Socialist Voice – out now! June 1, 2017
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Bus Éireann dispute ends [Jimmy Doran]
http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/sv/01-bus.html
All unions involved in the three-week strike in Bus Éireann have now voted to accept the Labour Court’s recommendation, thus bringing an end to the dispute.
The workers and unions should be commended for their exemplary behaviour during the most difficult of strikes, in the face of unilateral action by the Bus Éireann management. Workers in the other CIE companies who came out to support them in a solidarity strike played no small part in the securing of a more favourable deal than had been originally proposed.
The people who get up early in the morning [Tommy McKearney]
http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/sv/02-varadkar.html
he citizens of many European countries are being confronted with the invidious option of choosing between aggressive neo-liberalism on the one hand and fascism on the other. Nowhere was this clearer than during the recent presidential election in France, when voters were asked to decide between the right-wing financier Emmanuel Macron and the National Front leader Marine Le Pen.
A dedicated follower of fashion [Michael Healy]
http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/sv/03-fashion.html
The year 1967 was a time of upheaval and change in conservative society, attitudes, and fashion, and a confident young working class reflected this change.
It was a period of buoyant demand for youth labour, some of whom decided to pursue careers as apprentices in the hairdressing trade.
The restoration of stolen pay [Dan Taraghan]
http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/sv/04-pay.html
There is increasing militancy among the public-sector unions. After nearly ten years of “austerity,” with no pay increases and the so-called “financial emergency” legislation still in place, there is a growing realisation of how much they were shafted.
Public-sector workers had their pay reduced and then,
Political statement [National Executive Committee, CPI]
http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/sv/05-statement.html
The National Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Ireland, meeting on the last weekend of May, discussed the political and economic situation facing workers and working people across the country.
A Cork republican who fought fascism [Graham Harrington]
http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/sv/06-neville.html
evin Neville was born in Cork in 1921 into a family of Fenian stock that played an active role in the Black-and-Tan War. He joined Fianna Éireann at the age of eight and the IRA at the age of fifteen. He is believed to have taken part in all the IRA’s main operations
It wasn’t meant to happen [Ciarán Larkin]
http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/sv/07-trump.html
It wasn’t meant to happen. As presidential election day in the United States approached, pollsters and pundits, bar-stool sages and the proverbial man in the street chorused with swelling confidence that Trump could not win.
James Connolly Commemoration
http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/sv/08-jimmy.html
Oration by Jimmy Doran (Dublin District chairperson, CPI), Arbour Hill, Dublin, 14 May 2017
Comrades and friends, we are here as an expression of our continued opposition to British imperialism and partition and to reaffirm our commitment to the struggle for national unity, political and economic independence, and national sovereignty.
A poem that could make a difference [Gabriel Rosenstock]
http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/sv/09-poem.html
“Pandu, the Masseur in Goa” by Abhay K is a previously unpublished poem that every tourist should read. I’d very much like to see it as a poster poem in airports around the world.
The Siege of Leningrad, Shostakovich, and the airbrushing of history [Jenny Farrell]
http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/sv/10-leningrad.html
The cold war against Russia—and previously the Soviet Union—continues. This includes the removal from public memory of the many atrocities committed by Nazi Germany on the Soviet population and the latter’s heroic role in the defeat of fascism.
Letter to the editor: Ireland and Syria
http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/sv/11-letter.html
In May, Clare Daly posed a question in the Dáil to the Government. It said as follows: “To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the organisations to which the government provided funding in Syria, with particular reference to the oversight and scrutiny which took place regarding the destination of these funds; and if he will make a statement on the matter.”
Planes that kill other people’s children [Niall Farrell]
http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/sv/12-bray.html
Later this month the Bray Air Display—thanks to funding from Wicklow County Council—will announce its line-up for the now annual event in late July. Have no doubt that NATO warplanes will be in evidence on the programme.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
Ah, that old cliche, the Stalin government’s “heroic role in the defeat of fascism”.
Not a word about this little occurrence :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact
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Ah hold a minute now, no credit to Uncle Joe but : “… Galina Lelyukhina, recalled rehearsals: “They said on the radio that all living musicians were invited. It was hard to walk. I was sick with scurvy, and my legs were very painful. At first there were nine of us, but then more people arrived. The conductor, Eliasberg, was brought on a sledge, because hunger had made him so weak.”
That’s heroic enough for me
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But the article doesn’t even follow up on its starting premise.
It says there’s a “removal from public memory” of crimes the Nazis committed against the Soviet population and the Soviet’s (belated) war effort against the Nazis-and doesn’t provide any evidence for these assertions. Instead it starts going on about the Shostakovich concert. There’s also a dishonest attempt to identify modern Germany with the
Third Reich. You do not have to have the remotest sympathy for NATO to find this problematic. (For all her flaws, Merkel would never allow the German version of Aleksandr Dugin anywhere near the levels of power, as Putin has done).
How long before we see the Socialist Voice writers on
RT / Sputnik disinformation machine?
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Fair enough on it not following up on the airbrushing assertion but the composition and perfoming of the 7th in that apocalyse was magnificent
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apocalypse
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Fwiw, my view is fairly simple. M-R is just about excusable as a delaying tactic. What took place under the radar with German communists delivered into Nazi hands isn’t. The purges of the Red Army prior to and during the German invasion are inexplicable and utterly irrational – if Stalin had listened to those around him in the run up to the German invasion and allowed the structures to remain unpurged, well perhaps we would be looking at many many fewer deaths of Soviet citizens. The Soviet people and the vast majority of communists did act heroically, but sometimes one has the impression it was in spite of rather than because of the state structures etc.
The idea Germany in 2017 is equivalent to Nazi Germany is absurd. Not even worth commenting on.
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Replying to WBS – agreed. As an aircraft nut I have been watching YouTube videos about Soviet WW2 aircraft recently. Yak-3s etc, Sturmoviks. Amazingly Stalin had the likes of Mikoyan, Guryvich, Yakolev, Tupolev and others carted off to the Gulag during the war. He believed they would work better in prison! They lost some of their most innovative designers that way. MIG, Yak, Tu were let out (some went in and out a few times I think) later, but a lot of damage was done.
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That’s a great example FergusD. To do that was literally inexplicable. And if didn’t work! Do both in a human and a utilitarian level it failed – as for the politics 75 Yeats later we are stuck with a legacy where anyone arguing for collective approaches has to contend with it.
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It’s also worth pointing out that both the Soviets and Germans undertook the project to destroy Polish civil society to make reforming the Polish state an impossibility. Nothing noble about that.
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Hurrah – someone else who recognises what a danger Dugin is to Eurasia.
He’s a propagator of identitarian apartheid racist politics – blood and soil Heideggerian sort of stuff. And very popular in Russia ATM.
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But there is something noble about great art from from situations of depravity – Primo Levi’s If This is a Man, Shalamov’s Kolmya Tales are shining examples to me. Shostakovich’s 7th symphony wouldnt be rated by as his best ( the 5th and 10th get the nod on that Id say) but the circumstances of its creation in the very midst of catastrophe make it one of humanity’s great musical achievements imho
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Point taken on art out of chaos, I would draw a very sharp distinction between civilians and the Soviet government.
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