Irish Left Review - A Review of the Irish Left

Long endowed with a potent resonance for French people, the year 1968 has, at this point, 40 years on, morphed into a brand. In spite of the tumultuous occurrences elsewhere in the world that year, it has become synonymous with France, and more particularly Paris. Only for the Czechs and Slovaks does it have anything like the same significance. A whole generation of French people, the soixante-huitards, is associated by name with 1968 regardless of whether they had direct connection or not with Les événements. When people talk of ‘68 they mean the student uprising and the general strike of May of that year, but also of the lasting and considerable effect that The Events had on French society.

Browsing through the L’Arbre à lettres bookshop on rue du Faubourg St-Antoine the other day, I found the inevitable display table of publications devoted to the events of that year, among them works of fiction, comic books, coffee-table volumes of photojournalism, bluffer’s guides to ‘68, memoirs (Daniel Cohn-Bendit’s name, in particular, is ubiquitous) and even books that have only a tenuous connection with the May events, such as Raymond Depardon’s collection of photos from that year, 1968 - une année autour du monde. It would be a trite observation indeed to remark on the exploitation of a socialist-anarchist revolution for monetary gain, but super-model and notable tax exile Laetitia Casta, currently starring in the film Nés en 68, is on hand to trump that when she tells MK2’s in-house magazine that “in making this film, I feel I’ve experienced my own May 68″.

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The Irish Left Review has been on the go now for more than a month, so it’s worthwhile to take stock of how things have gone so far and where we want to go to next.

First of all the response to the new magazine has been very positive. People in general like the look of the site, wish it well, and think that what we have achieved so far looks promising. After the first group of articles published to coincide with the launch we’ve added a further substantial essay by Michael Taft, which provides a detailed analysis of recent elections and describes what should happen politically if the ambition the Irish Left Review is encouraging is to be achieved in the next local elections in 2009.

There also has been some publicity in the form of an interview published on the front page of Indymedia recently. In it I suggested that if readers are interested in contributing they should email me at dublinopinion AT gmail DOT com with their ideas and put “ILR – Article Ideas” in the subject header.

There is also another important way that readers can contribute. I am putting together an article on the Irish media which will argue that because of their specific business interests the media in Ireland is effectively blocking political change in this country. As part of this there will be a number of interviews with independent commentators on the Irish media. We are also launching a Media Watch column which will be based on examples of political bias in the media sent in by readers.

Chekov Feeney of Indymedia and Village has kindly agreed to edit and write this column, but it relies on our readers sending in entertaining or enraging examples of clear political bias that they happen to come across as they voraciously consume Irish media.

Send these example to dublinopinion AT gmail DOT com and put “ILR – Media Watch” in the subject header.

Articles will continue to be published on a regular basis, but perhaps the best thing you can do is add the rss feed for articles and comments into your rss reader, such as Bloglines or Google Reader. That way, you will be sure to catch the latest pieces without having to scan the site forlornly looking for fresh content.