A quick word on the Oscars, if only because ignoring them in the week of this site’s inauguration would be just a little too perverse. I didn’t deign to actually watch the ceremony - the last time I bothered staying up that late the winner was Titanic and, as I’m sure you can guess, the […]

It is a sad fact of reality that women, despite making up 51% of the population, only hold less than 13% of seats in the Dáil, leaving Ireland ranking 59th out of 120 nations examined for parliamentary representation of women in 2006. Apologists for this pitiful situation will of course either a) blame the […]

With a certain trembling of my typing hands I write that The Irish Left Review has just been launched. It is a new online political magazine which will discuss how a broad left can work together to change Irish politics.
While the magazine will provide regular essays, articles and columns it will not have a definite […]

Every so often last year I would take the Metro line 9 out to its terminus in Montreuil – a suburb just east of the confines of Paris – to teach, at the town hall, one of the mayoral staff, a rather reluctant student, who needed to brush up on his English for the many […]

To most Irish political and media commentators, the Republic is a capitalist economy without a capitalist class structure. They argue that its citizens are mostly middle class, with a working class rump that exists on the margins. The past fifteen years, in their eyes, has seen an expansion of that middle class, as well […]

“We sought workers, and in their stead came people”. That remark – now absorbed into German political discourse – is attributed to former German President Gustav Heinemann in the 1960s, speaking at a time when Germany was addressing the consequences of large-scale Turkish immigration.
Fast forward 40 years to the German elections in 2002: media […]

It’s hardly a radical proposition that the Irish Left is a curious beast. It is small, gaining perhaps at best twenty five per cent of the national vote at elections. It is scattered, with leftist elements within the Irish Labour Party, Sinn Féin, the Green Party and beyond amongst a number of much smaller […]