LookLeft in the Shops Now December 21, 2011
Posted by Garibaldy in Culture, Workers' Party.trackback
The new LookLeft is available in the shops now, with the usual mix of quality articles on politics, culture, opinion and sport. Buy it, and a merry Christmas is guaranteed.
LookLeft 9 – only €2 – includes;
Reports on student protests, Occupy Dame Street, turf wars in Kildare, AFA action against Nick Griffin, defending health services, the community fight against drugs, Occupy Wall Street, the sex industry, doctors in El Salvador, Ship to Gaza, turmoil in Egypt, the Greek Communist Party , Belfast’s Fresh Claim Café, WP Northern Ireland conference
Interviews with PUP leader Billy Hutchinson, America Radical Fred Magdoff, Rapper Captain Moonlight
Main Feature; Ireland’ addiction to low corporation tax and Corporate Imperialism
Features; Occupy – where to now, Revolution in Cork City FC, Friedrich Engels on Ireland, Irish Graphic Novels, book reviews, the Jemmy Hope Column and Around the Left (news from progressive organisations)
Views; WP President Mick Finnegan on Budget 2012, Socialist Party MEP Paul Murphy on the need for an EU referendum
The UVF read Look Left? A very varied readership it would seem, there is about 100 copies of the mag pride of place on the current affairs shelves in Easons in Dublin any idea what its readership is?
Not sure how many folk read LL, but it seems to be
read by people outside the normal WP readership.
The distribuition with Easons is useful- other left-wing
magazines like Red Banner are usually confined to places like Connolly Books, (Dublin) and Solidarity Books (Cork).
Interesting to see circulation. Bu I think you’re right, and go a copy myself in Easons today.
Looking forward to buying it and reading it. Congrats to the people who produce it. Happy Christmas.
Brilliant. Such a wide variety of articles – Billy Hutchinson to the Irish Comic Industry to the KKE to Cork City FC. This is very rapidly establishing itself as a serious magazine, hopefully it goes from strength to strength in 2012.
Echo the congratulations. This is a great media project which should be supported.
LL had D. R. O’Connor Lysaght writing a book review in
one issue. Given Lysaght is no fan of the WP’s
NI policy, this was interesting.
It’s fairly braoad in terms of contributors, except when it comes to the Six Counties though – the only voices on the North to be got from the magazine are the WP and the UVF.
I wonder if the Hutchinson interview brings up his recent picketing of Asda on the Shore Road.
Ciarán,
I’m not sure if the point you are making is referring to this issue, or is a more general one. In more general terms, the magazine has had a broader range than just WP and what PUP or ex-PUP people, with people from the British Labour Party and independent of party politics, like this one which I thought was excellent
http://www.lookleftonline.org/2011/10/give-my-head-politics/
I don’t think Jenny Muir’s piece is online, otherwise I’d link that too
“no fan of the WP’s NI policy, this was interesting.”
The implication there, or question perhaps, is about whether LookLeft is a party organ. Well clearly there’s an aspect of that function about it, but equally clearly it is intended to be a tool for broader Left discussion and debate around themes and issues of interest across the Left, and far from exclusively from a WP perspective. That the party organises around this, funds the magazine’s production, is to its credit I think. Worth noting also that the production staff draws widely on resources from outside the WP, so as a broad Left co-operation project I think it’s fair to say that there’s buy-in from other elements as well.
There have been gaps of course, but if groups or individuals produce material which is not Left-sectarian (without having to be saccharinely all sweetness and light obviously, genuine debate is to be wemcomed) and which is broadly aligned with the goals and vision of LL and of the further Left politics in general then I guess it’s a case of submitting that material for consideration to the editorial board, and taking if from there. I’m not speaking here on behalf of LL obviously, I’m only expressing a personal opinion based on reading the broad content of LL over the past couple of years.
Not sure if the Asda incident is referred to, but in the interview Hutchinson pulls no punches on his support for Loyalist identity. The Asda the Asda I thought was a naturally working out of the peace process – the UVF have no Stormount jobs for their former prisoners.
Hutchinson probably feels the same way about the Asda case, as Sinn Féin feel about employing a woman who was involved in murdering another young woman at Stormont. The majority of nationalists who voted SDLP during the conflict, and the majority of Unionists who never voted PUP have no ex-prisoners to be ‘given’ jobs.
What happened at Asda – didn’t hear about that …
It was an interesting interview with Hutchinson alright, although I wasn’t too impressed by what he said. He was trying to blame the media for the weakness of political loyalism, saying that they love to present a negative stereotype of loyalists but give a positive image of republicans. But the southern media at least have been falling over themselves to present a positive image of groups like the PUP, just remember the coverage of Ervine’s death, and Davy Adams still has a column in the Irish Times.
If there hadn’t been a series of feuds – UVF-UDA, UVF-LVF, UDA-UDA – and if there wasn’t a large element within the loyalist paramilitaries up to their neck in sheer gangsterism, the public image of loyalism would be much healthier than it is. It’s not like republicans have been given a free pass either, Sinn Fein were hammered in the media for months after the murder of Robert McCartney.
Hutchinson didn’t seem willing to acknowledge that the wounds are largely self-inflicted – after all, why is he leader today instead of Dawn Purvis, if the UVF was really willing to break with gangsterism and “civilianise” itself, she wouldn’t have resigned from the PUP. And I say all this as someone who regrets the fact that the PUP has never been able to challenge the main unionist parties, whatever its shortcomings it was streets ahead of the UUP and DUP.
OiOi – I see your boy Billy wants to arrange a meet up? Tell him I’m around my East Laaaaaandan manor till Boxing day when we take on the Zulu’s.
If silly Billy is as ‘ard as he saaaaays den laaaats ave him come ovar here for some yuletide pavement dancing.
Oi Oi! faaaaaacking Oi!