement disowning Mabel and expressing regret that such views had got an airing.  While there was an effort to avoid controversy this year it was not entirely successful.  (read more)

Erasing Murals and Erasing Gaza

13/03/24

Once upon a time, Belfast was famed for its murals, so much so that even now a part of the tourist industry depends
on a plastic paddy tour of the current murals on display in nationalist areas of Belfast. It was the 1981 hunger strike and its aftermath that saw an explosion in political murals in nationalist areas. As the 1980s went on, the technical and artistic quality of them improved dramatically and the politics they sought to represent expanded. Some of them were very militaristic, others much more political in content.   (read more)

Constitutional sleight of hand thwarted

10/03/24

The results in the referenda in the South returned a resounding defeat for the Irish political class. The first referendum on family and the deletion of references to women was defeated by 67.7% and the
second one on the issue of care was defeated by an even greater margin of 73.9%, as some of the advocates of a Yes vote on family belatedly found they couldn’t stomach the privatisation of care that this amendment would insert into the Constitution.   (read more)

A united Ireland or subsidising partition?

04/03/24

Leo Varadkar announced on February 20th "nearly €1 billion" for "the largest ever package of Government funding for cross-border initiatives".   The package includes €600 million to the A5 upgrade in Derry, €50 million for the redevelopment of Casement Park "to maximise" preparation for "the UEFA Euro 2028 championship". €10 million is going to the Battle of the Boyne site in Co Meath. and a commitment to fund the Narrow Water Bridge near Carlingford.  (read more)

Videos

Gender identity ideology

Presentation by Orla Ni Chomhrai on why socialists should oppose a dogma which undermines women's rights, gay rights, free speech, and science.

18 October 2021