New look An Phoblacht on sale today… June 24, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics, The Left.trackback
Many thanks to the friend of the CLR who forwarded us this.
New-look An Phoblacht on sale today.
With more pages, more photos and more colour, the 32-page July issue includes…
Ballymurphy Massacre, 1971 – Prelude to Bloody Sunday?
The Parachute Regiment shot dead 11 people over 3 days in west Belfast in the wake of internment in 1971 and just months before being deployed in Derry
The so-called ‘dissidents’
Belfast activist and former POW Bobby Storey asks: ‘Who’s pulling the strings?’
The banking reports
8 things you should know about the banks
Bodenstown
Thousands attend Sinn Féin’s tribute to ‘The Father of Irish Republicanism’
The farce of Fine Gael
Also…
Bloody Sunday
The background to the Paras’ murderous attack on the civil rights march in Derry on January 30th 1972, and the Saville Inquiry Report’s vindication of the innocent victims
Media View
Robbie Smyth looks into the Village and its view of ‘Our Divided Left’
Cúlchaint
Le Eoghan Mac Cormaic
World Cup soccer
Julia Carney shows her colours
Mary Nelis
Making inquiries in Derry and Gaza
Gerry Adams on Gaza
Israeli Ambassador should have been expelled
Venezuela
Chávez nationalises ‘anti-people’ firms
That Irish Times poll
Eoin Ó Broin gives his opinion
Obituaries
Seando Moore: A courageous Volunteer and hard-working community activist
Pádraig Barton: An inspiring young republican
The Falls Curfew, the Defence of Ardoyne and the Battle of St Matthews
Sport of a sort: The Hogan Stand
Blowing out your vuvuzela at Croke Park
And much more. Get your copy now.
www.anphoblacht.com
http://twitter.com/An_Phoblacht
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/An-Phoblacht/113973241981655
Significantly improved paper, kudos to john Hedges and his team.
This Blog gets a very favourable mention in page 13..
Always good to hear
Quite a good paper, yes. Some of the stuff on the banks was very effective – more so than anything I’ve ever seen in the far-left papers.
There is the small matter of the whole ‘killing innocent people’ thing, which I personally find hard to overlook.
That does take the shine off the ball somewhat.
Yeah, it’s hard to overlook the whole killing innocent people thing all right, what with a paratrooper right there on the front cover and all.
Ah PJ, you’re a gas man. Never met a stupid opinion you wouldn’t cling to.
Number of people killed by the parachute regiment in Ireland: 30 or so.
Number of people killed by the Provisional IRA in the same period: 1,800 plus.
You are an advocate of the Russian Revolution, are you not?
I’m not advocating pacifism, just numeracy.
Splendid. Shall we crunch some numbers in the “killed by” column?
I think PJ’s heroes, with his barely suppressed semi for Mao and Stalin will likely top any league table you care to build, unless you indulge in some very creative accounting.
My problem with the Provisional campaign, by the way, is rather distinct from the one expressed by DrX. I have no pacifist inclinations. However, responding to DrX’s complaint that the Provisionals killed large numbers of innocent people by pointing out that the parachute regiment killed innocent people is the height of stupidity, given the actual numbers involved.
Looks like they hired the entire design team of The Onion.
It’s monthly. Wasn’t it weekly previously?
Also, looking at the contents list – it appears to concentrate a fair bit on some things that happened in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Very little on what’s happening there now. Nothing about what, if anything, Sinn Féin ministers in government in Northern Ireland are doing to improve the lives of ordinary people.
In fairness, even if they went annual they’d have difficulty filling a page on what “Sinn Fein minister in government in Northern Ireland are doing to improve the lives of ordinary people”.
In general, presenting a shift from a weekly to monthly as a step forward is pushing it a bit. It seems more likely to be a retreat based on an inability to continue sustaining a weekly. On the upside though, maybe a monthly will be better in terms of content than the weekly was. Admittedly a modest target.
Alas, justifying a retreat from weekly as an advance is a mindset not unique to Republicanism. Every group on the left misuses Marx comments on quality versus quantity.
How would it be possible for SF to maintain a weekly newspaper when newspapers as a species are in a dangerous place. The very fact we are discussing this on the web is a sign that new media are being created. Is a paper like APRN immune from the wider context? Maybe it genuinely is a retreat due to a poor product but this cant be independent of the wider developments in media.
As regards pages of what SF ministers are doing to improve the lives of ordinary people in the 6 counties who knows maybe there is a point there, one to explore. Those who might seek to explore should bear in mind the maxim Physician heal yourself.
If Sinn Fein have achieved nothing for ordinary people then regretably they will then be playing in the same league as other left parties, including those who are so quick to criticise SFs record.
It may be that SF is now only as effective as its critics on the left. A harsh charge indeed.
Where on earth did you get the idea that anyone expects An Phoblacht to be immune from wider processes? Of course times are difficult for print publications everywhere.
That context doesn’t change the fact that An Phoblacht is remaining a print publication but its production schedule is going from weekly to monthly. There are fairly obvious reasons we can guess at for the cutting back of production – An Phoblacht is, or was, as far as I know a paper produced on a professional, paid, basis by at least a small number of fulltime staff. That’s expensive and presumably sales and advertising weren’t covering costs.
It’s a rational enough decision to cut back on the issues produced in those circumstances, and redeploy staff efforts (or lay people off I suppose). This is particularly the case in a period when An Phoblacht has hardly been essential reading for anybody, even diehard SF supporters. As splinteredsunrise pointed out the other week even for people very interested in following the twists and turns of Provo policies, the Andersonstown News has been more useful for quite a while.
As for “improving the lives of people in the 6 Counties”, SF Ministers are implementing cuts, have been privatising everything that isn’t nailed down and will soon be introducing water charges. The socialist left may be small, it may be sometimes fractious and it may be occasionally ineffectual, but it is on the right side. SF’s problem isn’t that they are ineffectual, it’s that they are effective, competent, right wingers implementing neo-liberal policies.
“It may be that SF is now only as effective as its critics on the left. A harsh charge indeed.:
I suppose the real point is that working in a coalition really does little if anything for the oppressed. A point to bear in mind North and South.I would feel that many in SF would feel the same way.
I would submit sadly that everyone and every group have failed to mobilise anything significant to stop or even delay the setbacks nevermind bring things forward.
“The socialist left may be small, it may be sometimes fractious and it may be occasionally ineffectual, but it is on the right side.”
But is that good enough, to be harmless but well-intentioned.
Jim,
“I would submit sadly that everyone and every group have failed to mobilise anything significant to stop or even delay the setbacks nevermind bring things forward.”
Why is it that this is the case. For me this is the question all left wing groups need to answer.
on APRN i freely admit that it was getting a bit staid. Twas rare you’d read anything that was very fresh or unique in it so I can see that impacting the sales alright.
Of course a more depressing thesis might be that it’s not really to do with SF in the North at all, but to an increasing trend where even mild leftwing thought has no real audience out there (and to be honest grand and all as the poll results for the LP are I don’t think they herald the socialist millennium). And An Phoblacht in its previous incarnation is reflective of that.
A more cheering one might be that in a more streamlined periodical there would be a chance for greater input of left wing thought, it wouldn’t be the first time that a magazine or publication became a centre for radicalism inside a party.
Not saying it has to happen, but let’s see how it goes.
As i understand it the change in aprn is not just about going monthly, there also re-vamping the website and think they intend to increasse the frequencey of news coverage on the web.
wbs
there is a small anouncement in the new printed aprn that opinions expressed in articles are the views of the author and not necesarely aprn and an invite for contributors. sounds like a formula for a speakers cornor any way.
Depends who is speaking…
ha, in the print version any way there is 32 pages. thats alot of space to fill. if the internet is trying to come up with stories every day again alot of space to fill. changes the conditions from someone with something to say being a nucence to being a blessing. maybe. probably reading to much into it, only on the fringes now. heard the idea a few months ago and seeing the lay out this weekend thats where iam guessing there trying to take it. if they don’t get contributors it won’t work, if the right people don’t do the speaking then thats there wasted oportunity.
Critics on the left. Would that be the SWP the SEA or the recently alias People before Profit, some of the most well heeled people in the country. No matter what cuts it wont effect the erstwhile wealthy journalists heading up such groups whose role over the years has always been to snipe from the sidelines. while proclaiming the revolution of the working classes. They are no threat to the capitalist State.
That’s one of the stupidest contributions to the discussion here I’ve seen for some time Mary. I’d wonder if it was “really you”, but having had the distinct displeasure of reading some of your contributions to the mind-numbingly tedious An Phoblacht, I recognise your tone.
I hold no brief for the SWP, but I rather doubt if its members in Derry are any more “well heeled” than Gerry Adams. I also doubt if you think that the bearded one’s author’s income disqualifies him from representing the working class. That’s a line of attack you reserve for your opponents.
There are, of course, any number of ways in which a journalist might be effected by the actions of Sinn Fein in government. A journalist, like anybody else, might use a library. Or they might have a child at one of Sinn Fein’s PFI schools. Or they might have a child being supervised by one of the underpaid and demoralised term time workers whose pay Sinn Fein attacked. Or they might use one of the services that SF has voted to allow councils to privatise. Or they might want to exercise the right to protest, a right SF is on the verge of taking away.
You may be right that the SWP aren’t much of a threat to the capitalist state, but it’s a bit of a hollow sneer coming from someone whose party is actually helping to run the capitalist state. Whose party is administering neo-liberalism in all its glory, cutting and privatising as they go. It’s SF, not the SWP, bringing cuts in services to people across the North, and it’s SF, not the SWP, hungering for the opportunity to do the same in the South as junior partners to Fianna Fail. Which is entirely appropriate, I suppose, given that Fianna Fail walked your path before you.
The worst McCann be accused of is being ineffectual. You and your organisation are markedly worse than that.
Leading any protests about the deaths of British soldiers these days Mary? Or to put it another way, what was the difference between William Best and Patsy Gillespie?
I’m not mad keen on attacks on any left formation from whatever quarter.