Socialist Voice – New Issue out now… November 16, 2011
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics, The Left, Uncategorized.trackback
The latest Socialist Voice from the Communist Party of Ireland is now available. To download please click on following link: SV-83
It’s a very interesting issue, not least the appreciation of Peter Graham and the articles on Occupy Dame Street. Here is the contents…
Should Ireland remain in the euro?
Occupy Dame Street: The left must become involved
Occupy Dame Street:A positive development but lacking a class understanding
Did Lenin ask for a stimulus package?
The unemployment experience.
Job losses batter Co. Waterford
Crisis in social housing worsen.
The impact of the crisis on women (part 2)
Out of the dark and into the light
Ninety years of struggle
Peter Graham
The IRA: from insurrection to parliament Tommy McKearney, The Provisional IRA: From Insurrection to Parliament
I must appalud the article on my old friend Peter Graham. Not so sure about how deep the Saor Eire connection was myself. Peter was a decent comrade.
I was surprised, but pleasantly so (if you can say that in relation to such a tragedy) by the piece in SV about Peter Graham. It says it all when it says that the left lost a great leader. He was extraordinally capable and charasmatic for his age.
A friend and I in 1969 (or perhaps 1968), dissatisfied with our school group – the Young Labour league – which was looking to the Labour Party, decided to join either the Connolly Youth Movement or the Young Socialists. By chance we turned up first at Peter Graham’s flat in Hume Street on spec one Sunday afternoon. We met a welcoming Peter Graham and was hooked. I wonder what would have followed had I made it to the CYM first
Actually about a year earlier I searched Pembroke Lane high and low and could not find the CP. The fates!
His murder was deeply shocking. I have never forgotten him.
From my old friend Gerry Ruddy on Peter Graham
http://www.issuu.com/conormccabe/docs/petergraham/1
Hey Jim, thanks for that, and for the wonders of digital technology for being able, almost, to read the actual magazine! I missed that fascinating and very informative article at the time – was rather enclosed after ’69 – and have been unclear about the whole milieux ever since. I was at the funeral though. The far left has not been good at preserving the memory of people like Peter Graham.
That’s a fascinating article, but it indulges in a fair number of wild claims and over-dramatic interpretations of some things (notably the reach, militancy and influence of the [United Secretariat of the] “Fourth International”), which makes me somewhat sceptical of its claims on other issues. That aside, the central problem with the article is that it doesn’t actually make any real attempt to explain why Graham was murdered.
I was a little surprised that the article was so blunt about the Saor Eire Action Group having its origins in the Dublin IWG.
The part where it explains that it’s “out of the question” that Graham was shot over a split in the Young Socialists or LWR is amusing in a dark sort of way – Graham was involved in two overlapping and rather fissiparous fringe milieus, republican and socialist, and I suppose it was probably necessary to explain to the general reader that while the socialist groupings were as likely to split as the republican ones, they didn’t tend to murder each other over those splits.
The references to Gaj’s restaurant was also interesting, as it’s mostly remembered now as the central meeting place of the early women’s liberation movement rather than as a central meeting place for left wing radicals in general.
Also, doesn’t that photo of the funeral include a rather well known RTE personality raising a clenched fist?
@MarkP the Graham funeral photo of Charlie Bird has already appeared on Dublin Opinion:
http://dublinopinion.com/2010/01/11/peter-graham-funeral-november-1971/
Tariq Ali is in there as well.
And that pic also appeared many years ago in An Phoblacht and, no doubt, elsewhere (except the RTÉ Guide perhaps).