Ireland

We are proud to announce the launch of communism.ie – the official website of the Revolutionary Communists of Ireland! We stand for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and fight for a Socialist United Ireland, as part of the struggle for the world proletariat revolution. If you agree with our programme, then join us in the fight for communism!

On 6 and 7 April, communists from across Ireland gathered in Dublin for the founding Congress of the Irish group of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT). We were joined by international visitors from the Revolutionary Communist Party in Britain and the international centre of the IMT. Across the two days 33 people attended from Dublin, Navan, Belfast, Bangor, Derry and Galway, making this by far the largest meeting of the IMT in Ireland to date.

The face of the capitalist political establishment in Ireland for the past seven years, Leo Varadkar, has resigned as leader of Fine Gael and from the Taoiseach position. Varadkar has been, without doubt, one of the most reliable servants of the Irish ruling class in the last decade. He was once the man they needed, but the times have now changed.

Shocking scenes have rocked Dublin. Far-right goons – showing their true, putrid colours – have used the stabbing of five people outside a school, including three children, to blame migrants and whip up mob violence. These events must be a wake up call: the left and the labour movement have been caught napping. The gloves must come off in the fight against the far right.

9 September marked the first All-Ireland meeting of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) which met in Dublin. Comrades came from around the country including Dublin, Belfast, Derry, Meath and Limerick, with a comrade attending from the international centre of the IMT, making a total of 15 attendees. Comrades were all filled with a mood of revolutionary enthusiasm, and after a day of political discussions comrades left with heightened spirits, ready to spread the ideas of Marxism and to build the Marxist tendency in Ireland!

The right-wing coalition government of Varadkar and Martin has decided that now is the time to test the water on ditching so-called Irish ‘neutrality’. No doubt they would love to bounce Ireland into NATO, finally ending decades of sham neutrality in favour of open recognition of the 26-county state’s actual position: that of a pawn of western imperialism.

This week, 25 years ago, the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) was signed in Belfast. Heralding it as nothing less than the beginning of a new epoch for the North of Ireland, the British and Irish government signatories – along with its American architects – were inebriated with their own ‘success’. ‘History’ had been made!

We are proud to announce the publication of the first issue of the paper of the International Marxist Tendency in Ireland – the Marxist Voice! This is a landmark moment for the building of the Marxist tendency in Ireland.

We were delighted to announce recently the republication by Wellred Books of Alan Woods’ Ireland: Republicanism and Revolution, the first edition of which came out in 2005 and has long been out of print. The brand new introduction to the book, which we publish below, draws out the processes that have been developing in Ireland in the years that have passed since: from the burgeoning crisis of capitalism, to the rise of Sinn Féin in the North and South, and the reemergence of the border question under Brexit.

The republication of Alan Woods’ Ireland: Republicanism and Revolution, which has been out of print since 2005, could not have come at a more appropriate time. The British ruling class has just buried a monarch whose reign was synonymous with the long-term ‘managed decline’ of British imperialism. Today, the decay of British imperialism has reached a new, convulsive stage. The Union is fraying at the seams, and the national question is reemerging with renewed force, in Scotland and in the North of Ireland. ...

The Ulster loyalist celebrations known as ‘The Twelfth,’ celebrated every 12 July in the North of Ireland, commemorate the victory of William of Orange over King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. They are used to whip up sectarian tensions by specifically anti-catholic groups such as the Orange Order, who amongst other things promote the myth that the Williamites’ victory was fought to “overthrow the Pope and popery.” This was recognised for the falsehood it is by the great Irish socialist and revolutionary James Connolly, who understood the pernicious role sectarianism played and continues to play in dividing the workers of Ireland. We republish his thoughts on ‘The Twelfth’

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This summer marks a century since the outbreak of civil war in Ireland, when fighting began between supporters of the Anglo-Irish Treaty and those demanding a sovereign Irish Republic. Today, the struggle for a Socialist United Ireland continues.

Sinn Féin has emerged as the first party in the Northern Ireland Assembly elections. With a remarkable 29% of the first preference votes to the DUP’s 21.3%, the gap was even wider than predicted. Within hours of the polls closing, #UnitedIreland was trending on Twitter. This is another devastating blow to the prestige of British imperialism and another tear in the fraying fabric of the so-called ‘United Kingdom’.

On Wednesday 9 February, climate activists Orla Murphy and Zac Lumley, will appear at the District Court in Dublin to face serious criminal damage charges, for which they could face up to a year in prison. The ‘crime’ they are accused of committing? Peacefully protesting against the inaction of the Irish government in the face of climate change by painting the words “No More Empty Promises” on the front of a government building. In the case of Zac Lumley, a supporter of the Irish Marxists (IMT Ireland), he is accused of merely live-streaming the protest.