John Barry is Associate Director of the Institute for a Sustainable World and Reader in Politics both at Queen’s University Belfast.  He was educated at University College Dublin and the University of Glasgow.  From 2003-2009 he was co-chair of the Green Party in Northern Ireland and was a key figure in the creation of an [...]

While DUP and Sinn Fein politicians in the Stormont coalition argue about policing and parades the economy of Northern Ireland is worsening by the day. Twenty thousand people lost their jobs in Northern Ireland 1n 2009.You’d think that our elected representatives might want to discuss that instead.
Last week while political leaders from the DUP and [...]

Young Boys Will Stick Their Head Anywhere!
I have always found the politics in Northern Ireland very confusing, I must confess. As I am understand it, the place is divided up into two part, one ruled over by a militaristic authoritarian misogynistic reactionary Protestant fascism, which want to take everyone back to the 17th century, and [...]

I was horrified to read Suzanne Breen’s latest instalment in her brave solo exposition of what is one of the most disturbing stories to emergence from behind the Iron Curtain of the Sinn Féin spin machine in recent years. Two women, the first a former national secretary of Ogra Shinn Féin and niece of Joe [...]

The number of unresolved issues in the Northern Ireland Assembly is increasing - such as the transfer test replacement, the new good relations strategy, the Review of Public Administration and, of course, the devolution of policing and justice powers. All have foundered on the attempts of parties in the mandatory coalition to make gains for [...]

Ideologies are not issued self-developed and completed into the aether of the idea rather they are generated by the development of specific historic processes in the real world. Ideas are not primary but secondary reflections back into reality through the mediation of the mind. Material reality is primary in the evolution of thought just as [...]

In 2003 the Bare Necessities report by independent think-tank Democratic Dialogue revealed that nearly 30% of Northern Ireland’s households were poor. According to the report, in 2002-03 half a million people in Northern Ireland were living in poor households of whom148,900 were children (37.4 per cent of all children).According to the report, “based on the [...]

Sunday’s news that SDLP leader, Mark Durkan, would stand aside if he was re-elected as the MP for Foyle came as a surprise to almost everyone. It was assumed by many that his time as leader would be soon coming to an end, but the timing and the nature of his announcement to Mark Devenport [...]

Speaking in relation to loyalist paramilitary decommissioning, First Minister, Peter Robinson, stated recently that devolution should benefit working class loyalist communities as much as it does the ‘business community’.
According to Mr Robinson “Devolution isn’t there to help the business community alone. It’s there to help every section of our society.” (Newsletter, 19th June) How does [...]