LookLeft Issue 6

Look left issue 6 FINISHED.
indd 1
26/04/2011 10:08
Some LookLeft Highlights:
Editorial:
The people will believe what the media tells them they believe. - George Orwell The determination of Irish conservatism cannot be doubted. Despite the neo-liberal agenda of deregulation, privatisation, speculation and attacks on workers living standards having brought social and economic ruination they do not halt but seek only to redouble their efforts. But such an approach, which flies in the face of the majoritys interests, can only thrive in a climate nurtured by a media that acts as cheerleader rather than critical observer. With its elite ownership and ties to speculation, Ireland does not have a free media. When trade unions have dared raise a voice to cry stop the media moves from lap dog to attack dog. In the face of all evidence its workers representatives who are decried as economic wreckers while the elite are given free rein to spout their failed ideology. Even more perversely in Northern Ireland editorials demand that the economy is forced to follow the failed southern agenda. That planned economic development is dispensed with in favour of prostituting the economy to tax avoiding multinational corporations. Even now, when we need a stern critical approach towards the intentions of German chancellor Angela Merkel and the European elite with their self declared aim of utilising an economic crisis of their own making to further European economic and political union on their terms our EU masters are portrayed as saviours, not loan sharks forcing us to pay for the gambling debts of a gombeen elite. LookLeft recently marked its first year under its current editorial board. All we can hope is to have made a mere pin prick in the establishment media juggernaut which allows Irelands economic and social tragedy to continue.
web: lookleftonline.org lookleftonline@gmail.com
6-7: White Noise, bleak hope 8-9: Opinions from the Left 11: Interview with Joan Collins ULA TD 12-15: The Real Economy 16-18: 23: 28-29:
Editorial Board
Michael Finnegan Kevin Brannigan Sean Garland Francis Donohoe John Lowry
Irish media crisis. Gavin Titley looks at how the Southern Media have fared since 2008
Paul Murphy MEP, Cian OCallaghan and Michael Finnegan are this issues opinion formers
Kevin Brannigan meets with the community activist now ULA TD
Stewart Reddin, Conor McCabe and Justin OHagan discuss topics from natural resources to the Belfast MTV awards.
Give my Head Politics
The University of Ulsters Stephen Baker and Greg McLaughlin analyse how the politics of the Peace Process have been handled by the Northern media
Interview with Mark Thomas
Kevin Squires meets the socially engaged comedian to discuss his new book Extreme Rambling.
Dirty old town done up

Freda Hughes explores the often spotted lesser heard world of Dublin Graffiti artists
Production manager
Kevin Brannigan
Published by The Workers Party

48 North Great Georges Street Dublin 1 Printed in Co. Meath
Designer
Sean Cooley
International Editor
Ultn Gillen
Front Page
Caroline Murray
ISSN 2009 3179
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Look left issue 6 FINISHED.indd 2 26/04/2011 10:08
A worker not a criminal

Joe Mooney
NEWS Coalition backtrack on Cork Hospital

John Jefferies
uring the general election Fine Gaels new Cork North Central TD Dara Murphy gave strong assurances that St. Marys Orthopaedic Hospital would be retained. Murphy also stated that his then party health spokesman, now minister for health, Dr. James Reilly was likewise committed to retaining services there. Dr. Reillys cast iron guarantee has since changed to keeping the hosptials services pending a review which was called following a HSE decision in March to begin construction of a new orthopaedic unit at the South Infirmary Hospital. This work has been halted pending the review but not cancelled, meaning the future of the last remaining hospital on Corks Northside remains in great uncertainty. Councillor Ted Tynan, a long-time campaigner for the Northside hospital, has described the review as a smokescreen to confuse people. He has called on the Northside coalition deputies, Labour junior minister Kathleen Lynch and Dara Murphy to come out with clear statements on the Orthopaedic Hospitals future. People are fed up of being lied to by both the previous government and the new coalition and they are fed up of being fobbed off with false promises. Those who gave cast iron commitments to keeping the Orthopaedic open should come clean now and tell the people whether or not their election promises have been abandoned, said Cllr Tynan.
n the 27th of August 2009, a floating picket took place in Dublin Port, during which a number of small craft halted the progress of larger cargo ships for a short period. Eighteen months later Gerard McDonnell was arrested and is now facing three separate charges under the Harbours act 1996 and Maritime Safety Act 2005 which could result in a fine of up to 250,000. Neither the Dublin Port Company nor the company at the centre of the dispute, MTL, are pursuing the legal action against the
Ringsend worker. Local community activists have expressed dismay that Garda have decided to focus resources on this case rather than serious anti-social activity in the locality. Throughout the eight month MTL dock workers strike, support for the strikers was tremendous. Supporters marched on the MTL terminal, and also targeted those with links to the company in Ireland and abroad, including Deutsche Bank, Dunnes Stores and even the Board of Celtic football club. Following intervention from the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) the strike was concluded with some jobs saved and some, including Gerard, made redundant. Following two court appearances, Gerard is scheduled to appear again before the circuit court later this summer. For more information contact: supportportworkers@dublin.ie
Need to tackle protestant working class under - achievement

n Northern Ireland protestant boys from working class backgrounds tend to get poorer exam results than other kids according to new research. Launching the report, A Call to Action, Educational: Disadvantage and the Protestant Working Class, East Belfast Independent MLA Dawn Purvis said she was Tired of working class underachievement being an academic subject and an accepted norm and it was now time to form a task-force to tackle the issue head on. The report indicates that amongst urban boys in receipt of Free School Meal Entitlement (FSME) 25.8% of protestant boys gained 5 A*-C GCSEs compared with 40.6% of catholic boys. Entitlement to free school dinners is used as a marker of relative deprivation.
Justin OHagan
For non-FSME pupils the achievement gap between protestant and catholic boys narrows considerably to 63.9% and 71.8% respectively. The data on which the figures are based relates to the 2008-09 school year. The principal finding of the report is that up to 80% of differences in educational attainment relate to factors outside the classroom and school. Purvis said it was clear the reports findings could be applied to general working class education disadvantage and it was not her intention to enter into, or promote, any sort of zero-sum competition with other educational sectors. Full report can be downloaded at www.dawnpurvis.com
See Citizens in the cradle; p10
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Rent Strike call over deplorable housing conditions

esidents of the Balgaddy housing estate, Lucan, must consider a rent strike to resolve gross violations of human rights, suffered as a consequence of appallingly low building standards, according to Workers Party President Mick Finnegan . Balgaddy urban village was awarded best housing design in the 2004 Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland awards. South Dublin County Council awarded Gama Construction the tender to construct the houses and construction was completed in a number of phases in 2004 and 2007. Balgaddy Residents have documented a litiney of health and safety issues with their homes many of which are infested with mould, damp, mildew and have water marks visible on walls. Noeleen Cooney described how Every time anyone has a bath, it leaks into my kitchen and this has been happening for a number of years. The county council said
Paul Dillon
that there were records showing that they have called to my house to carry out repairs but I didnt have anyone calling to my house. Mary Conney said; We do not drink the water in the house because of the smell that comes from the tap. One day it is the smell of sewage and the next it is like disinfectant. Mary continued, I was fit and healthy until I moved into this house, now I am on medication as the conditions have affected my liver and I have to have a liver biopsy. I feel let down by the council and cannot believe they are letting people and families live in these conditions. Mick Finnegan, the Lucan Workers Party representative and a former construction sector trade unionist, told LookLeft: An investigation into how this was allowed to happen must be launched. The substandard work is a scandal. Where were the people who were supposed to ensure that the work was carried out to the high-
est standard? That needs to be answered. You have to learn the lesson-you cannot build cheap houses. The department of the environment needs to be involved in an investigation and resolution of these issues. The Balgaddy group has done tremendous work, and have been very capable of putting forward the case on behalf of the tenants. They deserve to win their battle and we support them to be full. The builders must carry out the repairs or be forced to repay the council. In a statement South Dublin County Council told LookLeft; The condensation problem is common to most new social housing and will be resolved through physical remedial works and tenant cooperation. It would be a shame to tar this growing and improving area with a black brush condemning its tenants to a bad name as has happened so often in the past. LookLeft intends to maintain a focus on housing issues in Balgaddy and elsewhere. publicans. He was also being questioned about anarchist and republican groups and shown pictures of himself in Dublin city centre and on student marches. Such activity is not new to the Special Branch which has a long history of taking a keen interest in student activists and youth wing members of non-establishment political groupings. Among other recent incidents was a visit by Special Branch to the parents of a former member of the Communist Party of Ireland linked Connolly Youth Movement to fill them in on the young political activists activity.
Special Branch attention turned on student activists
Kevin Brannigan
Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and had also become involved in anti-fees campaigning. During his day in custody in February he was asked questions relating to Free Education for Everyone (FEE) activities and was told by one of his interviewers that newly elected ULA TD Richard Boyd Barrett had links to dissident Re-
young Dublin based student had his trip from his parents home to college interrupted recently when he found himself in the back of a Special Branch car being whizzed off to spend a day answering questions in a south Dublin Garda station holding cell. The first year student (who wishes to remain anonymous) had recently joined the
Croppies Acre
ublin City councillor Cieran Perry has condemned proposals to turn Croppies Acre, in central Dublin, into five a-side pitches. He said the proposals by architects Douglas Carson and Rosaleen Crushell showed a fundamental ignorance of the nature of the Croppies Acre. The Croppies Acre is the final resting of the United Irishmen of Dublin who rose for Liberty in 1798. These Catholics, Protestants and Dissenters were united by a desire to secure independence for their country. They fought and died together for a non-sectarian Irish Republic. It is an outrageous insult to their memory to suggest that football be played over their graves, Cllr Perry said.
he unveiling of a plaque by the North Inner City Folklore group to Patrick Heeney in Railway Street, Dublin, has been welcomed by WP representitve Malachy Steenson. The plaque commemorates the man who in 1907 wrote the music of Amhrn na bhFiann (The Soldiers Song) at 101 Mecklenburgh Street (renamed Railway Street). Patrick Heeney never lived to see his music become famous; he died in abject poverty in 1911 aged 29. Steenson said; We live in a city surrounded by the history of national and working class struggle it is well past time that we remember this in both commemoration and action.
Soldiers Song writer remembered
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Workers Party Northern Ireland Election Candidates
he Assembly might be working for Sinn Fein and the DUP but its not delivering for the rest of us. The Peace Process has served its purpose. Its time to move on to the Democratic Process. Thats why the Workers Party is calling for the democratisation of our institutions and an end to politics by sectarian headcount. Its time for a principled Left alternative at Stormont that is neither catholic nor protestant, nationalist nor unionist. With the Workers Party we can build that new political space. Start on the road to a new Northern Ireland vote socialist, vote Workers Party on May 5th. In areas where the Workers Party does not have a candidate we
would ask supporters to vote for those who propose genuine socialist solutions to Northern Irelands problems, oppose the cutback agenda and are active in their opposition to sectarianism. In the Assembly and Local Government elections the Workers Party will be focusing on
five key areas: 1. A new politics for Northern Ireland 2. The Economy 3. Fighting the Stormont Cuts 4. Opposing Sectarianism 5. The Environment The full Workers Party manifesto is available at; workerspartyelection.wordpress.com The Workers Party is standing four candidates in Belfast: Pictured left to right are: Paddy Lynn (South Belfast, Lagan Bank) John Lavery (North Belfast, Castle Ward) Kevin McNally (East Belfast, Pottinger), and John Lowry (West Belfast, Lower Falls)
Glasgow students sit-in
Wilma Kenny
sit-in by Glasgow University students is on going since February 1st in the University owned Hetherington Research Club. The students are using the closure of the post graduate club as an opportunity to confront the university authorities on their policies regarding an increase in tuition fees and job cuts. The building is now a place where different activists and groups can come together to discuss and debate ideas.
On March 22nd the university authorities called in the police to evict the protesters. There were around 20 students in the building but the operation involved around 50 police, 12 vehicles and a police helicopter. Word quickly spread and hundreds of students gathered outside the building to support their fellow students. Undeterred by the eviction the students proceeded to occupy the luxurious Turnbill and Melville rooms used for events and entertaining. The students have since returned to the Hetherington building where they keep a constant vigil
and are determined to stay put until their demands are met. They spend their time studying and hosting events which have included visits by singer Billy Bragg and film director Ken Loach. Rachel, who is involved in the protest, said: I thought it was a brilliant idea to break in and occupy the Hetherington, a space that was closed down without consultation from those that it was created for. It had been lying empty for a year. Weve taken it back for all students and stood up to the management. Weve created something important and unique to Scotland.
As the National Debt grows, so do efforts to dump it
Kevin Squires
he republics National Debt now stands at more than 101 billion thats over 22,000 per person! Of course, this is not the publics debt It is mainly private banking debt which the Fianna Fail/Green government socialised. The new Fine Gael/Labour government has carried on in the same manner, tossing a further 24 billion down the banking black hole in early April. In response there has been a range of campaigns launched. The Workers Party have called for a referendum that would guarantee the primacy of the common
good and social justice asserted in Article 43 of the Irish constitution, which would result in the reversal of the bank bailout. www.wedemanddemocracy.ie The Communist Party of Ireland are campaigning for a similar referendum, producing a comprehensive booklet on the crisis called Repudiate the Debt. The People Before Profit Alliance and Independent TDs have begun the Enough campaign seeking a referendum on the IMF/EU loan. Other groups like Debt and Development and Afri are looking at protest tactics like those used by the British group UK Uncut, while the 1% Network continues street theatre awareness raising.
It is abundantly clear that dumping the debt and the IMF/EU deal is - and should be - the main focus for progressive Irish groups and citizens. The above tactics arent mutually exclusive; instead they can be seen as complimentary. Its to be hoped that - in the interests of the vast majority of Irish people - these groups can come together at some level and consolidate a concerted campaign that can build an effective nationwide resistance. A WP spokesman said; This campign must ensure the people can vote on the bailout and IMF/EU deal in a ballot along with other referendum questions concerning the place of the child in the consititution and Dil enquiries, on a Referendum Day.
5
THE MEDIA CRISIS

Gavan Titley takes a look at the grim reality of the southern medias approach to the crisis but also sees cause for hope that their spell may be broken.
White noise, bleak hope: Irish media in the crisis

t would be strange, the 18th century philosopher Georg Lichtenberg remarked, if all that was worth knowing in science was discovered in Prussia. Yet reality is fully known in The Irish Times HQ. Writing in that paper on April 9th, political editor Stephen Collins perfected a line he has been crafting for months; we are where we are and there is no alternative, so its time to face reality. Anything that deviates from this is, of course, populist rabble-rousing. An unusually unkind editorial decision juxtaposed Collins article, on the same page, with one by economist Joseph Stiglitz. In outlining how the ECB-IMF deal will strangle growth, increase inequality and lead to social unrest, Stiglitz pointed out that there are high costs to postponing facing reality. So, whose reality is it anyway? The answer to this depends on what we expect mainstream media to do. On the one hand, The Sunday Independent will soon be issued in a special laminated edition, to help keep the bile on the page. On
the other, the fumes of eviscerated politicians, wafting from TV3 studios after another night with Vincent Browne, have become opium for the twittering classes. This is the conventional spectrum of mainstream adversarial debate, and the radical and progressive left knows well its openings, boundaries and limits. Indeed, traditional liberal conceits that a vigilant media hold power to account, and engage in meaningful agenda-setting are now transparently fictions in a context where the ideological flimsy of we all partied so lets share the pain has had such structuring force. In his new book Global Slump, David McNally argues that the current mutation of neoliberalism involves a concerted shift, not only of private debt to public debt, but to the ideological establishment of an austerity agenda designed to ensure the security of this transfer. Sweeping media generalisations are risky, yet by and large mainstream media in Ireland has normalized this mutation. The general acceptance of the public
and private sectors as cardinal ideological points as if these people dont know each other, or share lives, or as if these sectors arent economically interdependent is an obvious example. Corporation tax is principally discussed as the totem that separates us from the apocalypse. Or take a specific example: when the Dragons Den Democrats (or Ireland First, as a group led by business figures Dennis OBrien and Dermot Desmond prefer to be called) produced a blueprint for reform that, incidentally, mapped onto the conditions for their own further enrichment, they were handed the keys to the public sphere. Stung by criticism, an Irish Times editorial defended this in the name of the publics right to know. Liberal conceit at work; the public had a right to Unites Alternative Peoples Budget in December 2011, but I dont remember a PDF placed helpfully on www.irishtimes.com. Nevertheless, it is not all that useful to approach mainstream media in the crisis by simply trying to gauge the extent of an ideological consensus. This often ends up running like this: someone like Gene Kerrigan writes for The Sunday Independent therefore some critical stuff can creep through, versus, Kerrigan is the ideological exception, the acceptable dissent, that masks the broader rule. It is not useful because what is more important is that the extent and dimensions of the crisis in Ireland far exceed the capacities of media coverage to adequately map it.
Vincent Browne has become opium for the twittering classes

There is, as commentator Hugh Green has pointed out, a systematic denial that there might be anything wrong with capitalism other than a severe bout of cronyism. There is also an over-concentration of media power, an ease of access for powerful lobby groups, routine intimacy and dependence on official sources, and, as the Fianna Fail meltdown and general election showed, a reductive professional fascination with the spectacle of power. And there are also good journalists, and good reports. But this is a given. What the juxtaposition of Collins and the very mainstream Stiglitz shows is
6
something else; that those evangelizing the neoliberal mutation are currently clinging to an analysis and set of prescriptions that are fast unraveling in a deepening global crisis. This, perhaps, is the bleak hope: the general normalization of the austerity agenda, and the fiction that this partly naughty, partly unlucky little nation has to take its pain, cannot survive contact with the global context for long. Not because it will rationally be disproved, but because securing the magical nature of this reality requires more and more work, drawing more and more attention to its operations. Maybe this is too fanciful, but it is an attempt to think about what is emerging. I was struck, listening to Morning Ireland the morning after Black Thursday, when further billions of euros was poured into a broken banking system, by a kind of hysteria. A series of bankers and economists, with not even the pretence that a dissenting voice would be interviewed, queued up to say that, in fact, only 24 billion was a relief, and that they really believed we have turned a corner. But this is not the really real for the vast majority of people taking the pain in this country. In the crisis, there are certain things that can be expected from mainstream media that, at present, are in short supply. The new rhythms and pressures of the digital era, and reduced capacities for investigative journalism, do not mean that a concerted focus on the impact of austerity on peoples lives and the social fabric is not possible. The global crisis, as philosopher Alain Badiou points out, is chiefly reported like a Hollywood thriller with an elite cast, and its impacts on the cinema audience, sitting suffering in the dark, underplayed or ignored. Similarly, there has been little attempt to report on and think through the consequences and reactions to different types of default. The situation in Ireland needs to be meaningfully internationalized, beyond bare coverage of referenda in Iceland and riots in Athens. However, the bleak hope also requires the progressive and radical left to inform and shape this internationalization, insistence on the toxic social costs of austerity, and the need, in a crisis, to think about futures that cannot be put back together in the image of the past. Stephen Collins is right; it is time for some rabble-rousing, in mainstream discourse and a lot of other spaces besides.
The Jemmy Hope Column

As a people, we are excluded from any share in framing the laws by which we are governed. The higher ranks usurped the exclusive exercise of that privilege, as well as many other rights, by force, fraud, and fiction.
Pick of the Sindo.....

Young people will have to work for less, too, and those who complain that this is a most dreadful country and cant wait to get out of it should do just that. Get out, quick.
Headmaster and former GAA player Colm ORourke, Sunday Independent April 11th 2010
Academia must also change. The obsession with producing only PhDs is the main reason the crisis happened.
Economist Marc Coleman, Sunday Independent, May 23rd 2010
Since it is not fashionable, or even wise, nowadays to raise a glass to Charles Haughey, I will follow Anthony Cronin in suggesting that those of us who have cause to be grateful to him, and to his policies, should wait until we are at home alone, and then we should turn off all the lights and raise a glass to him in the dark alone. Tell no one.
Writer Colm Tibn, Sunday Independent, Febrary 13th 2011
No umeployed need apply!

According to the National Employment Law Project, a trend is growing among employers to not even consider the applications of the unemployed for jobs... Among examples offered by the project... was a phone manufacturer that posted a job announcement with the message: No Unemployed Candidate Will Be Considered At All, and a Texas electronics company that announced online that it would not consider/review anyone NOT currently employed regardless of the reason.
Bob Herbert, New York Times, February 21st 2011
7
FORUM
The EUs silent revolution
Paul Murphy, Socialist Party Dublin MEP
ated by the Commission and a scoreboard of austerity will be used to measure a countrys progress. The result is that countries could meet the Growth and Stability criteria but still suffer massive fines as a sanction for not sufficiently deregulating their labour market for example. imposing unpopular measures in the face of major movements against cutbacks. This is also a case of right-wing politicians in Europe seizing an opportunity to deliver to big business the policies that they have long demanded. The European Round Table of Industrialists (the most prominent European big business group), in 2002 demanded that at the drafting stage, the implications of national budgets and of major national fiscal policy measures [should be] reviewed at the level of the Union exactly what is now being proposed! The Left must be to the fore in organising resistance and opposition to workers being forced to pay for the economic crisis in Ireland. Within that movement, we should highlight the fact that workers, young people and the unemployed in Portugal, Greece and across Europe are facing similar attacks. A Europe-wide struggle including co-ordinated industrial action is needed to resist the Europe-wide austerity.
hat European Commission President Barroso has described as a silent revolution is underway in the European Union. A further diminution of democracy is being pushed through in order to facilitate the imposition of a permanent economic shock doctrine. Cutbacks, privatisation and downward pressure on wages will be institutionalised through the development of what is called economic governance. Neo-liberal governments across Europe and a neo-liberal European Commission are nothing new. However, the proposals for economic governance are an attempt to make these policies permanent, regardless of movements of mass opposition. There are three significant elements to these proposals. The first is the surveillance of national budgets by the European Commission and Council. Budgets will be presented to the Commission and Council for discussion and approval before any debate in national parliaments. The purpose of these discussions is clear to put pressure on governments to ensure that budgets are sufficiently savage for working people and generous for big business all in the name of maintaining and developing competitiveness. The second element is a significant strengthening of the Growth and Stability Pact the pact which limits countries public debt to 60% of GDP and their annual deficits to 3% of GDP. New mechanisms are to be introduced to ensure that countries stick to these targets by cutting public spending. Offending states will have to pay 0.2% of their GDP into a non-interest bearing account and if they do not follow the prescriptions of the Commission, they will lose this money as a fine, a procedure that can be repeated up to a fine of 0.5% of GDP (around 700 million for Ireland). The final element is the most sinister and ill-defined a procedure to prevent macroeconomic imbalances. A series of yet unknown parameters will be cre-
A case of right-wing politicians in Europe seizing an opportunity to deliver to big business the policies that they have long demanded.
These proposals form part of a response of the European capitalist classes to the economic crisis. They are an attempt to resist the inevitable break-up of the eurozone by moving towards a common fiscal policy across the EU. By imposing fines and exercising surveillance they aim to ensure that governments do not flinch in
A changing of the guard?

Cian OCallaghan, Labour Party Councillor Fingal
use of Irish Airports and airspace for purposes not in line with the dictates of international law will be prohibited. However The Programme for Government makes little mention of the vast oil and gas resources that lie beneath our seas. Four years ago the Department of Natural Resources estimated that 10 billion barrels of oil could be exploited from the Rockall, Porcupine, Celtic, Slyne Donegal and Kish basins.With advances in oil drilling technology and dwindling global oil supplies the oil and gas basins which surround our island will be exploited in the coming years. Labour in government must immediately take action to ensure that this is done for the benefit of the Irish people rather than in the interest of private corporations. A closer look at the Programme for Government suggests that this is unlikely to happen. Much of the failed politics of Fianna Fil and the right are still in place. The government is committed to the expansion of the Rental Accommodation Scheme which privatises social housing
here are a number of positive policy gains for the left won by the Labour Party in the Programme for Government. Most notably there are commitments to create a one tier universal healthcare system, to maintain current rates of social welfare, secure the right to collective bargaining and emphasise job creation. There is a commitment to reverse the minimum wage cut and the Freedom of Information Act is to be extended with whistle-blower legislation introduced. More powers are to be moved to local government and County Managers are to be replaced with Chief Excutives with more limited powers. The
8
Building the Left

Mick Finnegan, Workers Party President
e are at a moment of real opportunity for the left. We know that the people are angry; we know that they are looking for change. We know that people want an alternative. We also know, however, that the institutions that serve capitalism the political establishment and the media in particular are telling them that There Is No Alternative: no alternative to falling wages, worsening working conditions, higher prices, and reduced living standards. If the left is to take advantage of the current opportunity to make this truly a turning point, if we are to carve out for ourselves a permanently larger presence in political life and within civil society we must articulate a socialist alternative, which focuses on protecting and developing public services, and on job creation and economic development through deploying the immense economic power of the state; and thirdly the deepening of cooperation
across the left in both the short and the long term. The only way we can possibly mount an effective opposition is by mobilising the entire broad left, and by attracting new people to it. As we have seen with the trade union sponsored demonstrations, the broad left as a whole can mobilise a huge section of the population that dwarfs the numbers that individual parties or even alliances of left parties can hope to achieve. While we may disagree with elements of the worldview, programmes, or actions of other parties, trade unions or community organisations, we must seek to build an alliance of all those committed to certain basic progressive policies.
The only way we can possibly mount an effective opposition is by mobilising the entire broad left, and by attracting new people to it.
What then should the policies of the Irish left be over the next few years? As said earlier, we must promote socialism as the alternative; and follow the strategic goal of building a serious radical left presence not just in electoral politics but also in trade unions, in community groups, and on the streets. This involves not just the traditional kinds of hard work in workplaces and in communities, but also serious work that must be done to elaborate and articulate our vision. This means, drawing up more
d?
provision, the effective privatisation of any remaining publicly run waste collection services, the Dutch/ Fine Gael model of competing health insurers and the privatisation of 2 billion worth of state assets. Public Services that communities, unions and the left have established over decades of struggle will be attacked and squeezed while people on low incomes will be hit disproportionately with the introduction of measures such as water charges. This agenda will no doubt meet with approval from the the Doheny and Nesbitts school of bar-room economic thought which has disastrously championed neoliberal polices in Ireland over the last fifteen years. Rather than selling off state enterprises we should be utilising them as a base for expanding economic activity, job creation and encouraging the creation of spin off companies. In the election people voted for change and for the left in unprecedented numbers. The clear task and challenge for all on the left is to continue to campaign and mobilise for radical, underlying and transformative change rather than a continuation of the failed politics of the right.
detailed economic development plans, and we in political parties must build on the good work being done by the like of TASC so that we can demonstrate to people that socialism is not just a moral concern with fairness. It is a hard-headed, practical programme grounded in the reality of peoples lives, and with the power to transform social relations between our people. This means building an alternative culture, and it is here that progressive community organisations have a vital role to play. In alliance with trade unions and political parties, they can help us involve wider sections of the population, especially young people, in the struggle for progressive change in our society. Cultural activities can also become a focus for greater left cooperation. The Workers Party has transformed our publication LookLeft into a forum for broad left discussion and debate precisely as a means of both building left cooperation and in making left politics more attractive to people who have left sympathies but are not involved in any political organisation. LookLeft continues to expand its readership, distribution network and its range of writers. We feel that it has played a positive role so far, and that it has the potential to play a greater role in the future. Although we still regard politics and the state as being at the centre of the struggle for socialism, building classconsciousness is more than a matter of building political parties, this means developing our culture activities and exploiting new means of communications.
Educate Agitate Organise

Collectively, we can make a difference. The Workers Party stands solely in the interests of the working class. And by that we mean all workers, unemployed, employed or retired. We are 100% committed to a democratic, secular, socialist programme. Against the odds the Workers Party has never wavered in our dedication to these goals. So if you want to make a difference then its time you joined the Workers Party in the struggle to build a new fairer country. Over the decades the Workers Party has built up an unrivalled collection of publications on the struggle to build a democratic, secular, socialist Ireland. This library of pamphlets is an unrivalled resource for progressive political activists and copies of these publications are available to purchase from party offices. To learn more about WP Head office (Republic) the Workers Party contact:
48 North Great Georges Street, Dublin 1 Telephone: (01) 8733 916 Fax: (01) 874 8702 International: +353-1-8733916 WP Head office (N.Ireland) 6 Springfield Road Belfast, BT12 7AG Telephone: (028) 90 328 663 Fax: (028) 90 333 475
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Citizens in the cradle

he recent publication of Educational disadvantage and the Protestant working class: A Call to Action is a much broader assessment of how poverty and inequality impact on educational achievement than its title may infer. Its principle finding, based on local, UK and international research, is that differences in educational performance lie, to a very large extent, outside the school system. The research includes a London School of Economics study, which analysed nearly half a million individual pupil attainment paths. It found that prior attainment, gender, free school meal entitlement and English as an additional language accounted for 92% of the variance in later attainment in secondary schools. Such findings, the A Call to Action working group state, demonstrate that systemic educational improvement will require comprehensive, long-term responses to inequality including increased health spending, better housing, innovative childcare strategies, and moves towards a living wage. Early years and childcare strate-
Mary Diskin outlines the case for wider state intervention in order to break a cycle of educational underachievement that has entrapped some working class communities.
gies are key to improving educational performance according to the group. The most significant period for a childs development, learning capacity and wellbeing is during pregnancy and the first three years of life. Risk factors which affect brain development before birth are strongly associated with, or exacerbated by, poverty. Yet the state funded Sure Start programme aimed at reducing child poverty is underdeveloped and underfunded in Northern Ireland compared to the rest of the UK. Children who need this support but have been denied it will often show limited concentration skills, inability to cope with challenge or failure, and challenging behaviour during their primary school years. They will often leave primary school with limited literacy and numeracy skills. The OECD in its Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA 2009) has also indicated that participation in pre-primary education is particularly strongly associated with reading performance at age 15. The PISA 2009 study found that in the republic students with a family background in the top third
The most significant period for a childs development, learning capacity and wellbeing is during pregnancy and the first three years of life.
Mortgage crisis worsens
Donal ODriscoll
orkers Party Councillor Ted Tynan has stated that evictions have become a very real danger for many working class people who find themselves stuck with mortgages they can no longer afford. Its a huge issue; I hear it all the time. Many young people are faced with the very real prospect of being evicted from their homes, Cllr Tynan said. Financial institutions are now putting huge pressure on mortgage holders to make payments, which are no longer realistic. According to Cllr. Tynan, the best thing people faced with such a situation can do is to offer to make reduced regular payments. He said; You would be hopeful that in the event that the matter goes to Court, that there may be a sympathetic judge who will see that an effort was made to pay. He added that it was sadly ironic that financial institutions, who found themselves unable to survive economically without State intervention were forcing mortgage holders to pay rates that are now beyond them.
social and economic class had an average reading score that was significantly higher than students in the bottom third. Students whose parents have a lower level of education had a significantly lower average reading score than students whose parents have third level education. In Ireland, students in lone-parent families (one of the high-poverty risk groups) had a significantly lower average reading score than students in other family types. PISA 2009 indicates that the gap in the lone-family groups reading attainments in Ireland is higher than average across OECD countries. It is within this context that the A Call to Action Working Group examined the comparative underachievement of disadvantaged Protestants and in particular Protestant males in Northern Ireland. De-industrialisation and the loss of traditional labour markets and skills has had a huge negative impact on this group. Generations of working class Protestants were heavily involved in manufacturing industry and viewed getting a trade as the main form of educational requirement. There was a perceived lack of need to gain educational qualifications through the college/ university route with the result that many are unable to compete for jobs requiring educational qualifications and skills linked to computerisation. They are now reliant on low wage and casual employment or dependent on benefit. Cultural factors are likely also exacerbating educational disadvantage in other working class communities and deserve their own studies. However what existing research is clear on is a large number of children from less well off backgrounds, in both jurisdictions, leave primary school very poorly equipped in the areas of basic numeracy, literacy, language and communication skills with the result that they remain poor and marginalized as adults.
10
The peoples champion

United Left Alliance TD Joan Collins chats about electoral success and the future with Kevin Brannigan.
ts a sunny Sunday afternoon; Joan Collins TD is sipping coffee on Dublins middle Abbey Street. A constituent stops and congratulates her on election success joyously recounting how he dealt with the Fianna Failers who darkened his door during the weeks of canvassing. It doesnt sound too dissimilar to how Joan herself dealt with former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern on his last day in the Dail, with the would be TD interrupting the former canary yellow suited statesman during an interview, in which he had noted with a sigh how he wished someone had told him just what was going on in the banks. A Youtube recording of Joans interruption and questioning of Ahern, Have you no shame? soon went viral and propelled the local campaigner to the forefront of the national media. It was completely spur of the moment, if you had staged managed it you couldnt do it. Though if it had been planned I would have been more articulate. says Joan. I couldnt believe the feedback to it, everyone I met on the doors said I wish Id the opportunity to do it. Ahern walking away with a nice pension knowing exactly what hed done and here he was saying the Bertie bowl was one of his main regrets! A few weeks after gate crashing Berties farewell, Joan found herself sitting in the Dil chamber elected by the people of Dublin south central. Joan admits that the extra profile provided by BertieGate and the buzz surrounding the formation of the United Left Alliance (ULA) were important in the final tally but success was built was over 15 years of campaigning for working class communities, from opposing bin charges to water taxes. She now feels the responsibility of ensuring that the great hope from people as to what the ULA
can do is turned into real political achievements. However Joan has found Leinster House to be an unwelcoming place for those outside the perceived establishment. Fianna Fil had been there for so long they had the Dail chamber as a mirror image of themselves it was all geared towards them. Its a very alienating environment for working class people; the prestige, the power, the protocols and all the other shite youre meant to conform to. Lucky enough our (ULA) offices are away from it all above the Department of Agriculture offices so we only have to go to it (the Dil) when we go to the chamber. Joan is a former member of Militant (which later became the Socialist Party) but is now a member of the Socialist Workers Party aligned People Before Profit alliance. She now hopes the ULA can fulfil its potential by attracting leftwing former Labour party activists and others. But as the ULA seeks to move from a loose electoral alliance to parliamentary grouping and maybe
Joan has found Leinster House to be an unwelcoming place for those outside the perceived establishment.
even fully fledged party Joan accepts there will be obstacles to overcome. She points to two early debates within the ULA parliamentary group, which is itself part of the larger Dil independent TDs technical group ,that indicate the difficult process of developing a unified strategy among groupings which until recently ploughed separate furrows. The first day of the Dil there was a debate on corporation tax and Joe (Higgins) put in an amendment to it and there was very little time to sit down and discuss it in detail. The Tipperary Workers and Unemployed Action Group (whose TD Seamus Healy is a ULA member) were opposed to the increase in the tax, not out of any loyalty to multi-nationals, but because their area relies on multi nationals for employment. So there was potentially a first issue we could have fallen down on, says Joan. The second contentious issue was Richard Boyd Barretts broad front approach for a proposed referendum on the IMF/EU bailout. Joe and (fellow Socialist Party TD) Clare Daly didnt want to get involved due to (rightwing Independent TD) Shane Rosss involvement, it wasnt a political issue for me as we saw the referendum as more of a democratic rather than ideological issue. As such parliamentary teething problems are overcome wider organisation and recuriting must continue, to build a broader movement Joan states- were going to have ULA membership cards so when people join the ULA theyre not joining the Socialist Party or Socialist Workers Party those parties are just affiliated to it. Only time will tell how the ULA develops but whatever its clear Joan will always be more content campaigning within her local community than hobnobbing in the Dil bar.
11
THE REAL ECO

The Elephant off our coast
The southern states natural resources were systematically handed over to foreign multi-national corporations by a Fianna Fil regime mired in corruption but the political class has no appetite to right this wrong writes Stewart Reddin.
he so called democratic revolution as Enda Kenny described the outcome of the recent southern general election, has simply reaffirmed politics as usual. The election saw the return of a Fine Gael/Labour government committed to the disastrous EU/IMF austerity plan and the Fianna Fil programme of savage cuts. While working people endure cuts in wages and public services, vast wealth has been handed over to oil corporations, wealth that could be invested in schools,
hospitals and public housing. According to figures from the Department of Communication, Marine and Natural Resources (DCENR), at current world oil prices, the states oil and gas reserves have a potential value in excess of 700 billion. These figures are based on an estimated 10 billion barrels of oil equivalent in the Atlantic Margin and the current price of a barrel of oil at US$105/74. It is important to note that these figures exclude oil and gas reserves off the south coast; the east coast as well as
substantial onshore reserves. For example, on the east coast there is an estimated 870 million barrels of oil in the Kish Basin off Dalkey head, while onshore there is 9.4 trillion cubic feet of gas in Lough Allen, which is nine times the size of the Corrib gas field. As it stands the state has no control over its oil and gas reserves. In 1987 former energy minister Ray Burke enacted legislation exempting all oil and gas production from royalty payments and offered oil corporations a 100% tax write off on capital expenditure
12
CONOMY
for exploration, development and production. Subsequently, Bertie Ahern as Minister of Finance in 1992 halved the tax rate on profits from oil and gas production to just 25% and offered terms for frontier licences, which ceded control over Irish waters to oil companies and allowed them to deliver at market prices. Thus, the assertion by Mike Cunningham, the former Statoil director, that no country in the world offers as favourable terms to the oil companies as Ireland is well founded and was backed up by a subsequent Indecon report, commissioned by the DCENR, which found that the south offered oil companies what is probably the lowest government take in the world. On the basis of recommendations contained in the Indecon report, the Green Party Minister amon Ryan introduced a profit resource rent tax in 2007, which operates on a graded basis depending on the level of profitability. The standard 25% applies in all cases, but an additional 15% applies where the profit ratio exceeds 4.5 the DCENR defines this as the rate of profits less 25% corporate tax divided by the accumulated level of capital investment. However, this new rent tax only applies to licences issued after 2007 and will make little difference anyway as oil companies continue to enjoy tax write offs against exploration, development and construction costs. The generosity of the fiscal terms on offer become apparent when compared with fiscal systems in place in other resource rich states. Fiscal systems can include bonuses; rentals; royalties; production-sharing and corporate taxes. In some states a single fiscal system applies while in others a variety exists. The Norwegian state taxes oil profits at 78% while also retaining a 67% share in Statoil; thus directly participating in resource exploration and production. Both Britain and Denmark operate a combined royalty/tax system, the former has a government tax take of 50% while the latter is closer to 70%. In recent years many Latin American states have taken back control of their oil and gas reserves from oil corporations, the most high profile being Bolivia and Venezuela. Last December, the government in Ecuador, which holds the thirdlargest proven oil reserves in Latin America, renegotiated a deal with private oil producers, replacing production sharing agreements with service contracts. Under the new contracts the oil corporations will receive a per-barrel fee for the oil they produce, ranging from $16.72 per barrel to as much as $41 per barrel, but only after the state takes 25% of gross oil revenues upfront. In addition, oil companies have committed to investing $1.2 billion in oil fields. While other states have taken decisive action to reclaim their natural resources, the Fine Gael/ Labour programme for government offers a pathetically vague platitude that seeks to maximise the return for the people, yet at the same time commits to incentivise and promote off-shore drilling. The oil corporations need have no concerns that the new minister in the DCENR, Pat Rabbitte, will return to his more radical days, when active in the Resource Protection Campaign he campaigned for the establishment of a state oil company. Rabbitte has refused to revoke the consents granted to Shell for the onshore section of the Corrib gas pipeline, scandalously issued on the day of the general election by the then Fianna Fil minister Pat Carey. Approximately 700 billion worth of oil and gas in the southern state is currently controlled by global oil corporations and the new coalition government has already demonstrated its unwillingness to renegotiate the giveaway of our natural resources. The decade long struggle in Erris has to date prevented the 10 billion worth of gas in the Corrib field being expropriated by Shell. Reclaiming the vast wealth controlled by powerful private oil interests will require a mass campaign and a genuine democratic revolution. For more information see: www.shelltosea.com
www.lookleftonline.org
FOURTH ANNUAL GEORGE BROWN COMMEMORATION WEEKEND Friday 24th, Saturday 25th June Inistioge, Co. Kilkenny
Two days of discussion and entertainment. Speakers include: Friday - Jimmy Kelly (Unite), Michael D. Higgins and Jose Antonio Gutierrez. Saturday - Jack OConnor (SIPTU), Harry Owens and Ciaran Crossey. Discussion on the fight against Fascism in Spain 1936 - 1939 and socialism now. More info see: www.lookleftonline.org
13
Banking on the illogical

The EUs policies to overcome the Europe wide banking crisis seem beyond the understanding of all but the self-appointed economic elite. That is because, as Conor McCabe explains, they actually do not make sense.
t is often said that a definition of insanity is to do the same action over and over again, each time expecting a different result. In that case, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), Irelands single-largest creditor, is a 21st century Bedlam. Originally set up as a temporary measure, the EFSF was created in June 2010 in order to preserve the financial stability of the euro area by providing financial assistance to member states who found themselves in difficulty. It does this by selling bonds, and from the money raised it provides funds (with interest) to the financially-distressed states. The EFSF takes bad loans, and by putting them together, turns them into good loans. It uses a financial instrument similar to that used by institutions in the run-up to the 2008 financial meltdown - whereby subprime mortgages were bundled together with other loans and sold as one good loan. These instruments are known as collateralised debt obligations. In February 2011 the Financial Times explained that, technically, the EFSF is not a collateralised debt obligation but a special purpose vehicle that essentially pools guarantees and loans from stronger euro members to give it a top triple A credit rating. The difference, however, is in definition, not in usage. The economist Nouriel Roubini wrote in January 2011 that the EFSF was an instrument whereby you take a bunch of dodgy less than AAA sovereigns (& some semi-insolvent) and try to package a vehicle that gets [an] AAA rating. And it is this process of bundling bad debt into bonds which
THE REAL ECO

are guaranteed by good lenders which makes it akin to the financial weapons of mass destruction which almost brought down the US and European banking systems. The loans are still bad, the sovereign states are still distressed - it is only the guarantee that has changed. The bonds are valued not so much on the loans themselves, but on the guarantee which comes with them. The risk has not gone away. It has merely shifted from one place to another, from bad lenders onto good. The reasons why the sovereign states find themselves distressed in the first place are not addressed in any shape or form. In Irelands case, the transfer of private banking debt into sovereign debt, alongside three years of deflationary budgets, has left the economy in statis, while debt obligations are transformed into triple-A bonds via the EFSF making the EFSF a profit in the meantime. The Greek economist, Yanis Varoufakis, explained the procedure in a blog post in February 2011. With Ireland and Greece frozen out of the money markets, the EFSF loans for Ireland were raised from the money markets by the EFSF on the strength of guarantees issued by the remaining 15 eurozone states, in proportion to their GDP. The total raised was then cut up in small packets, each containing a slice that was guaranteed by Germany, another by France, another by Portugal and so on. Given that each country had different degrees of creditworthiness, each was charged a different interest rate, before the packets were sold off as bonds, mostly to Asian investors and to Europes own quasi-bankrupted banks. This means that Portugal, already on the verge of bankruptcy, had to borrow, at high interest rates, on Irelands behalf, thus adding to that countrys already strained debt obligations. Were another Eurozone state to be forced to leave the money markets, as has happened to Greece, Ireland and Portugal the EFSF would then have to issue new debt on behalf of the remaining eurozone countries, to help it. In other words, 13 countries rasing money for four, until another defaults, then its 12 countries raising for five, and so on until the bank of nations within the EFSF is so small that they cannot bear the burden of total debt on their shoulders. The complete lack of engagement with the problems facing the Irish economy deflationary policies, falling tax returns, unemployment and emigration in lieu of a credit solution for its bankrupt banking system, reveals a certain truth about the EFSF. The purpose of the bailout is not to help the Irish economy to recover these are not investment loans, after all but to ensure that European financial institutions are guaranteed a return on their loans to Irish banks: those private loans which are now part of Irish sovereign debt and which the present government is determined to protect, to the detriment of us all. However, because new debt is being created for the sole purpose of servicing old debt, it is only a matter of time before another financial crash befalls Europe. It is not possible to repeat the same action and arrive at a different outcome. [For those interested in the issues surrounding the EU debt crisis, Varoufakis blog is essential reading. The address is: http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/]
The risk has not gone away. It has merely shifted from one place to another, from bad lenders onto good.
14
CONOMY
A
generation ago it was the common sense view on all sides of mainstream ideological debate in Western Europe and the USA that there were some public goods which had to be regulated outside the market. Forms of non-market regulation included the welfare state, trade unions with power both at a shopfloor and a national level, a strong public sector and a vibrant civil society. Of course, these regulatory measures resulted more from working class struggle and rulingclass fear fear of workers, fear of Commies- than the benevolence of the capitalist state. Nonetheless, in the 1950s and 60s this social democratic common sense endured because it brought prosperity and was popular. Looking back, we know how that story ended and how a new common sense was constructed by Thatcher, Reagan and their cronies. Despite global market collapse, this neo-liberal common sense still endures among the elites movers and shakers. Central to the neo-liberal project has been the reshaping of the role of the state. Where once the creation of a national industrial policy was seen as a necessary job of government, this is no longer the case. Instead regions and cities in the state now compete with each other on the global market. The city or region must engage in a branding exercise in order to sell itself to foreign corporations. The tide is about to turn for Northern Ireland plc ran a recent editorial headline in the Belfast Telegraph talking up announcements promising nearly 140 jobs from two high-tech firms. (Great! 140 jobs and only 100,000 more of us out of work.) In search of a brand, the citys past is plundered and an ersatz postmodern (i.e., depoliticised) version of
Gamblers Paradise?
history is put in place partly through the kind of public art that was once firmly (and mercifully) confined to the lobbies of corporate headquarters. Rundown areas are regenerated but only if they fit the Citys corporate plan. The actual people who live or used to live in such areas are much less important than the bottom line. Urban regeneration is often tied up with some big spectacle such as the 2012 Olympics in Londons East End or the MTV Awards in Belfast in November this year. Again the Belfast Telegraph gushed: The repercussions will be felt across Northern Ireland, with a massive cash injection for the economy and a well-deserved place for the city on the worlds music map. Above all this strategy demands a divided and flexible workforce which is prepared to join in a race to the bottom on the global market. As the Skills Strategy For Jobs document put out by the Department of Employment and Learning in 2004 puts it: Northern Ireland faces ... a number of key challenges. These include, the effects of globalisation, rapid technological advancement and the decline of traditional industrial sectors. It faces competition from countries such as China, India and other Asian and Eastern European countries which are producing significant numbers of high-skilled and talented low cost workers. The manufacturing and service sectors are routinely outsourcing to developing economies. Within this context we can understand the misguided attempt
Northern Irelands future must not be placed on the neo-liberal roulette wheel warns Justin OHagan.
Despite global market collapse, this neoliberal common sense still endures among the elites movers and shakers.
by some in the business class along with all the parties in the Stormont Executive and the British government to lower the rate of corporation tax as the latest and most daring attempt to play Northern Ireland plc on the global casino. If this alliance of neo-liberals get its way Northern Ireland will become a tax haven, although it will probably be known (laughably) as an Enterprise Zone. Northern Ireland Enterprise Zone plc will be a parking place for the ill-gotten cash of various tax dodgers on its way to their pockets via Cayman and the City of London. Very few real jobs will result from this wheeze. As tax expert Richard Murphy says: For Northern Ireland the problem will be that of all tax havens: flyby-night companies that have no intention of creating real jobs, and whose sole aim is to park profits in the province before moving them on to another tax haven as quickly as possible. Will they get their way? They just might. In the age of neo-liberal common sense, the powerful might be led to believe that its better to think and behave like a gambler than a politician or an economist.
15
Give my head politics

S
ymbols in Northern Ireland have always been politically loaded. In December 2007, Northern Irelands newly elected First and Deputy First Ministers, Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness, attended their first public engagement: the opening of a new IKEA superstore on the outskirts of Belfast. Pictured sitting together on a red leather sofa, these once implacable enemies looked relaxed in each others company and happy to endorse the arrival of this global consumer brand. It was an image that served as a powerful symbol of Northern Irelands political transformation and the economic optimism that accompanied it. No one imagined then that just three years later Northern Irelands executive, still in its relative infancy, would be contemplating an austerity budget in response to an economic crisis. It certainly never occurred to the mainstream media; their fulsome support for the peace process was underscored by an uncritical endorsement of a peace dividend that promised to lift Northern Ireland from the miserable condition of a workhouse economy and make it a serious player in the global free market. ial spirit that would herald in the peace dividend. The resounding Yes vote was celebrated in the media without qualification but it was a headline in the business section of the Irish News that pointed to some of the vested interests in a positive result: Property pleased by yes.
The peace proce media portrayal b did these develop people vulnerabl
Projecting a new era
Good news for business
From the lead up to the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) referendum, in early 1998, local newspapers were focusing on the peace dividend to come: inward investment, regeneration and prosperity. The theme and tone of a Belfast Telegraph headline declaring US President Bill Clinton is set to pump more than 100m into Northern Irelands economy to help turn political agreement into peace was regularly repeated. Business leaders acclaimed Virgin boss Richard Bransons visit to Belfast in support of the Yes campaign as if his very appearance personified the entrepreneur-
The peace dividend, then, seemed tangible and obvious to the news media: a booming property market, urban regeneration projects and the arrival of retail giants like IKEA. It also provided a new narrative for writers of film and television drama as well as official propaganda. The offbeat comedy film, An Everlasting Piece made in 2000 but set in the 1980s tells a story of reconciliation delivered on the wings of capitalist enterprise. Catholic and Protestant barbers, Colm and George, work in a grim mental hospital, surely an analogy for troubles era Northern Ireland. The hospital is staffed by dour Protestants, while the inmates are mainly Catholic. It is a depressing representation of the public sector and Colm and George resolve to escape from it by bidding for a franchise to sell wigs. Among their customers are loyalist and republican ex-paramilitaries, as well as British soldiers, whose contagious hair loss seems to represent their loss of power in the new Northern Ireland. In the penultimate scene of the film, Belfast City Hall is picturesquely illuminated by Christmas lights as the camera finds George and Colm among the happy patrons of a busy, city centre bar, celebrating their business success. The scene sums up a wider post-GFA narrative of entrepreneurship as the basis of cross-community accord and social invigoration. The romantic comedies With or Without You (1999), The Most Fertile Man in Ireland (1999) and
Catholic and Protestant barbers, Colm and George, work in a grim mental hospital, surely an analogy for troubles era Northern Ireland.
Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley on

Wild About Harry (2000) also transformed Belfasts once dire, on-screen image. As media analyst Martin McLoone commented such films display the iconography of an affluent middle class with its culture of high-spend consumerism and metropolitan aspirations.
Official propaganda
The British government also played an important role in changing Northern Irelands image, by developing the idea of the region as a desirable investment opportunity in the global market. In 1994 the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) commissioned what was the latest in a line of short films to advertise its anti-terrorist, confidential telephone service. Produced in the period of the peace process and
16
process starkly changed Northern Irelands rayal but Stephen Baker and Greg McLaughlin ask evelopments assist a depoliticisation that may leave nerable to the renewed conservative onslaught.
The new role for former combatants as family men was given a more serious inflection in films such as The Boxer (1998) and The Mighty Celt (2005). They deal with the return of former combatants to their communities after periods in prison or on-the-run. In each case the men wish to rekindle old romances with women they knew in the past, a measure of the transformation that they have undergone, giving up violent political convictions for romance, family life and home. However, in both films the romantic ambitions of the protagonists are challenged by former comrades who remain committed to violent politics. In this way The Boxer and The Mighty Celt reduce the political transformation underway in Northern Ireland during the peace process to a struggle between domestic, homely virtues and malicious politics. The same theme emerges in the films Some Mothers Son (1996) and Titanic Town (1998), in which mothers are drawn reluctantly into political activism. In Some Mothers Son, Kathleen becomes involved in a political campaign when her imprisoned son joins the 1981 hunger strike. But as he falls critically ill, she rails against the politicking by both sides in the dispute and retreats from the political frontline; only then has she the power to take her son off the strike and save his life. Similarly in Titanic Town, Bernie becomes a peace campaigner when the violence in her neighbourhood threatens her family but in the end she is repelled by the duplicitous nature of government officials and republicans. All these films seem to depict politics as the preserve of the belligerent and the double-dealing, with the implicit message that so called ordinary, decent people stay at home and dont get involved. Home, in this instance, stands for an unproblematic place, free of
these were broadcast during the summer of 1995 and appeared to have no specific purpose except to show off Northern Ireland as a delightful destination for tourists and investors.
From hood to good
Ian Paisley on the magic settee

called A New Era, it displayed a perceptible shift in emphasis from previous advertisements, transforming before our eyes the traditional symbols of conflict and division into images of peace and prosperity. A paramilitary gun morphs into a starting pistol for the Belfast marathon; a baseball bat is used for baseball, not for paramilitary punishment beatings; security bollards turn into flower displays; and a police cordon turns into ceremonial tape for the opening of a new urban motorway. After the paramilitary ceasefires in 1994, the NIO commissioned a further series of films that moved away from the anti-terrorist message altogether. Scored with some of the bestknown songs of Van Morrison
A paramilitary gun morphs into a starting pistol for the Belfast marathon; a baseball bat is used for baseball.
Another remarkable transformation came at this time in the portrayal of paramilitaries. In the early 1990s, when the prospect of an end to the violence looked within sight, the NIO confidential phone line advertisements underwent a significant shift. In previous versions the paramilitaries had been depicted as hooded, violent parasites, preying upon their own communities. But by 1993, they were being portrayed as men with a role to play in the peace process if only they would abandon their commitment to violence. As representations of official thinking the NIO advertisements seemed to prompt a new permissiveness with regards to media representation of former combatants. This was illustrated in the BBCs commissioning of the local situation comedy, Give My Head Peace. First broadcast as a pilot episode in 1995 under the name, Two Ceasefires and a Wedding, the sitcom portrayed loyalist and republican paramilitary-types as a comically dysfunctional family but a family none the less.
17
political controversy. This malign portrayal of political involvement is explicit in one of the best-known films of the ceasefire period, Divorcing Jack (1998). Here the political sphere is represented as universally repressive. As a consequence, it advocates a withdrawal into domestic intimacy, demonstrated figuratively in a conversation between its protagonist Dan Starkey and a journalist colleague from the United States. The American asks Starkey what he prefers to call Northern Ireland: Ulster, the occupied six counties, the North or the province? Starkey tells him he just calls it home, avoiding the political associations any other answer would imply. Most of the film is taken up with Starkeys efforts to rescue his private life after an act of marital infidelity plunges him into the world of political machinations, estranges him from his wife and leads to her being kidnapped by a renegade paramilitary. In the films final scene, Starkey and his wife are removed from the apparently insensible world of politics and reconciled at home where they make love on what Starkey describes as the magic settee. Like so many other film protagonists of the period they simply retreat into domesticity. Here there is no need for politics; there is no thought of collective forms of belonging or action, just the sovereignty of the home-owning consumer.
Mural depicting TV Show Give My Head Peace

2008 might suggest that Northern Irelands peace dividend is not going to be delivered by free market economics and naked consumerism. Up until then, politicians and media pundits looked across the border to the republic of Ireland with envy and grudging respect. The Celtic Tiger economy seemed proof positive that Northern Irelands overreliance on the public sector and government subsidy was stultifying economic growth. The peace dividend would only come by opening up to neo-liberal free market economics. Of course, the picture down south is very different now: toxic banks and the IMF bailout have burdened Ireland with a crippling public debt and fuelled a crisis of legitimacy amongst its political classes. Ironically, Northern Ireland has been sheltered from the worst effects of the crash because of the very same reliance on the public sector that everyone wanted to strip away. Currently the devolved administration is preparing to implement a range of cuts to public sector jobs and services but it is doubtful they will be on the same scale that is being inflicted on the public sector in the republic. It remains to be seen whether the new economic reality brings about a more critical re-imagination in media and culture of what the peace dividend really is or should be. Stephen Baker and Greg McLaughlin are lecturers in media studies at the University of Ulster and authors of The Propaganda of Peace: the role of media and culture in the Northern Ireland peace process, published in 2010 by Intellect Books.
Rethinking the peace dividend?
Divorcing Jacks magic settee is reprised in the image of Paisley and McGuinness reconciled on the sofa in IKEA, seated beneath the stores brand slogan: Home is the most important place in the world. While IKEAs assertion of the importance of home is commercially self-interested, homes and housing are politically contentious issues. From the civil rights movements campaign against the sectarian allocation of houses, to todays ghost estates and the repossessions, our domestic lives are neither separate from, nor do they transcend, the world of politics as ceasefire cinema would have us believe. Indeed, the economic and social fall-out from the financial crash of
18
The revolutions and attempted revolutions that have swept the Arab world have demonstrated the power of ordinary people, but also the adaptability of imperialism, writes Ultn Gillen .
Carter calls for release of Cuban Five

Francis Donohoe
ormer US president Jimmy Carter has joined the growing numbers demanding the release of five Cuban political prisoners held in US prisons since 1998. During a visit to Cuba at the end of March Carter stated the Cuban Five should be released immediately. In a Cuban television interview the Nobel Prize winner said in my private talks with President Bush and also with President Obama, I have urged the release of these prisoners. I recognise the restraints within the American judicial system and my hope is that the president might grant a pardon. The Cuban Five - Gerardo Hernndez, Ramn Labaino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzlez and Ren Gonzlez - are serving lengthy sentences in different U.S. prisons after being arrested in 1998 and sentenced in 2001 for attempting to protect their homeland from terrorist attacks. In 2005, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions declared that the imprisonment of the five men was arbitrary and urged the U.S. government to remedy the situation. The five were convicted of espionage, although the prosecution failed to prove that any of them had obtained documents considered secret or sensitive by the U.S. security services. In Cuba they are seen as heroes in the fight against terrorism having infiltrated anti-Castro Cuban exile groups in Miami, Florida. During April at the Gron 50 Symposium in Liberty Hall to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolutionary forces victory at the Bay of Pigs Irish political and trade union figures reiterated their call for the immediate release of the five men. Unite regional secretary Jimmy Kelly said the US authorities unacceptable treatment of the men included the punishment of their families who were at best only granted episodic and very restricted visitation rights, and in two the mens cases no right to visit at all. SIPTU general president Jack OConnor endorsed the call for the mens release also commending Cuba for remaining a beacon of light for those seeking to create an alternative society based on social solidarity rather than greed. For more information see www.freethecuban5.com
Whose revolution is it anyway?
he western media have a clear, simple narrative of the events that have swept the Arab world. Oppressed people suddenly demanded access to westernstyle democracy, and have succeeded in sweeping away several corrupt dictators. This movement has been led by young people using new forms of social media like twitter and facebook to outwit regimes stuck in the past. Only in Libya, where Gadaffi clings to power militarily, has a brutal dictator succeeded in holding back the tide of history. This is a powerful story. It also hides more about what is happening in the Arab world than it reveals. For two centuries, the most basic revolutionary demand of all has been for bread. Bread was at its highest price in living memory the day the Bastille fell, and Lenin built a revolution around the slogan, Peace, Bread, Land. Protests in the Arab world began with the demand for cheap food. As Fidel Castro has warned for some time, the consequences of global warming and the use of massive amounts of crops for biofuels in the US and Europe have included substantially higher food prices for the poorer regions of the globe. We have seen the political consequences in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere. In other words, poverty, inequality and class struggle have been at the centre
of the protests, with trade unions and left-wing parties and activists playing prominent roles. Barely a peep about all this in the western media. The role of imperialism has also been obscured in the dominant narrative. The Egyptian dictator Mubarak and his like depended upon the support of imperialism, and served to keep the region, and its oil, safe for capitalism. Hence Washingtons initially lukewarm response to the protests. Only when the people were on the verge of sweeping away the regimes by their own efforts did the US, UK and others remember their support for democracy. While bombing Gadaffi, the imperialist powers ignored government troops backed by Saudi forces massacring anti-government protestors in Bahrain. The difference of course being that Bahrains despotic monarchy and the Saudi tyrant have been long-term allies of the US. The Egyptian army has also made clear it intends to maintain its grip on power in its attacks on and torture of protestors since Mubarak fell. Again, NATO remains silent. Imperialism is seeking simply to replace its front-men while giving the illusion of change. In 1848, a wave of revolutions swept Europe. Within a year, the reactionary monarchs used their armies to effect counter-revolutions almost everywhere. There is a real danger that the Arab revolutions face a similar fate.
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Basques search for a political way forward
40,000 people took part in a silent demonstration on the streets of Bilbao, mid February with the slogan Towards peace legalisation
After over 40 years of intermittent violence which claimed many lives the Basque guerrilla group ETA renounced armed struggle in favour of political activity earlier this year but as Diarmuid Breatnach outlines the Spanish establishment has been slow to reciprocate.
TA declared in January its six months-old official ceasefire to be general, permanent ...and verifiable by the international community. A consultation process among those who support independence for the Basque areas controlled by the Spanish and French states had been taking place throughout 2010, cumulating in a leading political element rejecting violence in favour of political organisation, debate and civil disobedience. However, the Spanish government has maintained its policy of repression and complaints of torture by political detainees continue. The Spanish hard Right media and their principle political party - Partido Popular - call for no negotiation with terrorists, claiming Basque radicals only wish to talk because they are weak and they should be crushed. The social democratic media and many in the ruling Partido Socialista Obrero Espaol (POSE), say that previous ceasefires have been broken and the leading pro-independence political movement, Abertzale Left, has to do more to convince them that they are in earnest.
The Abertzale Left itself is a heterogeneous movement. Ranging from Marxist to anarchist it comprises the daily newspaper Gara, the trade union LAB, youth organisations, a political prisoners support group and a number of other cultural and political groups. However the movements leadership have made clear the new ETA truce is unilateral and the result of a wide consultation that conclusively resulted in a decision to reject violence and to rely on democratic political processes. Some commentators have pointed out that the line of ETA only wants to talk because it is weak now, so why bother is a dangerous one, as the message given is that ETA needs to become strong in order to be considered worth talking to. Despite the cold response from the Spanish establishment to their political initiative Abertzale Left has began to gather allies. When parties of the Basque separatist radical Left have been allowed to take part in the Spanish electoral process, they have won the votes of up to 25% of the southern (within the Spanish state) Basque electorate 10% at their lowest point. But since 2003, the year the Spanish state closed down the pro-self determination Basque
The line of ETA only wants to talk because it is weak now, so why bother is a dangerous one.
language newspaper, Egunkaria, and banned the pan-Basque organisation of town mayors and councillors Udalbitza, they have also banned every political party or electoral platform representing the Abertzale Left (with the exception of a Spanish state-wide Iniciativa Independista alliance that contested the 2009 European elections) and arrested its activists. However Abertzale Left has declared its intention to stand in upcoming local government elections with a new pro-independence political party Sortu launched in January. In its constitution Sortu rejected violence including that of ETA and undertook to expel from the party any member who advocated it. Parties cannot be registered in the Spanish state unless their constitutions comply with the Political Parties Law and it is clear that the new party wanted to ensure that the State had no excuse to refuse its registration. Many Basque political and social organisations and all Basque trade unions welcomed Sortus formation, while the District Attorney of the Basque Regional Court stated that its constitution was a significant departure from previous political formulations of the Abertzale Left.
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But on the basis of a file presented to it by the Guardia Civil, a paramilitary police force, the Spanish states Supreme Court stated Sortu was merely a reformation of an earlier pro-independence political party Batasuna and on 24th March declined its registration on a split vote of nine to seven judges. The decision has been appealed to the Constitutional Court but with a late April deadline for registration for the local government elections, even a favourable decision may come too late for the partys participation. The banning of Abertzale Left aligned political parties is part of wider state repression including closures of newspapers, radio stations, web-tv and websites, the banning of youth organisations, the arrest, torture and imprisonment of political activists. Spanish liberal opinion, for the most part, ignores the evidence of this repression in the Basque Country. But some cracks in that unanimity may be appearing. Recently two duty solicitors employed by the state in Madrid to supervise the detentions of Basque political activists, broke ranks and refused to endorse confessions, commenting on the mental state of the detainees and on the unusual hours at which the confessions had been obtained (e.g. 4 a.m.). In April 2010, the National Court in Madrid found that the journalists and management of Egunkaria, accused of assisting a terrorist organisation, had no case to answer and that the newspaper should not have been closed. While in January 20 members of Udalbitza, on trial on similar charges, were similarly found not guilty. Its aims might be separatist and people might not like that but that did not did not make its activities illegal, the judges commented. The dissenting verdict of seven judges of the Spanish Supreme Court on the registration of Sortu is another example of cracks in the Spanish consensus, with growing opposition also voiced within the ruling PSOE to the Political Parties Law. But for Basques to gain a real measure of independence would mean the French and Spanish states being prepared to lose a substantial part of their territory.
But for Basques to gain a real measure of independence would mean the French and Spanish states being prepared to lose a substantial part of their territory
Such an event would also encourage other sepratitist movements. There is no evidence that either state is seriously prepared to contemplate the prospect. So why then does the Abertzale Left seem to believe that the political process can bring them what they want? The published conclusions of Abertzale Lefts internal debate show a decision to fight the Spanish state on what they consider to be its weakest front the political one. They reason that through their leadership of Basque struggles since the creation of the two autonomous regions of the southern Basque Country in 1978, these structures have been exposed as unable to satisfy aspirations for self-determination and the development of an egalitarian society. It is time, they say, to take the next step forward, to mobilise the widest possible social and political forces to present a front for selfdetermination of such amplitude that it cannot be denied. At the same time in France they are campaigning to build a viable administrative, cultural, economic and political unit of the three Basque provinces there, which are currently part of a wider French administrative deprment. It is noticeable how often the Abertzale Left refer to the Irish Peace Process and Sinn Fin has been working quite closely with them. But there are also doubts within
Abertzale Left about the comparison. In private conservation some Abertzale Left activists say: We are not like the Irish movement we have a very broad movement right across our nation. They say that they will be concentrating on building the broadest unity at different levels and using campaigns of civil disobedience. Evidently they expect to achieve a result which Sinn Fin has been unable to do. But there is disquiet among a minority. Sortu renouncing violence is one thing, but specifically mentioning ETA while making no mention of the violence of the Spanish state is quite another. And the promise to expel anyone who advocates armed struggle has left a bad taste in the mouths of many. But the consultation process was very wide and there is no sign of a forthcoming split but a future one in the movement cannot be ruled out, including perhaps a dissident ETA especially if the Spanish state does not permit the Abertzale Left to enter the electoral process. On the other hand, many believe that the repressive apparatus of the Spanish state and its reactionary political forces need ETA in order to justify their existence and their repression of Basque legitimate demands for self-determination.
Euskal Herria (The Land Where the People Speak Basque) consists of seven provinces, three in Iparralde (the Northern Country) within the French state and four in Hegoalde (the Southern Country) within the Spanish state. Part of Euskal Herria was granted autonomy by the Spanish Republican Government in 1936 and many Basques fought for the Republic during the civil war. This conflict saw the bombing by the German Luftwaffe of Gernika (Guernica), the ancient gathering place of the Basque chiefs. During Francos rule of a quasi-fascist Spanish state the Basques faced political and cultural repression. The main Basque political party, Partido Nacionalista Vasco went underground. A section of the partys youth wing was strongly influenced by the 1960s student uprising and anti-colonial struggles. These Leftist activists endured severe state repression and in 1959 broke away to form ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatuna Basque Country and Freedom), with a view to direct action and also to separate from the Catholic and largely conservative PNV. Among ETAs early targets was Francos heir Spanish Prime Minister Carrero Blanco killed by a car bomb in 1973. However in later years some of ETAs actions have met with disapproval within the Abertzale Left and the groups activities began to be seen as a liability in the struggle for independence. State violence has also been a major obstacle to political dialogue. During the 1980s Basque militants were assassinated by the state-sponsored G.A.L. (Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberacin). A journalistic investigation into these activities resulted in jail sentences for among others -- the PSOE Minister of the Interior and senior Guardia Civil officers.
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Street politics
J
ust last year the British National Party (BNP) put forward 338 candidates for the UK parliamentary election, the biggest fielding by the far right the UK had ever seen, topping the National Fronts 303 candidates in 1979. The party gambled and lost, failing to win any seats and losing their 12 seats on Barking Council. The British left declared the BNP to have been finally defeated, decimated and no longer a threat. However, veteran members of Anti-Fascist Action (AFA) have a different analysis, they say that the BNP have more than tripled their vote and say things are going to get a lot worse. Joe and Ian are veterans from this war against the far-right, meeting them in a bar in their former stomping ground of Islington, North London, they say they must protect their identities for fear of reprisals to this day. Their book Beating the Fascists has caused a huge stir in the UK; published by Freedom Press, the book pulls no punches in its accounts of the physical fight against fascism on the streets and the internal political tensions that often threatened to tear AFA apart. Over ten years in the making Beating the Fascists not only chronicles the bloody street battles and political squabbles but also points out how the far-right fill a vacuum for a radical alternative that the left has failed to. The BNPs turn to electoralism and decision to abandon a Mosleyite strategy of winning control of the streets through menace was due in no small part to AFAs violent counter-strategy of the early 90s, the authors claim. However, they say Anti-Fascist Action always argued that un-
For two decades British anti-fascists fought a battle for control of the streets against burgeoning far-right movements, Brian Whelan meets the authors of a controversial new book by activists who were on the frontline.
East End. Initially fascists were operating in Kings Cross we wiped them out and after that their paper sales in Chapel Market were destroyed, Joe explained. We had boundaries and there were no prisoners taken. We had a safe area here in Islington, North London became a stronghold for us, it was a prototype for clearing out fascists. We then started moving into east London knowing we could retreat back. This strategy was expanded nationally and the group enjoyed varying success in Manchester, Leeds and Scotland. When we went to Brick Lane, it was very symbolic for the BNP, they had been there from 1979 and hadnt been touched, then suddenly they had to fight for their pitch and lose. The authors say that the political climate allows no place for violent confrontation in Britain at present, but they express no remorse for their past activities. It had to be violent because the opponent was violent if theyre going to use violence you cant use non-violence against that, youll be battered into the ground. I dont think there is room for fighting them anymore, if the BNP stand 800 candidates to be effective youd have to confront all 800, Joe added. Would that damage anti-fascism or improve it if someone is running for election and youre kicking in their door and setting fire to their cars people will ask what are you standing for? Having spent a decade fighting the far right on the streets Joe now believes they are now more dangerous than ever, as they hold elected positions. He explains that alongside the war stories the book explains how they predicted almost two de-
less the left could undermine the far-rights political constituency in the white working class they could never be truly beaten. The NF, C18 and BNP all had the same Mosleyite strategy to win control of the streets and after that the wider political narrative would kick in, Joe explains. That was their plan so I mean there was a flaw in that if they were met by equal or superior violence they would be left in a limbo and thats the position they found themselves in in the mid-90s, so they stepped off. The book is an often disturbing read, each chapter switching from graphic details of operations with militaristic discipline against fascists to analysis of the political decisions faced. They reveal inside accounts of events such as Battle for Brick Lane, a series of running battles spanning 1990-1993 which saw the far-right lose one of their strongholds in Londons
Unless the left could undermine the far-rights political constituency in the white working class they could never be truly beaten.
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cades ago that the BNP would inevitably make serious electoral breakthroughs. Over the last ten years of producing their book they have seen their prediction and worst fears for the BNPs success come through, You can keep saying theyre not a threat up until the point youre walking into the camps, he adds. Things will get worse but how it turns out in the end is anyones guess, nobody can dis-
guise the fact that the left are completely finished now in London. They are bereft of ideas and bereft of constituency. Unfortunately groups like the BNP are now the official radical opposition. Ian adds that they believe the BNP are currently only experiencing setbacks and to write them off as a threat is a great mistake. The left should understand that what the BNP is trying
to achieve is very difficult, to bring nationalism in from the cold. Thats something the left has entirely failed to do with communist politics. Its not going to be overnight, theyre going to have setbacks and recover ground.
Beating The Fascists: The Untold Story of Anti-Fascist Action is available now via beatingthefascists.org.
Socially engaged comedy An interview with Mark Thomas
he interview began with the obvious question: what had inspired Mark to undertake such a mad task as a walking tour in one of the Middle Easts most troubled regions? Marks answer was a love of rambling, curiosity and Operation Cast Lead which he describes as Israel dropping banned weapons on a captive civilian population in Gaza. Mark admits that although he never stopped working on issues around the arms trade with Israel, the bloody mess that was the second intifada, especially the horrendous suicide bombings largely turned him off the Palestinian issue, but the hugely cruel attack on Gaza switched me back on. He saw walking the route of the wall as a natural way of meeting people Palestinian and Israeli - hearing how it has affected them, finding out things, working out how things are, and coming back to tell the story. Through this story he hopes his audience will sort of get to understand it as well. However, Mark is at pains to point out that what I do isnt stand up. It has a foot in theatre and a foot in comedy. But its not stand up. Its about getting out,
Campaigning activist-comedian Mark Thomas was in Dublin with a new show, Walking The Wall, about his exploits as he extreme rambled along the 723 kilometres of Israels apartheid wall in Palestine. Kevin Squires met him for a short interview about his latest work, and what the future holds for this radical raconteur.
telling the stories and taking people on a journey, somewhere they didnt expect to go. Nevertheless, both the show and the accompanying book, Extreme Rambling, are brutally funny, and horribly tragic. Eight weeks walking the wall from north to south and hed seen much to depress him not least his constant detentions by the Israeli military - but also much to inspire. The non-violent resistance movement that is building there is incredible. I mean, the national leadership is fucked, on both sides but the grass roots stuff, the community leadership and community action thats coming out is just superb. It really is brilliant! He was pleasantly surprised by the Israeli activists whom he found to be absolutely morally on the money. One thing that stayed with him was, on day one, somebody told me the thing that they were most proud of was the fact that my people are still here. By the time I got to the end of the walk I kind of understood a little bit about that its actually stunning that people have withstood the onslaught that is going on. Finally, I ask will we see his good self back on TV anytime soon? He laughs; someone else asked him that yesterday, his response was I looked out the window this morning and there is still no ice in Hell! His break with Channel 4 came when a producer suggested he host Celebrity Guantanamo Bay - at that point you have to question whether theres anything viable there. But he remains upbeat. With this tour, 50,000 people will see the show, including at the big festivals like Glastonbury and Reading. The programs have articles and information on boycott, divestment and sanctions, they are intellectual ammunition and 15,000 have been printed. And the book will reach between 50 to 100,000 people. He also reveals that he hopes to release a film of Walking The Wall in cinemas, which is something to look forward to.
Extreme Rambling is published by Ebury Press (April 2011).
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He who would be free must strike the blow

n the first issue of the Irish Worker and Peoples Advocate in 1911, its editor James Larkin wrote: Too long, aye! Far too long, have we, the Irish working people been humble and articulate. The Irish working class are beginning to awaken. They are coming to realise the truth of the old saying he who would be free must strike the blow. During 1911 the Irish Worker reached sales of nearly 100,000 but would settle at a circulation of around 20,000. With each copy of the paper shared around workplaces and families according to historian Francis Devine: It is not an exaggeration to say that the Irish Worker was read by the entire Irish working class. The papers articles encouraged workers to organise and circulated news of workers struggles, as well as providing theoretical arguments. It was in the newspaper that Sean OCaseys first writings appeared and during the 1913 lockout, WB Yeats, George Russell and Padraic Colum submitted content. Other well known contributors over its 189 editions were Tom Clarke, Standish OGrady and Constance Markievicz. Larkin reproduced poetry in the newspaper and in it James Connollys Labour in Irish History was first serialised. The paper was set up by Larkin and its production and content was initially his responsibility. Larkin was proud of the fact that the street vendors received a much greater commission for selling the Irish Worker than any other newspaper. This was in contrast to the editor and contributors who drew down no wage. The paper aimed to be provocative and almost always controver-
Paul Dillon charts the history of The Irish Worker newspaper.
sial. It took vicious aim at the enemies of organised Labour. In July 1913, the Irish Worker printed pictures of the Savoy Scab Ochette, eight women who continued to work at a sweet factory during a dispute. The paper was an information service to workers, advertising rallies, demonsrations and strikes and appealing for support. The small businesses and companies who advertised in the paper were particularly aiming for the patronage of trade unionists. The edition of Saturday, January the 18th 1913 carries 40 small ads or notices, most of them making a direct appeal to class conscious workers. A bakery on Meath Street in Dublin 8 describes itself as The Workers Baker and appeals for shoppers to ask for Larkins Loaf. TP Roche presents itself as The Workers Hairdresser. Of course, such a radical, partisan newspaper of the organised working class would never claim to be unbiased when it came to election time. Thus, in the 1913 local elections in Dublin, the paper advertised the campaign of the Dublin Labour Party, of which Larkin himself was a candidate. The January 11th 1913 issue under a banner headline Labours standard bearers, carried five photos of party candidates. Underneath the article, an editorial states: Friends, comrades and fellow workers, the hour is approaching which shall decide the cause of truth, honest administration and probity in public life. In characteristic style, the paper does not merely support the Labour candidates, it attacked and undermined their opponents in a vitriolic way. We wonder if the
Larkin arrested during the 1913 lockout
workers of merchant quay are going to vote for a publican a creature who waxes fat on the degradation of the poor. In a sign that the Irish Workers loyalty was firstly to the union and secondly the party, in the 1913 election it supported the candidacy of two union activists who had not been officially endorsed by the Labour Party. The paper proved vital to the workers struggle during the 1913 lockout. In one of his most stirring contributions from the period, Yeats wrote a letter to the Irish Worker on the attempts to stop children being sent to friendly houses in England. The letter was published under the heading Dublin fanaticism. I want to know why the mob at North Wall and elsewhere were permitted to drag children from their parents arms, and by what right one women was compelled
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to open her box and show a marriage certificate; I want to know by what right the police have refused to accept charges against rioters; I want to know who has ordered the abrogation of the most elementary rights of citizens. On September 6th 1913, an article headed Larkin in Jail reported the imprisonment of the Irish Worker editor, it states: William Martin Murphy and the permanent officials of the Irish government are responsible for the murder and outrages perpetrated by hired ruffians in uniform with a lust for blood. With Larkin in prison, James Connolly became the Irish Worker editor, a position he remained in when Larkin departed for the United States. Connolly used the paper to rally support for the Citizen Army. The authorities suppressed the paper, the last issue edited by Connolly, appeared on December 5th 1914 with a blank space where the lead article
In the face of state oppression and declining readership the Irish Worker finally succumbed in March 1932.
should have been. The censor had interfered with the printing process. Undeterred, Connolly issued the article as a leaflet. His words speak for themselves: If you strike at, imprison or kill us, out of your prisons or graves we will evoke a spirit that will twart you and mayhap, raise a force that will destroy you. We defy you! Do your worst. Only too aware that an enslaved press would never give fair coverage to working class struggle Connolly continued to print publications, including The Worker and Workers Republic, in the wake of the Irish Worker ban. With Larkin returning to a divided Labour movement in the early years of the Free State his efforts to re-establish the Irish Worker would never result in it returning to its pre 1914 heyday The passage in 1931 of the
constitution (Amendment Act No.17) established a military tribunal with wide powers to suppress newspapers, such as the Irish Worker, whose banned issue of October 1931 declared that the form of the state is secondary. What matters is what class rules. In the face of state oppression and declining readership the Irish Worker finally succumbed in March 1932. Larkin and the paper remained defiant to the end one of the papers final issues stating: remember that governments are only strong in proportion to the weakness of the organisation of the working class. A united working class commands respect; a disunited working class gets what it is getting today. Be wise, men and women of Ireland!
Obituary: Sean Cronin
ean Cronin who died in the US on 9th March was a highly respected republican who although living in the United States for many decades never lost his optimism that Ireland would one day succeed in achieving Tone and Connollys objective of a united people free and independent. I first met Sean in 1955 when he joined the IRA, after he had returned to Ireland from America with his first wife Terry. Having spent the war years in the Defence Forces he was, compared to the IRA standards, an able soldier. He became a member of GHQ staff and within some months he was working on a plan of campaign Operation Harvest. A very generous, sociable, unassuming man of integrity he never imposed himself on any person. Terry, who died in 1977, was in her own right a very capable and progressive person a shining light in bringing a very different viewpoint and analyses of politics to many nave Irish republicans in the 1950s. Prior to Operation Harvest Sean took part in a number of IRA operations a major one being the attempt to rescue IRA prisoners from Wakefield Prison England. Obviously resented by some elements in the Republican Movement he was a victim of one of Irish McCarthyisms most despicable witch hunts in the late fifties.
A number of allegations, originating with the Clann na Gael in the United States, and taken up by reactionary elements in Ireland led by long time IRA figure Paddy McLogan, claimed that Sean and Terry were communists and therefore not suitable to be involved in their Catholic nationalist organisation. The IRA Army Council decided to establish a court of inquiry into the allegations. Sean rejected this decision and parted company with the IRA. Instead of standing with an honourable man they had surrendered to a faction of reactionaries. Sean maintained contact with some republicans and in 1964 was a founder member of the Wolfe Tone Society which played a key role in the formation of Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA). Again, as so often in the past, anti-progressive forces played their trump card of sectarianism and rather than NICRA fulfilling its aims of building an equal, tolerant and democratic society our country was trapped in the mire of sectarian conflict. Sean hated splits and factions and always opposed those who sought to divide people. Sean had a great rapport with republican leaders Cathal Goulding and Toms MacGiolla and they worked together on many projects even after his return to the
United States, where he worked for many years as the Irish Times Washington correspondent. Sean had the view that even in the darkest periods of Irish history it was essential to keep the flame alive. He made this point very strongly in his pamphlet They Kept Faith on Sean Sabhat and Fergal OHanlon. From the late 1960s into the 1980s Sean produced a number of major works on Irish revolutionaries, including Young Connolly and For Whom the Hangmans noose was spun. There was also his first class biography of socialist republican leader Frank Ryan and The Revolutionaries, Jemmy Hope, Marx and the Irish Question. All were published by Repsol the WP publishing arm. In his last years Sean suffered serious health problems. Most saddening of all was the onset of Alzheimers disease. For an intellectual and a very active person this was a dreadful blow, as he still had so much to give in our common struggle. On behalf of the Workers Party, we extend our sincere sympathy to Reva Rubenstein Cronin, Seans stepson, Philip Rubenstein and his two step-grandsons Douglas and Kenny. Sean Garland Sen Cronin: born 1920; died March 9th, 2011
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The name of Mirtn Cadhain is better known than his work and political activity. Here his biographer Aindrias Cathasaigh discusses a writer and fighter worth listening to.
Listening to Mirtn Cadhain
irtn Cadhain (190570) is someone many people have heard of, but usually only one aspect of him. People might speak of him as a leading writer in Irish, as a long-standing republican, as an Irish language activist, or as a socialist. He was all of these things, of course, and this gives an idea of the range of his activities. But all too often, those who discuss Cadhain come away knowing only bits of him instead of understanding the totality of his work. His interest in republicanism was sparked by reading An Phoblacht at teacher training college. Back in Connemara, he joined the IRA and rose through the ranks until the bishop of Galway sacked him from his teaching job in 1936. Moving to Dublin, he was elected to the Army Council, but resigned from it in protest at the bombing campaign in England: he considered political freedom without economic
freedom useless, he told them. Nevertheless, he was interned for most of the Second World War with other republicans. They were fatally weakened by the rise of Fianna Fil, but an attempt by Cadhain to sketch out a new political course for the movement was met only with accusations of betrayal. He had no involvement with them after his release, and often spoke bitterly of republicanism, although throughout the 1950s he stood against Catholic church dominance in the southern state. He later returned to an uncompromising republican faith. Is poblachtach m fin, he affirmed. Nor ghill m ariamh do na Stta at sa tr seo agus t sil agam nach ngillfe.1 From the start Cadhains writing was characterised by a powerful use of Irish steeped in both the spoken tradition of Connemara and the classical literature. A far from romantic view of Gaeltacht life emerges from his stories, with a stark portrayal of the hardships
Modern literature which integrated international philosophical influences in an unashamedly native idiom.
of small farming. While his fiction rarely dealt explicitly with politics, his political attitudes are often evident in it. His classic novel Cr na Cille touches none too subtlely on contemporary controversies, and bursts the bubbles of class pretension among its characters. The hopelessness of existence on a few miserable acres is mirrored in his stories of alienated office workers trapped in the confines of a dehumanising system. The suffocating constraints placed upon women are a constant theme in his writing. Cadhain succeeded better than anyone in producing modern literature which integrated international philosophical influences in an unashamedly native idiom. Cadhains activism to defend the Irish language started with a bang in the 1930s when he led Muintir na Gaeltachta, a neglected case of social agitation on the part of republicans. Their demand that ranchers land in Meath be given to landless families from
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Connemara met with success in the establishment of the Rth Cairn Gaeltacht. Members of the group went to prison as part of a campaign of illegal fish-ins to demand public control of waters owned by local landlords. The language question was fundamentally a social one, Cadhain insisted: N trrthilfear an Ghaeilge gan an Ghaeltacht a thrrthil, agus n trrthilfear an Ghaeltacht gan an talamh.2 In the 1960s, far from settling down to the academic moderation befitting his job as a lecturer in Trinity College, Cadhain embarked on a bitter struggle to defend the language. He saw the Gaeltacht in clear class terms, with a respectable Englishspeaking middle class strangling the working peoples language: Caithfear an mhenaicme seo threascairt, an nathair nimhe seo.3 He called for a ban on sales of property in the Gaeltacht where this would jeopardise the position of Irish. He was a leading light in Misneach, which fought tooth and nail for the language. He organised a midnight picket on Taoiseach Sen Lemasss home, which succeeded in winning the release of Connemara fishermen jailed for refusing to pay rates. A government White Paper on Irish was scuppered when Cadhain got hold of a copy and leaked its meaningless banalities. He took on the increasingly influential enemies of the language, refusing to be bound by any Queensberry rules. But he also excoriated the feeble respectability of the mainstream language movement, calling for revolutionary methods: Nor smaoinigh muid fs ariamh in irinn gur g rabhlid bhun go barr leis an nGaeilge a thabhairt ar ais.4 This was all part of a marked shift leftward in Cadhains final decade. He had taken no part in the left-wing movements among republicans in the 1930s, but was enthusiastic about the republican embrace of social campaigning in the 1960s. He proclaimed open sympathy with Marxism, and saw Irish more and more as one aspect of
a broader revolutionary struggle. His involvement with the Gaeltacht civil rights movement crystallised this perspective, and he told Irish speakers that they had to embrace socialism: An charaocht a bhainfeas ire dFhianna Fil agus d leithid, is fidir leis an gcaraocht sin, ach muide dh thap anois, an Ghaeilge a thabhairt ar ais freisin do mhuintir na hireann. Seo Athghabhil na hireann, an Rabhlid, rabhlid intinne agus rabhlid anama, rabhlid i gcrsa maoine, seilbhe agus maireachtla S dualgas lucht na Gaeilge a bheith ina sisialaigh.5 Cadhain saw the north explode in 1969, and welcomed mass nationalist resistance to British rule, hoping for military resistance too. He demanded that capitalism must go as well as the Border, rejecting the idea that the struggle could be restricted to civil rights or independence alone. The Ireland he envisaged would be aontaithe, saor, gaelach, ire na nOibrithe.6 The marginalisation of the Irish language has resulted in a criminal neglect of Cadhains work. He succeeded in bringing together a range of activities which are often viewed as separate or even antagonistic, and showed
in his political activity that they naturally belonged together in an extensive fight to rebuild Irish society on radically new foundations. Now, as the need for such a transformation becomes ever more acute, is a good time for us to listen to what he has to say. 1 I am a republican myself. I never gave in to the States that exist in this country and I hope I never will. 2 Irish wont be saved without the Gaeltacht being saved, and the Gaeltacht wont be saved without the land. 3 This middle class has to be vanquished, this poisonous serpent 4 We have never thought yet in Ireland that a revolution from the ground up is needed to revive Irish. 5 The combat that will wrench Ireland out of the hands of Fianna Fil and its likes can give Irish back to the Irish people, if we grasp the opportunity now. This is the Reconquest of Ireland, the Revolution, a revolution of the mind and a revolution of the soul, a revolution in matters of wealth, ownership and living It is the duty of Irish speakers to be socialists. 6 united, free, gaelic, a Workers Ireland
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ONE UP D D TOWN IRTY AUL D

Dublins street art scene allows for both artistic and political expression. Freda Hughes meets two of the scenes most prominent exponents and discusses their work.
cil. Nevertheless, the journey was worthwhile and I continued on my way into town taking photos of stencils, paste ups, stickers, murals and tags. This was not an unusual morning for me. Ive been photographing street art for about four years. Since I was very young, graffiti and street art have always caught my eye. When travelling, the art on the streets always leaves a more lasting impression of that city on me than the more obvious tourist attractions. Londons diverse styles and vast array of techniques mirrors the heterogeneity of the city while Krakows propensity for anti-fascist stencils highlights a deeper sociopolitical problem. In Palestine, Israels illegal wall has been transformed into the worlds largest canvas by artists such as
CANVAS - Camden Row, Dublin
he morning after a night out, despite the driving rain, strong winds and hangover I was nursing, I found myself up early and heading off to find Suir Bridge in Kilmainham. The purpose of my expedition was to photograph a piece of street artist ADWs work. After finding the piece, I was saddened, but not surprised, to find half of it had been painted over by Dublin City Coun-
28
Swoon, Ron English, Banksy and Blu, as well as ordinary people determined to express themselves. For this article I interviewed two very different contributors to Dublins street art scene: ADW the street artist responsible for well known pieces such as the Cowen/ Lenihan Blues Brothers and the Bertie Celtic Tiger, and TEXT a young graffiti artist who creates colourful murals around the city and worked on the They Are Us project with Maser. I wanted to provide a cross-section of the motivations behind much of the illegal art that brightens up our city, and which forms a part of a rich scene that is yet in its infancy. For me, it is the street art and graffiti I see around Dublin and its suburbs that make the monotony of daily life bearable. They immediately reveal a subculture, bravery and sense of purpose beyond the organised structures of our society. Many of these pieces are created under pressure and with fear of arrest, and often only last a few days or even hours before being removed by authorities, or altered by other artists. This interplay between the artist and the city fascinates me as does the artists acceptance of the transient nature and public ownership of their art. That Dublin has seen, in the last decade, a rapid increase in privatised space being sold off for advertising, with a resulting disappearance of public space, while during the same period there has been an increase in non-commissioned street art and graffiti is itself an interesting piece of non-verbal social commentary. Thats enough of my armchair analysis; lets see what the artists think.
ADW - Andrews Lane, Dublin
myself to learn how to paint graffiti these areas and tries to show the and do what that artist had done. locals how to learn this new skill there is always going to be some Ive been painting ever since. Would you consider your disagreement too.
What made you want to start painting?
For me, it is the street art and graffti I see around Dublin and its suburbs that make the monotony of daily life bearable.
work to be socially con- Do you think that the amount of privatised space scious? ADW: Primarily I create for me, I given up for advertising in get a kick out of creating my own the city has influenced peoartwork whatever the motivation ples desire to create street for the piece may be. I approach art?
my work with a degree of honesty ADW: It would be nice to see and believe that people can relate more legal sites for artists so there to this, especially in these strange could be more of a balance between and uncertain times. the two. It would also be nice to see Do you feel that street art the huge sums of money invested has a positive effect on com- into advertising being invested in the talented artists our country has munities where it exists? ADW: Good street art has a very to offer. positive effect within our society. TEXT: I think it has influenced/ I think people are getting pretty motivated people to do more to bored with the grey, cold walls that build upon a very small culture. surround us and that most people How do you feel about enjoy and appreciate a splash of your work being removed colour in their lives. or tampered with? TEXT: I do feel that art has a ADW: Honestly, it is pretty dispositive effect on people and cer- heartening to see your piece painttain communities, but I also feel ed over or buffed off after all the that with everything positive hard work, but thats just the nature there comes some negatives. Le- of the game. It would be nice to see gal spaces are often in disadvan- some of my work last longer than taged areas because the council or 24 hours though. the government feel that it would TEXT: I feel the way every other make an area better if there was artist does about their work, its a new culture or skill brought in. individual to themselves but also Thats all well and good but what when you put your work into the the councils and government dont public eye its no longer yours; peorealise is that within disadvan- ple may change it or remove it, but at taged areas there are often serious the end of the day, its the publics to problems with authority figures, so do with as they wish. when someone comes into one of
TEXT: What inspired me was a piece painted on three stories at the top of an apartment block in Dublins inner city. It really astounded me that the artist got up there. From the ground up the piece was a perfect three colour fade with nice white in-lines and a border. It was perfect. Whenever I walked into town with my parents I used to look up for ages staring at it until one day I looked up and it was gone. The Council had buffed the surface clean, so I took it upon
29
And the beat goes on...
In the face of economic recession and the earliest nightclub closing times in Europe, a bourgeoning underground dance scene is remerging in Dublin. Jay Carax takes you on trip where the only rule is enjoy yourself.
Years Eve; the organisers maintain that this was done illegally as they had gone through all the proper legal routes to put on the event. While most crews consist of well-known and established DJs who are putting on events for the love of music, at least one other group of promoters unfortunately seem to be merely cashing in on the D.I.Y. clubbing spirit. This crowd have been known to grossly overcharge for alcohol and ask for exorbitant prices for their events with little or no talent in their musical line up. Like the greedy publicans who raise their prices at 10pm and expect you pay over 6 for a bottle of beer, these cowboy promoters are trying to make a quick buck out of the new culture. Dont be fooled. From the very earliest days of Acid House to the Criminal Justice Bill protests in the UK to the Reclaim The Street parties to recent underground nights whether its in Dublin or Derby, the actions of the counterculture D.I.Y. rave community has often been seen as a political action; taking over abandoned buildings and creating Temporary Autonomous Zones (TAZ) in order to highlight the crude commercial capitalism profiting from clubbing today. With the days getting longer and the weather getting better, I expect it to be a hot Dublin summer. Whether deep within a forest, hidden in a dune of a beach or in an empty NAMA controlled building in a ghost town industrial estate, over the summer who knows where you might find a hundred kids with a generator and a rig. Keep your ears peeled.
eople have become fed up with being overcharged for alcohol in bars and being turfed out at 2:30am. Instead of sitting around and simply complaining, various groups are channelling their efforts into coming together and organising their own events. The response of the Gardai has been swift and harsh. Numerous underground, late night and BYOB (bring your own beer) events have been shut down by the police in the last six months. Undeterred, music and art collectives have reacted to this clampdown by adjusting the way they publicise and organise. Last November I was among three-hundred party goers who boarded a fleet of double decker buses on the quays on a cold Saturday night at 1am. After a twenty minute drive we found ourselves stepping out from the bus and into an empty industrial estate in the south-west of the city. We were here for a large, after-hours rave in a disused warehouse which was rented for the night by a small group of DJs and promoters. It was a unifying experience. Young lads barely out of school from local housing estates chatted to middle-aged ravers who had been around for the first wave of Acid House in the late 80s and early 90s. Some people brought along beer or other alcoholic drinks, oth-
ers didnt. There were no reported acts of violence or theft, an all too common occurrence in our citys clubs and streets at night. Everyone had come to listen to the music, dance and have a good time in an environment that was outside of the control of overzealous Gardai, greedy publicans or thuggish bouncers. Events like these, albeit on a smaller scale, are happening every weekend in the city. Nights dont finish at 2:30am anymore; people see it as half-time. In July 2010 a collective of female DJs under the name of Medusa ran a BYOB electronic music and arts party in the garden of a city centre house. The location of the event, which was dubbed A Midsummers Night Party, was only released a few hours before it took place. Over the last few months another collective has run several after-hour club nights in a small warehouse in central Dublin. A group of European DJs who have recently moved over to Ireland have been running regular after-hour parties on a boat. All recent developments have not been as positive though. The police in recent months have become more aware of the burgeoning after hour clubbing scene and have been cracking down hard. Among the events closed down in recent months was a party in a warehouse in North Dublin on New
The actions of the counterculture D.I.Y. rave community has often been seen as a political action
30
A further shore
T
he Vagabonds began life as a two-piece after Pa Bourke and Dave Phelan met while studying in Cork, later adding Niall Burns and Niall Clancy after moving to Dublin. There is no bravado here; both are open about the bands humble origins two years ago. As Pa explains we practised for ages and we were still shit after a year, playing shit gigs. We thought we were great but we werent. They never let this get them down however, enjoying playing and improving all the while. Dave took some heart from hearing Blurs Damon Albarn interviewed saying for the first two years they were absolutely abysmal adding [as a band] weve got better now. They must be doing something right to attract the attention of legendary producer Stephen Street (Blur, The Smiths and Babyshambles). Dave explains the coming together we would love to have a more exciting story but we just sent him an email with a demo. His manager got back saying he was interested in working with us but it would be expensive as an unsigned band. We didnt care. The resulting debut EP Another Victory for Hysteria is superb. The response according to Dave has been positive, good amongst our peers. Its not as though I dont respect the opinion of other bands and people we know working in music but its a bit like your mother It was largely ignored by the mainstream media except Paul McLoone and Dan Hegarty who played it quite a bit and were thankful for that but I want to hear our songs in the evening when people are listening. A wider issue emerges, whereby home-grown acts get a raw deal at the expense of more established acts. Both are adamant things should be better here. Take Radio 1 in the UK, you are likely to hear a new band or one you havent heard before. Ireland is big enough to have an indigenous scene like
The Vagabonds have been making waves on both sides of the Irish Sea lately; Dave and Pa took time out to chat to Barry Healy for LookLeft.
enough to put into the band and make a living. The Vagabonds would love to make it from Dublin but have their sights set on cracking the UK with Dave explaining We are looking towards England, not to belittle Ireland or that, we are gonna take a risk because we believe this band can work. The band has already been noticed and received support from Strummerville (The Joe Strummer Foundation for New Music), a UK based not-for-profit organisation aimed at helping up and coming artists. Dave speaks fondly about them. They do very good work and theyre giving us some backing. Our music kind of fits in with Strummerville. We have a song John Mellor, often referred to as our homage to Joe Strummer, which it isnt but it fits in with their agenda. Its nice to have a link to the UK. Pa has similar sentiments adding Its nice to be recognised by this kind of organisation. Its like were Karl McCaughey something unusual in the UK. We cant Scotland, but too many bands get a decent gig is Cork, Galway have to leave Ireland to make it. or Derry but we can get them in From their experience the odds Brighton, London and Manchesare against the artist as Dave ter. outlines In Ireland anyway the Their aforementioned brash promoter, venue and vintner are punk rock sound makes them all making money off the bands stand out from other bands. Exwho arent adding, we want plaining this, Dave chuckles, it to be able to work as musicians was a complete and utter acand make a living. Anyone who cident. We just decided to turn says otherwise is a fucking liar. up the amps and distortion, we Unfortunately we cant do that ended up loud. There is more here. You get gigs in Dublin but sophistication to our approach they are reluctant to pay you. now. Many bands try to be avantPa agrees saying were not garde for avant-gardes sake; we looking for 300,000 deals. Just know certain types of songs that will work for this band.
31
the left wing

Donal Fallin casts his eye over Shamrock Rovers v St. Patricks Athletic in the first instalment of the left wing. If you would like to write about a League of Ireland, Setanta Cup or Irish league game for the left wing contact lookleftonline@gmail.com
Shamrock Rovers 2 St. Patricks Athletic 0 March 18th 2011 hamrock Rovers v Saint Patricks Athletic, the first Dublin derby of the 2011 League of Ireland season. Both sides have considerable pockets of support in several suburbs south of the Liffey, the Tallaght Saints and Ballyfermot Hoops banners prove that the cities football affiliations arent divided too strictly by geography. Most talk of hooliganism at League of Ireland encounters is the stuff of Ballymounts (TV3 HQ) imagination (and who can forget that TV3 documentary on Bebo hooliganism a few years back?) but the last encounter between Rovers and Pats ended with a pitch invasion from some visiting supporters and some bottle throwing, coupled with an inadequate police response outside of Richmond Park. This time, the Garda take no chances and the police presence around Tallaght Stadium is unlike anything I can recall on visits here in the past. The game kicks off at 8pm, and straight away the Ultras on both sides of the stadium make their presence felt. The SRFC Ultras unveil a banner to mark their tenth year, while St. Pats Shed End Invincibles opt for three large two stick banners, spelling out S-E-I. An attendance of over 5,900 watch a first half one could hardly describe as captivating with Northern Ireland international Chris Turner opening the scoring for Rovers with a 25 yard strike after 11 minutes. Half-time presents a chance to people-watch and I spot a few elected representatives in amongst the Saint Patricks Athletic fans, while one time Fianna Fil T.D Charlie Mr Tallaght OConnor is to be found across the way according to reports. A green and white scarf must be worth a lot out here, as a post election radio documentary following OConnor and Conor Lenihan around parts of Tallaght suggested people would be more welcome canvassing for the Taliban in this part of Dublin than the Fianna Fil/Green government of old. A solitary chipper van feeds about half the visiting fans in the waiting line before the whistle to mark the resumption of the beautiful game. On the pitch, the visitors come back into the game but the skill of this Rovers side really does show. While St. Pats begin to play much better football, and really do come back into the game at times, the clinical skill of Rovers means every break they are given could prove fatal. On 81 minutes, the home support greet a second goal with a rendition of thats why were champions. When the game is brought to an end, the P.A man seizes an opportunity for a laugh and opts for The Drugs Dont Work from The Verve, a play on the fact Saint Patricks Athletic are often referred to by their Dublin rivals in particular as the junkies. The Bohemian F.C faithful will tell you its not the first such instance of a colourful choice of number on the Tallaght jukebox. Held back for a good 15 minutes, and overlooked by a large Garda presence, they continue to sing we are the red army inside an empty Tallaght Stadium. On the walk to The Square I spot a young Rovers fan shout at what I presume is a school friend in a Saint Patricks scarf. The pain of losing a Dublin derby isnt felt on Friday night, but rather Monday morning in the workplaces and schools of the capital.
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Look left issue 6 FINISHED.

Some LookLeft Highlights:

Kevin Brannigan meets with the community activist now ULA TD

Give my Head Politics

Interview with Mark Thomas

Dirty old town done up

Published by The Workers Party

ISSN 2009 3179

A worker not a criminal

NEWS Coalition backtrack on Cork Hospital

Need to tackle protestant working class under - achievement

See Citizens in the cradle; p10

Rent Strike call over deplorable housing conditions

Special Branch attention turned on student activists

Soldiers Song writer remembered

Workers Party Northern Ireland Election Candidates

Glasgow students sit-in

As the National Debt grows, so do efforts to dump it

THE MEDIA CRISIS

White noise, bleak hope: Irish media in the crisis

Vincent Browne has become opium for the twittering classes

The Jemmy Hope Column

Pick of the Sindo.....

No umeployed need apply!

A changing of the guard?

Building the Left

Educate Agitate Organise

Citizens in the cradle

Mortgage crisis worsens

The peoples champion

THE REAL ECO

Banking on the illogical

THE REAL ECO

Give my head politics

Projecting a new era

Good news for business

Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley on

From hood to good

Ian Paisley on the magic settee

Mural depicting TV Show Give My Head Peace

Rethinking the peace dividend?

Carter calls for release of Cuban Five

Whose revolution is it anyway?

Basques search for a political way forward

Socially engaged comedy An interview with Mark Thomas

Extreme Rambling is published by Ebury Press (April 2011).

He who would be free must strike the blow

Paul Dillon charts the history of The Irish Worker newspaper.

Larkin arrested during the 1913 lockout

Obituary: Sean Cronin

Listening to Mirtn Cadhain

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ONE UP D D TOWN IRTY AUL D

ADW - Andrews Lane, Dublin

What made you want to start painting?

And the beat goes on...

the left wing

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