Archive for the ‘Arts and Culture’ Category
Sinéad O’Connor – Political and Musical Tributes
I think this photo was taken in August 1989 at a FADA (Forum for a Democratic Alternative) march outside the RDS, Ballsbridge, Dublin. It was a protest marking the 20th anniversary of British troops taking over the streets of the six counties after the 1969 Battle of the Bogside. Other speakers included Eamonn McCann. Sinéad O’Connor is singing, flanked by Joe Kelly who chaired the meeting. Thanks to Niamh Kelly, Joe’s daughter, who supplied the photograph.
Sinéad O’Connor understood, better than many others, that the partition of Ireland is a 32 county problem – it is not just about the north. This letter was published in the Irish Times edition of Tuesday, July 30, 1996.
John Meehan August 8 2023
Sinéad O’Connor’s funeral tribute in Bray Co. Wicklow – where she spent many happy years in a house on a promenade beside the sea – was led by a beautifully decorated old van, almost vintage :
Mandy La Combre’s Tributes
Mandy la Combre is a feminist and trade union activist.
I really wanted to be in Bray today to say a final farewell to Sinéad but unfortunately I’m working in Belfast so couldn’t make it. This made me sad. I also haven’t really seen any of the coverage of this morning but I have it recorded at home to watch on my return.
It still feels like a gut-punch to lose this priestess, political agitator, and gifted songwriter, who had an otherworldly voice like an angel and who inspired so many of us teenage girls growing up in grim 1980’s Ireland. What a terrible loss for us all.
It seems fitting that a giant installation honouring Sinéad was unveiled on Bray Head, Co.Wicklow, as she too was a giant. It reads ‘ÉIRE LOVES SINÉAD’ and is located where the recently rediscovered World War Two ‘ÉIRE’ navigational landmark is, also close to Sinéad’s former seafront home at Strand Road, Bray.
I love the below images. Sinéad indelibly marked into the Irish landscape as she should be, and a wonderful happy picture of Sinéad at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1990 – long before she was battered at the hands of the press and the world.
If I was religious I’d say something like I hope she’s sleeping soundly now in the arms of her boy, but unfortunately I’m not, and I’ve a hard time believing that to be true.
So when you don’t know what to say….
“Where words fail, music speaks”.
Thank you Sinéad, for everything. 
Written on August 8 2023
It’s taken me 24 hours to post anything about Sinéad O’Connor. It was actually quite a shock to hear the news.
I’ve enjoyed Sinéad’s music since the 80’s. When she rocked out onto the scene with her doc martens, rolled up jeans, shaved head and a screeching voice like an angel – she was quite the firebrand. Relentlessly willing to stand up for her beliefs even when they were not popular, and they so often were not.
As a teenage girl I wasn’t that many years younger than her and consumed her debut album ‘The Lion & The Cobra’ mercilessly. Playing it for years long after its release date. In fact when pregnant, the first time my son kicked inside my womb I was listening to ‘Troy’ on my Walkman, and so it was set in stone that would be his name. Over 30 years later the album still resonates, it’s a timeless work and an astonishing debut…and Troy still has the coolest name.
I’ve seen Sinéad live only a few times in my life; once in the 80’s in the Olympic ballroom where she looked incredible flouncing around the stage in a black tutu like a beautiful angry nymph, once in the 90’s in Giant stadium in New York, where she headlined an Irish music festival and she filled the stadium with her voice singing a capella literally stopping me in my tracks. And later in the 00’s singing on stage with Gavin Friday with whom her stunning performances with her iconic voice and attitude always complimented Gavin’s shows.
I met her briefly on two occasions and she was always polite. One particular occasion she appeared particularly quiet, shy and unassuming gripping Gavin’s arm for moral support as she navigated the nightclub trepidatiously as if worried that people would start looking at her – even though she looked just beautiful.
Last year I read her book ‘Rememberings’ and saw the film about her life ‘Nothing Compares’. Both fantastic pieces of work, both I seriously recommend to get a real insight into Sinéad’s character and talent.
The book is a brutally honest account of Sinéad’s life in her own words and the film is a stunning portrayal of a celebrated rise to fame and quick exile from mainstream music as a result of her outspokenness and activism. I was delighted to see I had a two second accidental cameo in the latter, it made me giggle in the cinema. Also, my abiding memory leaving the viewing was walking away thinking what a remarkable woman she really was.
You will see a multitude of platitudes to Sinéad in the coming days and weeks, most sincere, and some by those that used, persecuted, and mistreated her while she was alive. But if you really want to remember and celebrate Sinéad, get her back catalogue. That is where the real magic lies. The music and her unique voice speak for themselves. That is where she really shone.
Yes, she was a trailblazer, a feminist, an activist, a moral character that relied on honesty and was always true to herself – but she was also damaged and dreadfully hurt and her songs are an expression of all that she was, not faux, but genuine, and oftentimes in your face. That’s why we loved her and that’s what we should remember.
Right now I really feel for her children, her family and her friends that loved her so much, it must be an unbearable loss. But I also extend condolences to those fans that never wavered and always held Sinéad in their hearts through thick and thin and all the ups and downs. We’ve lost a true talent, and Ireland has lost the best female voice this country has ever produced.
Her work was such a gift.
Sinéad Marie Bernadette O’Connor, rest in power.
You have been loved. 
Written on July 27 2023
Sinéad O’Connor reached back to a powerful Irish ballad, “The Foggy Dew”, and produced a haunting new version with the Chieftains in 1995 :
Twas better to die neath an Irish sky than at Suvla or Sud-el-Bar
Tributes to Sally Shovelin, Socialist and Feminist Activist – August 25 1957 – August 4 2023
Sally Shovelin passed away on August 4 2023 after an 18 month battle with cancer.
Sincerest Condolences to Sally’s partner John Gallagher, her close friends Betty Purcell and Helen Mahony, her sister Nora Shovelin and many other friends and family.
I first met Sally in the mid 1970’s via membership of People’s Democracy (part of the Fourth International). From that time onwards she was a committed left-wing, feminist, trade union, and anti-imperialist activist – always courageous and willing to confront injustice.
Sally Shovelin holds a Poster “Dublin Women Support Women Prisoners”, Armagh, April 7 1979 – many thanks to Derek Speirs for the photograph
We remained in regular contact for many decades, our paths often crossing in political campaigns and many enjoyable social events. Sally had an impish sense of humour, and was great company.
Read the rest of this entry »Oscar Wilde had the measure of Lord Edward Carson – July 12 Observations
Lord Edward Carson was a disgusting 🤮 racist imperialist reactionary. Born in Dublin in the 19th Century, he earned brownie points in the palaces of British Imperialism by hounding Oscar Wilde into prison and, after that, a premature death ☠️ resulting from an infamous homophobic trial in 1895. Carson’s statue dominates the Stormont parliament today, and every July the 12th this monster 👿 is celebrated at Orange Order parades in the north of Ireland. Oscar Wilde had Carson’s measure.
WILDE [responding to Carson’s reading of a letter from him to Lord Alfred Douglas]:…..I think it is a beautiful letter. It is a poem. I was not writing an ordinary letter. You might as well cross-examine me to whether King Lear or a sonnet of Shakespeare was proper.
CARSON:Apart from art, Mr. Wilde?
WILDE: I cannot answer apart from art.
CARSON: Suppose a man who was not an artist had written this letter, would you say it was a proper letter?
WILDE: A man who was not an artist could not have written that letter.
CARSON: Why?
WILDE: Because nobody but an artist could write it. He certainly could not write the language unless he were a man of letters.
CARSON: I can suggest, for the sake of your reputation, that there is nothing very wonderful in this “red rose-leaf lips of yours.”
WILDE: A great deal depends on the way it is read.
CARSON: “Your slim gilt soul walks between passion and poetry. ” Is that a beautiful phrase?
WILDE: Not as you read it, Mr. Carson. You read it very badly.
Orange Order Homophobia has not gone away. In 2023 several Orange bonfires burn images of people these reactionaries hate. Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar (who is gay) got the Orange Order burning treatment this year, along with Sinn Féin vice-President Michelle O’Neill. In 2022 Orangemen cheered the burning of an election poster depicting People Before Profit public representative from West Belfast, Gerry Carroll. Is this really surprising when a statue of Edward Carson dominates the Stormont Parliament Building in Belfast? The “official version” is that we must “respect” all cultural traditions, including the imperial hate of the late reactionary born in Dublin.
The Orange Order is not welcome in civilised parts of Ireland – such as the Garvaghy Road in Portadown. Oscar Wilde has some advice :
Mr Worthing advises Orange Order marchers to get lost to stay away from civilised people.
In honour of Esteban Volkov (1926-2023) – Long live the memory of Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition’s struggle against capitalism and Stalinism
Sources : http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article66877
https://fourth.international/en/566/latin-america/527.
[Photo by Leon Trotsky House Museum / CC BY-NC 2.0]
As we bid farewell to Don Esteban, who died on June 16 at the age of 97, we pledge not only to support the continuity of the work of the Leon Trotsky House Museum in Mexico, but also to continue collaborating with his life’s mission: to preserve and spread the political legacy of his revolutionary grandfather.
On Friday, June 16, Don Esteban Volkov, Leon Trotsky’s grandson, died in Mexico. He was the last living witness of the last years of his grandfather’s work and assassination, committed by the Stalinist agent Ramon Mercader on August 21, 1940, in the house where the family of the exiled Russian revolutionary lived in Coyoacán. The building was transformed by Don Esteban in 1990 into the Leon Trotsky House Museum.
It is a very important chapter in the history of the left in the 20th century that closes with his passing, because Don Esteban was more than a grandson. He was a conscious guardian of the legacy of struggle, of the theoretical production and of the political resistance of his relatives and compatriots of the Left Opposition of the Soviet Union. Hence the importance of his life, of his tireless voice in remembering Stalin’s purges and persecutions of an entire generation of pre and post-1917 revolutionaries; in the tireless work to preserve documents, objects, and family memories; in the struggle to refute the smear campaigns that Trotsky, even after his death, and the Trotskyists faced for decades.
Read the rest of this entry »Doctor Matt Barrett saves a little of Ireland’s honour at the absurd coronation of a British King called Charles III
The French socialist Jean-Luc Melenchon spoke for many when he branded the coronation of the new English king Charles III “nauseating”.
A Dublin cardiologist, Matt Barrett, is the partner of an Irish politician Leo Varadkar (currently the Fine Gael Taoiseach, Prime Minister). Matt had to attend the recent coronation of an English king called Charles. While Varadkar and other attending Irish forelock-tuggers (such as President Michael D Higgins and the Sinn Féin leaders Mary Lou McDonald and Michelle O’Neill) dutifully swallowed the nauseating royal guff, Matt broke ranks.
Ten out of Ten to Matt Barrett! :
“Varadkar’s partner, Matt Barrett, however, did not get the memo. In the VIP motorcade and in Westminster Abbey, he posted a series of irreverent comments on Instagram to his private group of more than 350 followers.
“Holy shit I think I’m accidentally crowned king of England,” he posted from the taoiseach’s car as they approached the abbey on 6 May.
The posts, reported in the Irish Times on Saturday, have embarrassed the government and landed Varadkar in a fresh diplomatic blunder.
Once inside the abbey, Barrett, a consultant cardiologist, ignored an injunction in the order-of-service booklet to switch off his phone and posted jokes and observations on the ceremony.
A paragraph from page 38 in the booklet caught his eye. “The queen’s sceptre and rod are brought from the altar by the Right Rev and Right Hon the Lord Chartres GCVO and the Right Rev Rose Hudson Wilkin CD MBE, Bishop of Dover. The queen touches them in turn,” it said.
Barrett posted a photo of it with a green line around the last sentence. “Sounds like the script to a good night out, tbh,” he said.
In the list of participants, he noted the Right Rev James Newcome, who has the title Clerk of the Closet. Barrett highlighted this, saying: “Had this job until my early 20s.”
Later he posted a photograph of Charles wearing his crown and compared it to the sorting hat in the Harry Potter books. “Was genuinely half expecting it to shout ‘GRYFFINDOR,’” he wrote.”
The source is the Guardian, a British newspaper.
In Ireland, beside the famous “You Are Now Entering Free Derry Wall”, the English king is not welcome :
Bakhmut Town; a tribute to Finbar, Cooper, and Dmitry – A ballad honours Finbar Cafferkey of Achill Island Co. Mayo
In Bakhmut Town
To the tune of Roddy McCorley
Finbar Cafferkey from Achill Island County Mayo fought for the freedom of Ukraine and died in the streets of Bakhmut town.
https://soundcloud.com/user-310458959/bakhmut-town-a-tribute-to-finbar-cooper-and-dmitry
Oh come you who love freedom and a tale I’ll have you hear
Of comrades who came to Ukraine, as foreign volunteers
From Russia and America, Ireland and all around-
And side by side, they fought and died, on the streets of Bakhmut town
Ukraine: Voices of Resistance and Solidarity – Dublin Book Launch Report and Video
We wish to thank Independent Left, Conor Kostick, Donnacha Ó Bríain, Halyna Herasym and Nóirín Greene for this report and visual record. Source : https://independentleft.ie/voices-of-resistance/
Ukraine: Voices of Resistance and Solidarity
27/02/2023
Ukraine: Voices of Resistance and Solidarity is a book edited by Fred Leplat and Chris Ford, published by Resistance Books and Ukraine Solidarity campaign. It contains essays by Mick Antoniw, Welsh Labour MP; John-Paul Himka, history professor; Taras Bilous, activist for Sotsialnyi Rukh / Social Movement; Yuliya Yurchenko activist for Ukraine Solidarity Campaign and Sotsialnyi Rukh / Social Movement; Oksana Dutchak, co-editor of Spilne/ Commons; Viktoriia Pihul, Ukrainian feminist; Nataliya Levytska, Deputy Chair of the Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine; Vitalii Dudin president of Sotsialnyi Rukh / Social Movement; Bogdan Ferens, founder of the Social Democratic Platform; Eric Toussaint, spokesperson of the CADTM International; Ilya Budraitskis, activist in the Russian Socialist Movement; Niko Vorobyov, Russian-British freelance journalist; Gilbert Achcar, Lebanese socialist; Simon Pirani professor of modern languages and cultures; Stephen R. Shalom, editor of New Politics; and Dan La Botz, editor of New Politics.
Read the rest of this entry »February 18 2023 – Tens of Thousands Demonstrate Against Racism and the Far-Right in Dublin
Brendan Ogle (UNITE Trade Union) introduces film highlights of the February 18 2023 Ireland for All Solidarity March in Dublin :
A diverse band for sure, an eclectic mix of the great, the good and …well. The point is Ireland 
is about 
not hate.
Get the hate off our streets.
NEVER LET THE FASCISTS HAVE THE STREETS
(Put together by the brilliant @martinblake) :
https://www.facebook.com/100006503678746/videos/756058655802297/
Photos of the demonstration – special thanks to Mike Finn and Maeve Foreman :
Read the rest of this entry »Memory Politics – 6 Belgrave Square, Rathmines, Dublin – Property was once owned by sinister reactionary Edward Carson – Decades later Brian Judge used the house to raise funds for the Birmingham Six – victims of a British Miscarriage of Justice
Properties can be used for many different purposes. Brian Judge reported on his Facebook page :
I owned Number 6 Belgrave Square for several years. When researching the title I found out Edward Carson was the first owner of the property. He lived in it for 3 years. For obvious reasons I did not put a plaque on the wall.
It was a large house with a large rear garden which I used regularly to raise funds for Irish miscarriage of justice cases in Great Britain and Ireland.
During a fundraiser for the Irish Commission for Prisoners Overseas the police turned up and entered the house.They were confronted by Joe Costello TD (Teachta Dála, MP in Ireland). Joe asked by what authority they had entered the house, they claimed they were invited – something I disputed.They prosecuted me for having a bar at the function. I was represented by Michael Farrell a founder of People’s Democracy and a fellow member of the Commission. The case was thrown out on a technicality. Apparently in Irish law you can sell drink to your friends for the purchase price.
Post Script : Michael Farrell was interned in 1971. He was released after a 34 day hunger strike. One of Ireland’s foremost human rights activists down to the present day.
This prompted some correspondents to ask why Brian was opposed to the erection of a plaque honouring Lord Edward Carson.
Read the rest of this entry »Did Lenin Сreate Ukraine? On the Right of Nations to Self-Determination and Marxism
Why do Marxists defend the right of nations to self-determination? What does the struggle for national liberation have to do with the workers’ struggle? Social researcher Grusha Gilaeva analyzes the positions of Marx and Lenin on the national question and explains why the left movement must support the anti-colonial struggle of Ukraine
Grusha Gilaveva’s fascinating article comes from the Russian left-wing publication Posle. Gilaveva argues, in a very convincing manner, that Marx and Engels started out in the 1840’s opposing the rights of small nations to self-determination – inspired by a blanket opposition to all nationalism – but changed their policy after 1867. Marx and Engels were heavily influenced by Ireland’s struggle for liberation from the British Empire, and the Phoenix like rise and fall of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), the Fenians. Policy divisions on the question of self-determination for small nations continued within the Marxist second and third internationals in the twentieth century. Bolshevik leader Vladimir Ilyich Lenin championed a policy favouring the rights of small nations and nationalities – and was opposed by revolutionary comrades such as Karl Radek and Rosa Luxemburg. Once again Ireland featured strongly in the debate among revolutionary Marxists. The Easter 1916 Rising in Dublin, although it was militarily crushed by British artillery, inspired socialists all over the globe who were fighting against the barbaric World War 1. The impact was brilliantly described by the famous North American feminist revolutionary Louise Bryant in “The Masses”, published in July 1916. “The Masses” can be accessed here : https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/masses/index.htm
An alliance between the descendants of the IRB (the Irish Volunteers led by Pádraig Pearse) and a brand-new working class actor fighting for Irish Freedom, James Connolly’s Irish Citizen Army (ICA), inflicted devastating wounds on the most powerful empire the world had ever seen in those early years of the 20th century.
The 1917 Russian Bolshevik Revolution began to go badly wrong in the 1920’s. An early sign that all was not well was Great Russian chauvinist suppression of smaller nations such as Ukraine. We live with and suffer from terrible consequences today. We cannot change history, but we can learn from it.
John Meehan January 25 2023
Did Lenin Сreate Ukraine? On the Right of Nations to Self-Determination and Marxism
Why do Marxists defend the right of nations to self-determination? What does the struggle for national liberation have to do with the workers’ struggle? Social researcher Grusha Gilaeva analyzes the positions of Marx and Lenin on the national question and explains why the left movement must support the anti-colonial struggle of Ukraine
Read the rest of this entry »
