My parting of the ways with the left, or rather the Marxist-oriented left, was a complex one. It took place during the collapse of the Soviet Union and the European socialist states, although for a time I deluded myself that something better might emerge, or even that it might be preferable if the regimes survived. […]
There is a little known but brilliant book, The Death of Uncle Joe, by Alison Macleod who worked for the British Communist Daily Worker in the 1940s and 1950s until eventually seeing sense and leaving. The book is well worth reading for its human insight into how many people doggedly stuck to their illusions despite […]
Liam O’Flaherty is occasionally cited by Irish socialists as one of their own. His early membership of the Communist Party of Ireland, (he was editor of its newspaper Workers’ Republic for a time), and participation in the comic opera occupation of the Rotunda “soviet” in 1922 are given as support for this false iconography. The […]
A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR In recent years, politics and society have rapidly, and dramatically, changed. Views that were mainstream a decade ago on subjects like marriage, trade, abortion, religion, and criminal justice now find themselves increasingly held by only a minority in society. In the UK, Arthur Scargill, the scourge of Margaret Thatcher, is […]