The Cedar Lounge Revolution

Left Archive: Red Banner, A magazine of socialist ideas, Issue 1, November 1997 March 1, 2010

RDBNR

Here’s an interesting one. Red Banner, ‘a revolutionary socialist magazine’ for those who ‘are sick of the way the world is run…. we intend to present socialist ideas to as many people as we can, and to develop and apply those ideas to the needs of the struggle for socialism today. It is our belief that struggle requires a clear understanding of its situation, of its history, of the conditions of its victory’.

Noting that ‘Capitalism every day proves itself to be incapable of resolving the basic problems facing humanity’ it also allows that ‘just as obvious… is the failure of the left, thus far, to get rid of it. There is no use denying it: there are too many on the left who see the struggle in terms of their own narrow organisational success, and not enough whose main concern is the strength and fighting consciousness of the working class. Red Banner has no illusions whatsoever that it is destined to form some revolutionary vanguard, but we are convinced that a powerful socialist movement can be built by the working classes themselves.’

And it continues…

The rainforests are in bad enough shape as it is, so we won’t be wasting paper with appeals to seek salvation in the election of nice politicians, or in the ascendancy of benevolent dictators. We stand for the workers of the world independently and self-consciously taking control.

But we wont’ be resorting to censorship and heresy hunting to put our views forward. Only those unsure of their politics need gunboats in the bay to enforce an intellectual monopoly for their product We, on the other hand, have enough confidence in the strength of revolutionary socialist politics to believe that they will win through and grow stronger in the free competition of ideas.

The contents are an eclectic mix, with contributions from Joe Conroy, Mick Doyle, Rosanna Flynn and others, including The Myth of Michael Collins by one Brian Hanley. Well worth a read. And also worth noting that it is still going strong.

Irish Left Archive: Nuclear Ireland? by Matthew Hussey, Carole Craig, Co-op Books/Focus Ireland, 1978 November 30, 2009

NUKE IRL

This is a document, and many thanks to Jim Monaghan for forwarding it, that to some extent runs at a tangent to much of the Archive. But it is without question that in the mid to late 1970s campaigns and activism developed that were centered on issues beyond socialism as such or the North and foreshadowed social campaigns and the rise of the environmental movement and its political face in the Ecology Party and later the transition of that organisation to a Green Party. However, that said, the left in all its forms was involved in the campaign to prevent the arrival of commercial nuclear power on our shores. The Fianna Fáil government had produced a Green Paper on energy, ‘Energy-Ireland, Discussion Document on some Current Energy Problems and Options’.

Indeed the book is explicit in noting that it ‘looks at these opposing views [on nuclear energy] and many others – in the context of the nuclear power station now being considered for Carnsore Point in County Wexford’. Written by Dr. Matthew Hussey of Kevin St. College of Technology and Carole Craig, a journalist, the quote on the back of the pamphlet indicates the approach taken within:

Fission energy is safe only if a number of critical devices work as they should, if a number of people in key positions follow all their instructions, if there is no sabotage, no hijacking of the transports, if no reactor fuel processing plant or repository anywhere in the world is situated in a region of riots, or guerilla activity, and no revolution or war – even a ‘conventional one’ – takes place in these regions. The enormous quantities of extremely dangerous materail must not get into the hands of ignorant people or desperadoes. No acts of God can be permitted.
Hans Alfren, Nobel Laureate

Inside it deals with the science of nuclear energy, safety issues, aspects of the econmics of nuclear power and the political ramifications. it also discusses alternatives. Throughout it is illustrated by Martyn Turner cartoons and strips. It’s actually quite a snappy read and very evocative of the period within which it was produced. Odd to reflect that as recently as this last week, John Gormley was arguing that the nuclear option while not his choice was not something that he would dismiss out of hand.

On a further tangent to this topic there’s some illuminating material inside the Lost Revolution on the agonising within SFWP on the issue of nuclear technology.