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Sarah Kay ✊ In 1985, at the height of the Cold War, British singer Sting wrote a protest song against mutual nuclear deterrence. 

Calling upon reason, which was scarce at the time, he pleaded to understand that no one is above another – that we all fear death, violence, that we all want the same thing for our children. We all, supposedly, do. We all, supposedly, work toward a society in which they would grow up free and happy.

The Belfast pogroms have tested that theory in two different ways. The non-issue of asylum has been fascinating the United Kingdom, and Ireland, in the most negative way possible. A population ranking under 2%, asylum-seekers have become targets of the most violent of acts, including burning people alive. The Belfast attacker was a 30 year old from Sudan. This was a call to review immigration and our role toward those under international protection. It’s in the name: asylum is not regulated domestically as much as it is the product of a post-war treaty that was meant to address the consequences of the 1936 Nüremberg laws – statelessnesss - and provide for the millions of displaced in Europe: refuge, the right to seek safety and protection.

The current genocide in Sudan should horrify us all. A consequence of the 1994 Rwanda genocide and the 2003 genocide in Darfur, Sudan is suffering unprecedented levels of conflict-related sexual violence. In 2024, Volker Türk, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, commented that:

(The RSF) have killed thousands, seemingly without remorse. They have manufactured a climate of sheer terror, forcing millions to flee. They have let the people who could not - or would not - escape, suffer, destroying medical services and blocking humanitarian aid. 

Ignoring that Sudanese people should indeed be under international protection is dehumanisation on a state scale.

But there are other genocides – in Palestine, in Congo, in Armenia – where the horror continues to unfold; sometimes live streamed into our phones, sometimes spoken about at the tail end of news reports. In 2025, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights announced:

In other areas under M23 control in South Kivu, such as Minova, M23 has occupied schools and hospitals, forced IDPs out of camps and subjected the civilian population to forced conscription and forced labour. Additionally, DRC officials report that at least 165 women were raped by male inmates during the prison break by more than 4,000 inmates from Goma’s Muzenze prison on 27 January, as M23 began its assault on the town.

 As Sting then said, “there’s no such thing as a winnable war, it’s a lie we don’t believe anymore.”

But migration isn’t only about seeking asylum; it is the oldest, and most important, human behaviour. Since the beginning of human civilisation, we have migrated: to find food, to find land, to find water. We have migrated, even more importantly, to find shelter. Through this migration, Darwin’s theory of evolution brought us here, to the point where Jim Crow laws on segregation, a source of nostalgy in many European countries, can become a biological issue. Migration isn’t and will never be a crime, because we have all migrated one way or another in our lives: we studied abroad; we did a work away visa; we visited a friend and overstayed our welcome; we decided to check out a new city because Belfast felt too small. All of this is migration. Moving back with your parents in Dundalk because you couldn’t find a job in the city is a micro form of migration; you wouldn’t have it removed from you. Migration is not the issue; racism is. Only one category of people is allowed to migrate and doing so on the assumption that their chosen form of immigration is the only valid one. Ending immigration has never helped any public deficit or crumbling institutions, in fact, it’s been demonstrated time and time again that immigration has immense economic benefits.

As Sting said again, here’s no monopoly on common sense on either side of the political fence. We believe that those seeking asylum made a choice. We believe that migrants all inherently are bad faith actors in an otherwise open and thriving community. We deny the simple fact of genocide and the direct consequences of global exploitation leading to global inequality. We have no moral or ethical right to denounce what we would continue doing to ourselves: criminal exploitation. Paramilitary recruitment, drug trade, all of which show cruel child neglect in the name of scoring political points. Wouldn’t we want a different future for them, too?

⏩ Sarah Kay is an international human rights lawyer now described as “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” . . . again.

Do We Love Our Children Too?

Heartlands Tribune ☭ Written by Paul Knaggs.


“No self-respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party who ignores her sex.”
– Susan B. Anthony, suffragette, 1920

MPs from five parties have signed a motion to kill the EHRC’s Code of Practice on single-sex services before it can come into force. Labour supplies the largest bloc. They call it inclusion. It is ideological capture. And the working-class women they claim to represent will remember who stood where.

The Motion That Reveals Everything

On 1 June 2026, a formal parliamentary motion was tabled by Nadia Whittome MP to disapprove the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s statutory Code of Practice for services, public functions and associations. The Code was laid before Parliament on 21 May. Under the procedure that governs statutory instruments of this kind, Parliament has 40 days in which to raise objections. If no objection is passed within that window, the government sets a date for the Code to come into force.

That is the mechanism. Those are the facts. What lies beneath them is something more troubling: a cross-party faction of MPs, organised within days of the Code’s laying, channelling the energies of a professional activist lobby rather than the interests of the constituents who sent them to Westminster.

Continue @ Heartlands.

Betrayal By Motion 🪶 Parliament Moves To Kill Women’s Rights Code

Caoimhin O’Muraile  ☭  What kind of politician is Nigel Farage? 

In my opinion the leader of the far-right Reform UK party is a para-fascist ‘Thatcherite’ who if ever gets governmental power will shed the few sheep’s clothing left and reveal himself and his party as neo-fascists of ruthless capabilities. 

The man is a proven liar: remember the Brexit campaign him and that other clown Boris Johnson led? They hired a coach with the slogan “We send the EU £350 million a week, lets fund our NHS instead”. The figure was false and represented gross not net and did not “account for the UK's rebate (approx. £75 million) or the money the EU spent back in the UK on things like farming subsidies and regional aid”. It was designed to fool the electorate who, as per, fell for it - certainly in England hook line and sinker! On the day the result the UK was leaving the EU was broadcast Farage was on television beaming from ear to ear admitting they had got “that one wrong” referring to the £350 million per week. He all but admitted lying in order the Leave the EU side won. This is the man who, if polls are true, will be the UK Prime Minister in 2029. Let’s hope not.

All bourgeois politicians are to a greater or lesser degree liars. They have to be, it is a dishonest system they will govern. It is a dishonest class of people, the bourgeoisie, whose interests they will preside over and serve but even by these standards Nigel Farage is in a league of his own. He is the man who likes to portray himself as the bloke who is great company in the pub, the man who likes a pint and always has a smile on his face. On the odd occasion Farage is caught off camera his visage without the smile reveals a phoney grotesque image which is nearer the man who would be PM than the nice bloke image who likes a pint. Even by the standards of illusionary parliamentary democracy which is a dirty devious game Farage is in a different division. He would certainly be too much for the comparatively (compared to many parliaments and politicians in other countries) honest Irish Taoiseach and Dail TDs. The likes of Jim O’Callaghan, Twenty-Six-County Minister for Justice, and MLA Mathew O’Toole would be out of their depth with Farage which is why when I read in the Irish Daily Mirror their comments along with former Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, I raised an eyebrow.

On Friday 26th June 2026 the newspaper reported almost laughably 'Reform In Power May Spur A United Ireland.' Firstly let’s get one point of ideology right Reform UK are exactly that, a party to strengthen the UK not weaken it. They are a unionist party and on this subject Farage has already indicated, as leader of that party, his desire to “renegotiate” the Good Friday Agreement. Roughly translated this means tear the thing up and despite not being a supporter of the GFA text myself it is for totally different reasons to those of Reform UK. Nigel Farage claims he wishes to alter the GFA in a “minor” way through renegotiation. Of course the DUP will love this idea and from their point of view who could blame them? 

Jim O’Callaghan said; “a Reform UK government could hasten the timeline for calling referenda on Irish unification” a sentiment shared by Leo Varadkar and Mathew O’Toole. Leo’s rationale for his agreement with Jim O’Callaghan is: “a Reform led government that seeks to double down on Brexit could act as an accelerator towards reunification”. Should this happen any referenda or even a border poll would be at a time of this “reform led government's” choosing, in all probability when they feel a vote to maintain the union is a near certainty. 

Failing that those who innocently believe Farage is a normal politician, even allowing for the accepted level of deviousness, should ask themselves a united Ireland under which flag? Reform UK are very fond of the Union Jack and are unlikely to want one of the three crosses of which the flag consists removed. For those who are unaware the crosses which combine to make up the Union Flag, or Jack, are the Cross of Saint George (England), the Cross of Saint Andrew (Scotland), and the Cross of Saint Patrick (Ireland), now “Northern Ireland” since 1922. 

It is not beyond Nigel Farage to suggest the Twenty-Six-Counties returning to the British Commonwealth Realms, consisting of fourteen countries of the fifty-six member states which comprise the whole commonwealth, with the British Monarch as head of state. Farage would, if this were to happen, bank on the Irish government having all eyes on unification forgetting who will be head of state until it’s too late! Should the Irish refuse this arrangement Farage could possibly use bully boy tactics, like his mate Trump, to force the issue. Should such a “Reform led government” decide on a border poll at their discretion they would make sure it went their way. They could then tell all nationalist groups, including the Dublin government, they’ve ‘had their much wished for referendum or border poll and lost now shut the fuck up about it’!

Nigel Farage is no friend of Ireland despite his friendly overtures towards Dublin. Hitler was once friendly towards Czechoslovakian leader, Edvard Benes, at the time of the Munich Agreement over the Sudetenland. This was until he got his way then the paper smile dropped and a more aggressive Hitler, the real one, came to the fore as Nazi tanks steamrolled over the entire country. 

It was suggested that a rise in “English nationalism” could bring forward any referenda on Irish unity. This again is an illusion because England is the metropolis of the UK in fact the UK could be described as an ‘English Empire’ and any split involving England leaving the union would be, for Reform UK, unthinkable. A reformed UK yes, a UK without England no-way! Speaking at an event in Belfast on the 25th June Mr O’Callaghan suggested:

There could be (a poll in the next four years) if Reform came to power, if they decided they wanted to get out of the European Convention on Human Rights and if that required them to dispense with Northern Ireland, that could occur, but I can’t predict the future. 

You certainly got the last line right, Jim, you certainly cannot “predict the future”. I think your wishful thinking for a far-right government in Britain, one to the right of Thatcher’s government which murdered ten Irish Republican POWs, will benefit Ireland think again. Such fanciful talk is akin to Arthur Scargill promoting a Thatcher led government because they would save the coal industry!

When dealing with Reform UK and Nigel Farage in particular it is like ‘taking soup with the Devil’  always use a long spoon. Look through Farage’s paper smile, the great bloke to have a pint with image, and treat with suspicion at least anything the man says. He and his cohort Boris Johnson, who lacked the basic intelligence to do it alone, conned the English people with their lies about the £350 million per week going to the EU, claiming that money could be spent of the “NHS”. He then went on television laughing at the fact he had pulled it off. Will the Twenty-Six-County administration be a match for this sheep in wolves clothing? Not a fucking hope in hell, more likely he, Farage, could take back the whole of Ireland claiming it to be unified once again under the UK flag!! 

Forewarned is forearmed. And remember, Farage was weaned in the Thatcher tradition of the day, herself a would-be fascist - fortunately her party was not. Nigel Farage the man with racist and fascist views has a party of likeminded people under him. When dealing with this man remember Czechoslovakia and Edvard Benes 1938!! 
     
Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.
I

They Really Do Not Know Nigel

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand And Twenty

 

A Morning Thought @ 3193

Jim Duffy ✍ Power is back. Oops. Gone again. Darn it. Love going to bed by candelabra. 

I couldn't find the single candle. Oh its back again. LOL Gone again. Either that or the fan is becoming alive on its own or haunted.
 
I have often thought of getting one of my grandparents' old oil maps filled and ready for use in the event of power failures. They used them before rural electrification in our area in the 1950s.
 
The biggest shock in rural electrification apparently wasn't the light, or having radio, but that people realised for the first time how dirty and dusty their homes were. By oil lamps and soft candle lights a lot of the dirt was invisible, especially as thatched houses had small windows so rooms weren't very bright in day time. The first reaction on electric light turning on was to say "oh my god! Look at the dirt and dust everywhere. I never saw it before." It had been invisible in the dimly lit parts of rooms. Now, the light got everywhere and everything could be seen.
 
There were a lot of embarrassed housewives (it was the eta of strict gender demarcation in work) mortified at the state of their homes until they realised everywhere, from thatched houses to castles were in the same boat. So vast amounts of cleaning followed on from the electric light turning on.

On farms, cows were spooked by electric light rather than oil lamps and candles. So were dogs and cats. Even though their eyesight works differently, they could tell that something was different and it took them quite a while to get used to it. I noticed that with my sister's cats. Even though they can see in the dark, in a power cut they kept looking around thinking "something is different." I had to grab Damien when he made a move to walk along the mantlepiece. His tail and the lit candle were liable to collide.
 
Power still gone, after a few spurts. At least that means they are trying to fix it. Thank god for that silver candelabra!

⏩ Jim Duffy is a writer-historian.

Candelabra

Barry Gilheany ✍ Most of my interactions with opponents on social media and on TPQ are ultimately based on abstract concepts and intellectually formed frameworks of ethics be they race and immigration, abortion international relations, Brexit, the Israel/Palestine conflict and its blowback, identity etc. 

But my experience of the latest heatwave to affect Britain (and especially East Anglia where I live) and Europe brings to the table the elements of lived experience and the personal as political. For sweltering in badly insulated apartments during temperatures north of 35 C (with humidity pushing the felt temperature towards 40 C); being enveloped in literally hot air when venturing out; sleep being virtually impossible and the incapacitating of one’s thinking and tasking resources through the inability to focus and concentrate brings home the reality of climate change generated heat. A reality that climate change ignoramuses such as the Irish far right shitposter David Quinn and the media ecosystem of pundits that he belongs to happily deny. I swore at him on X with even more vehemence than I do at antivaxxers, antimigrant bigots, 9/11 Truthers or any other contemporary conspiracist as I felt that his denials were as gratuitously offensive as those of antivaxxers to the victims of Covid.

For, in the Observer view “It’s the climate, stupid’.[1] Commentating on the meteorological events of the previous ten days; the issuing of three red warnings for three consecutive days, the closure of schools, delayed trains, the malfunction of hospital machines such as scanners causing appointments to be cancelled, the busiest ever day for London Ambulance Service in terms of life threatening emergencies and, as tragicomic irony, the cancelation by climate conference organisers of a session on extreme heat because of extreme heat, the Observer drily points out that the debate should not merely be about hot housing and air conditioning but about climate change in its entirety. For it is tautologous (except to the denial lobby of which more later whose shrill tones are becoming worrying louder) to state that climate change touches everybody and every part of the economy. Because of the urgency of it in terms of a medium-term national challenge and the existential nature of it as an international challenge, a proper strategy for the Prime Minister elect Andy Burnham to address has to be near as possible to the top of his to-do list.[2]

However one particular aspect of a proper climate change strategy is currently set to put Labour on the horns of an acute political dilemma. For as part of Britain’s long-term goal to reach Net Zero carbon emissions by 2050 (the fossil fuel industries being the greatest emitters), Energy Secretary Ed Milliband and others will urge Burnham to rule out new North Sea oil and gas exploration licenses. However, excessively high energy prices for British consumers and industry, even before the Iran war they were nearly 90% higher than the median for the EU’s 14 richest countries, due to the UK power grid’s reliance on imported gas when the wind stops blowing and the severe vicissitudes in prices at times of war, is making the transition unaffordable.[3] Energy is intensely political and has become the latest culture war issue that that the Alt-Right has taken up.

Energy prices have been seized upon with alacrity by Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative Party. At a right-wing conference in London dubbed the “anti-woke Davos”, she singled out the “villain” responsible for Britain’s economic woes. “His name is Ed Miliband, and he has made our country poorer”, Badenoch proclaimed to applause. This gathering had been convened by the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, whose backers include the owner of the Gbeebies (GB News) and an assortment of fossil fuel companies. Among the attendees from the Trump administration was its energy secretary, Chris Wright, himself a former fossil fuel executive, who described Britain’s green policies as a “tragic mistake”. As a piece of comedic irony, as an example of the imitation of art by life in the manner of the film Don’t Look Up, Jonathon Freedland reports that according to those who were there, the thousands of climate sceptics and opponents of multiculturalism and “wokeness” gathered at the conference venue in Olympia, West London were sweltering, fanning themselves against a London temperature that remained stubbornly above 35C while listening to the likes of Wright, using fans distributed in goodie bags and emblazoned with the slogans, “Free speech never felt so cool.”[4]

However beyond the increasingly mainstreaming lunatic fringe of the anti-woke right, the Net Zero consensus has begun to fray. Several trade unions are pushing for the afore mentioned North Sea licences because of the jobs and growth they believe they would generate. Tony Blair made the same case for North Sea drilling in his 5,700 word essay The Labour Party is Playing With Fire Over Its Future and the Future of the Country last month calling for the loosening of Net Zero targets. In Canada, Mark Carney has dismantled numerous multiple green measures and even the European Commission in Brussels is backtracking on its green commitments. But for Freedland, Net Zero is not an optional extra or an unaffordable luxury. It is a lifesaving essential.[5]

To advance Freedland’s proposition, as I wish to do, requires unpacking the question asked by Tony Blair in 1995 “Does our economy need right now the goal of clean energy or cheap energy”. As part of his takedown of Tony Blair’s argument “made using a 1990s map of the UK that no longer resembles the reality of the country in which we live”[6], Nafeez Ahmed gets to grips with what he calls the “Cheap vs Clean’ Fallacy and in the process shows that the North Sea cannot save Britain. He crunches the numbers to prove his case as follows.

Between 2010 and 2024, 14 years of Conservative drilling policy issued approximately 400 new exploration licences. Twenty fields were built which at full exhaustion over their total lifetime production will yield the equivalent of six months of UK gas demand. Au contraire, the most recent renewables auction will offset 50 times that, every year, indefinitely. The Office for Budget Responsibility has calculated a £364 billion fiscal hit from the UK’s continued reliance on global gas markets through 2050. Thus modelled across every realistic price scenario, the Treasury loses money on a typical new North Sea field.[7]

Thus for decades, every barrel of oil or cubic metre of gas pulled from the ground returned many times the energy it took to extract. This ‘energy return on investment’ (EROI) is collapsing for fossil fuels and rising for renewables. The UK’S national EROI peaked in 2000 at 9.6:1 and had fallen to 6.2:1 by 2012. An industrial economy of Britain’s complexity requires a ratio of at least 10:1 to function comfortably. The UK has glided below that threshold for almost two decades, concealing the deficit with more expensive imports from geopolitically problematic regions such as Russia and the Middle East and which are vulnerable to sudden acts of disruption such as the current closure of the Strait of Hormuz.[8]

When researchers reframe the ‘Cheap vs Clean’ energy false dichotomy in terms of what happens if enough solar and wind capacity is built to meet demand on the worst days – the cloudiest weeks of winter when wind drops off – as opposed to average demand, the result is an enormous surplus of generation for the rest of the year. With roughly 800GW of wind, 600GW of solar and approximately three days of grid-scale storage, the UK could become a clean energy superpower – producing two to three times what it currently consumes, at near marginal cost, for most of the year and exporting the surplus into a Europe that needs it.[9] The ideal prospectus for a Chancellor Ed Miliband.

If any there is any idea or policy whose time has come it is surely Miliband’s net zero transition agenda. If ever there was a time for active government to shake off the dead hand of the Treasury in the service of the greater good, it is now. However an unholy alliance of the Unite and GMB trade unions who fear Miliband’s agenda will lead to major job losses in the oil, gas and utilities sectors; leading City figures who fear that Miliband’s desire for expansive public investment to fund the green transition will cause higher borrowing imperilling the UK’s public finances and figures on the political Right such as Badenoch and Farage who see the green agenda as another front in the culture war waged by the liberal metropolitan elites against the plain people of Britain.

While the latter can be dismissed as populist but dangerous froth, the first and second of this trilogy of oppositional arguments need to be addressed which the economist Josh Ryan-Collins does convincingly. He responds to trade unionist concerns by pointing out that as Chancellor, Miliband would control the very fiduciary levers – public investment, industrial strategy, retraining programmes and social protection – which would ensure that workers and communities would not be left behind in the transition. Rather than ambitious climate change policy per se, Ryan-Collins claims that the problem resides in the reluctance of the Treasury to mobilise resources to support affected workers and regions.

References  

[1] The Observer View. 27 June 2026.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Jonathan Freedland Britain burns – and still the climate sceptics refuse to look Guardian Journal 27 June 2026 pp.1-2

[5] Ibid, p.2

[6] Nafeez Ahmed, The Real Radicalism the Moment Requires is at the Level of How the World is Seen. Byline Times July 2026 pp.25-28

[7] Ibid, p.26

[8] Ibid

[9] Ibid.

⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter.

Feel The Heat And Act 🌞 Climate Change As The Weathervane Issue Of Our Time

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand And Nineteen

 

Hate Theology @ 5

 

A Morning Thought @ 3192

Gary Robertson ⚽ Paint me purple and call me an aubergine Scotland are coming home after the group stages of the World Cup. 

Who didn’t see that coming?
 
Another glorious failure to add to a long list of sporting disasters.
 
While I’m still on my #BoycottTheWorldCup mission being on social media means it’s difficult to avoid any talk of the tournament. So when I opened Bluesky and was faced with a barrage of criticism for the dubious tactics of Steve Clarke and annoyance at a 3-0 drubbing by an average Brazil  - yes an average Brazil could beat most teams but this latest incarnation is a mere shadow of the great Brazilian teams we watched in our teens - I knew we were, unlike Jeffery Donaldson, coming home. And rather like the “great and the good” of the Loyalist community of the occupied North much talk was of how we all knew there was something dodgy about the man but we all said nothing.
 
The man of course being Steve Clarke, and his dodginess being his woeful tactics. Scotland scored one goal at the World Cup and that was a deflection (I’m sure there’s room for another Donaldson/Loyalist joke here but that’ll need to wait). We just aren’t very good and despite the hype, the dare to dream attitude of the Tartan Army reality bites hard and it’s homeward bound.
 
I note with interest Charles Windsor asking Scotland fans to cheer on England. Further evidence, as if it’s needed, that the English monarch really doesn’t live in the same world as the rest of us. True, some Scottish Rangers fans are there supporting England but this is simply Stockholm syndrome in action and proof if needed that “Care in the community” (one of Tory Blair’s policies) failed miserably and there’s a case for reopening asylums. But the majority of Scots would rather cut out their tongues than ever wish England well. 

Now don’t get me wrong they have some great players with at least one “stolen” from Ireland in the form of Declan Rice (currently injured, we wish him well). It’s not and never has been the England team but instead the English media. Sky News would be on 24hr “England win the toughest World Cup ever in history says some road sweeper called John from Scunthorpe” watch, and Skinner & Baddiel would be on 24 hours a day on most radio stations across these islands. It’s a horror of unimaginable proportions. Subjected to continuous footage of the winning goal like a scene from “A clockwork Orange” before we knew it our kids would be sounding like cockneys and singing “rule Britannia”. No, if they could keep it in the bubble that is Englandshire, fine go on win it but it wouldn’t and couldn’t be. And that’s why those of us tenuously holding on to our sanities couldn’t bear England win the World Cup. Next up for England are the DR of Congo, a land they decided not to invade on their round the world empire building “exploits”, instead leaving it to the Belgians under their king Leopold to massacre ten million plus people. Again while I won’t be watching I wish the Congolese well and hope to see them in the last 16.
 
In other news Celtic have signed “set piece coach” Ross Grant from Hearts so I guess that’s something to cheer about. Providing they hang on to the likes of Engels then hopefully he can fine tune their skills and we will see more opportunities created from what is fast becoming an integral part of the modern game.
 
The friendly between Shelbourne and Celtic still goes ahead on July 7th in Dublin and tickets are still available at time of writing from Tolka Park, an ideal opportunity for young fans who aren’t able to travel to Glasgow to see their heroes close up and perhaps photos and signatures. With a six pm kick off it’ll still be light when the match finishes and just about the perfect treat for the kids.
 
So that about wraps it up for now of course. As the season approaches, hopefully we’ll have signings to talk about, pen put to paper and contracts signed until then let’s continue to speculate.

Til next time ….

🐼 Gary Robertson is the TPQ Scottish football correspondent.

Unimaginable Horror

Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières ★ Written by Christian Zeller.

The European rearmament drive is forcing a question the left has shelved for thirty years: what should socialists say about armies and conscription? 

Christian Zeller, ecosocialist theorist and professor at the University of Salzburg, argues that the reflexive rejection of conscription — however understandable — functionally endorses the professional army, historically the more reliable instrument of capital’s class power. Drawing on the democratic soldiers’ movements of the 1970s and 1980s, and on the experience of Ukrainian popular resistance, he makes the case for an emancipatory military policy that links defence of democratic and social rights to a strategy of working-class self-organisation — including inside the armed forces. [AN]

The entire left spectrum is unprepared for the challenge of defending democratic and social achievements in Europe against external and internal threats from authoritarian states and forces. The question of the character of armies and military service is increasingly at the centre of debate — a question that socialists have barely engaged with over the past thirty years.

Militarisation and conscription

Russia launched its war against Ukraine in 2014. On 24 February 2022, the Putin dictatorship began its full-scale invasion against the Ukrainian population. 

Continue @ ESSF.

Socialists And The Army 🪶The Military Challenge Conscription, Professionalism, And The Left: Towards An Emancipatory Military Policy

Louth For Ever ★ writing in Medium on 23-May-2026.

Four events in one week, and what they showed about the terrain the contest is being fought on.



Photo by Dimitry Anikin on Unsplash

Section I: The Week

On Tuesday 18th May, Israeli naval forces intercepted the Global Sumud Flotilla in international waters as it attempted to deliver aid to Gaza. Around 430 activists were detained. At least 14 of them were Irish citizens, including Dr Margaret Connolly, a Sligo GP and sister of President Catherine Connolly. On Wednesday and Thursday, the Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir released videos of himself walking among the bound detainees holding an Israeli flag, telling them welcome to Israel, we are the landlords, and pushing one detainee to the ground. The Taoiseach said the behaviour was appalling. The Tánaiste said it was despicable and could not be consequence free. Both declined to move the Occupied Territories Bill, which has been before the Oireachtas since 2018 and has been called for repeatedly by the opposition this week.

On Wednesday 14th May, the Residential Tenancies Board published its quarterly figures. There had been 7,062 termination notices served on tenants by landlords in the first quarter of 2026, a fifty-one per cent increase on the same period in 2025, and the highest quarterly figure since the data series began in 2022. On the same day, the Daft.ie report for the first quarter of the year showed that market rents had risen by 4.4% between December and March, the largest quarterly increase the series has recorded since it began in 2002. The new rent regime which the Coalition introduced on 1st March, advertised as a stabilising reform, had produced in its first quarter the highest rent rise in twenty-five years and the highest eviction figures on record. The country’s largest commercial landlord told its investors the new rules would produce a twenty-five per cent increase in its rental income over the coming decade.

On Friday 15th May, on Henry Street in Dublin city centre, a thirty-five year old Congolese man named Yves Sakila was held on the ground for approximately five minutes by five private security guards from a firm contracted to Arnotts, after an alleged shoplifting incident from which Sakila had attempted to flee. He had injured an elderly man in his eighties as he ran. The five men held him on the ground until he stopped responding. He was pronounced dead at the Mater Hospital. He had been in Ireland for over twenty years, had lived in a Salvation Army hostel in Dublin 1, and was described by staff at the Granby Centre as pleasant and quiet, with a deep interest in technology and a habit of attending prayer services. His family in the Democratic Republic of the Congo learned of his death online. The Congolese Community in Ireland held a vigil for him on Henry Street on Tuesday 19th May.

On Friday 22nd May, by-elections took place in two constituencies. Dublin Central was filling the seat vacated by Paschal Donohoe in November. Galway West was filling the seat vacated by Catherine Connolly when she was elected President in October. The counting began on Saturday morning. The first preference picture is now in.

This was the week

Section II: The week the framework spoke

The previous essay in this body of work argued that a hegemonic project, in the precise sense that it seeks to become the framework through which a generation makes sense of its political situation, is what is currently consolidating across these islands. It argued that this project operates on integrated terrains. Anti-immigration nativism. Patriarchal restoration. Anti-EU sentiment positioned as the recovery of sovereignty. The colonisation of working-class economic grievance through narratives that locate responsibility in external enemies rather than in structural failures. It argued that a counter-hegemonic project must hold the integrated terrain on its own terms, contesting both the political sphere and the ideological sphere, and that no party in the current Irish opposition holds the form the contest requires.

The week described in the previous section is what happens when the framework that essay named is operating in plain view across multiple terrains at once.

The flotilla story is the foreign-policy terrain. Israeli state behaviour towards Irish citizens, including the President’s sister, is condemned in the strongest available rhetorical terms by both the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste. The legislation that would translate the rhetoric into material action — the Occupied Territories Bill, before the Oireachtas since 2018 — remains unmoved. The Coalition is performing the position the political ground demands while declining the action the position would require. The gap between rhetorical position and material act is the gap.

The housing data is the economic terrain. The Coalition’s signature housing policy, introduced on 1 March as a stabilising reform, has produced in its first verified quarter the largest rent rise in twenty-five years and the highest eviction figures on record. The country’s largest commercial landlord has told its investors that the new rules will produce a twenty-five per cent uplift in its rental income over the coming decade. The policy serves a specific constituency, and that constituency is not renters. The economic terrain on which the far right is building hegemonic capacity is being made by Coalition policy more material every quarter.

The death on Henry Street is the ideological terrain made physical. A Black homeless man, a member of a community the far right has been targeting in pub conversations and on doorsteps and in podcasts for years, is held on the ground for five minutes by five private security guards and dies there. The Congolese Community in Ireland says it does not feel safe any more. What makes a community feel that, and what makes five men hold a man on the ground for five minutes for a shoplifting allegation, are connected to the same framework whose contest this essay is about. The ideological sphere does not stay abstract. It reaches the street.

The by-elections were the political-sphere test. The Dublin Central count has reached its third stage as this essay publishes. The Galway West first count has just landed. The first-preference picture across both is in, and the first-preference picture is what the closing section reads. Final seat allocations will arrive on their own time. The structural fact does not wait for them.

These are not four separate stories. They are one story, told across four terrains, in one week.

Section III: Henry Street

Yves Sakila was thirty-five years old. He came to Ireland in 2004, when he was thirteen. He lived here for more than twenty-two years. By the spring of 2026 he was homeless. He had been living for some time at the Salvation Army’s Granby Centre in Dublin 1, where staff described him as pleasant and quiet, with a deep interest in technology, and a habit of sometimes attending the Centre’s prayer services. He left the Granby Centre on the morning of Friday 15th May. The staff who said goodbye to him that morning were the last people there to see him alive.

Shortly before five o’clock that afternoon, on Henry Street, he was alleged to have shoplifted from Arnotts. As he attempted to flee, he knocked an elderly man in his eighties to the ground, leaving him seriously injured. Five private security guards contracted to the store gave chase, caught him, and brought him to the ground. They held him there for approximately five minutes. The footage that has been released shows him at the start of the five minutes audibly shouting in distress. By the end of the five minutes, he is motionless. He was pronounced dead at the Mater Hospital that evening.

His brothers and his uncle, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, learned of his death online. His family in Ireland, and the Congolese Community in Ireland, learned of it through phone calls and through the news.

On Tuesday 19th May, the Congolese Community in Ireland held a vigil for him on Henry Street. The vice president of the Community, Laure Zoya, said that he was more than a headline. He was a member of their community, a professional, a human being whose life mattered. Members of the community said they did not feel safe any more. Flowers were placed at the spot. Prayers and songs were offered. The vigil ended.

These are the facts of one man’s life and death.

They are also, and this is the only structural reading the essay will offer of them, the facts of what the ideological sphere produces when it reaches the street. The far right’s project, the project the sixth essay named as a hegemonic contest, has been building for years on the everyday terrain of who is seen as belonging here and who is seen as not. The conversations on doorsteps. The phrasings in WhatsApp groups. The cultural production around national identity and who counts as Irish. The slow movement of what feels like common sense about Black men in Irish cities. None of this is a direct cause of what happened on Henry Street. None of it can be. The Garda investigation will establish what happened. The case has been referred to the Garda Síochána Ombudsman, Fiosrú. The legal process will work in its time.

But the conditions under which a Black homeless man could be held on the ground for five minutes by five men in front of bystanders, in a country where the everyday discourse about who belongs has been moving in a particular direction for years, are not separable from those conditions. The Congolese Community in Ireland said that they do not feel safe any more. They are saying something the framework the previous essay named would predict them to be saying.

Yves Sakila has been denied human dignity in death by some of the framings of the days that followed it. This section has tried to refuse that denial. He was a person. He had a name. He had been in this country since he was thirteen years old. He died on Henry Street on Friday 15th May 2026 and that fact does not become smaller because it is also the fact that the framework the essay is engaging is operating.

Section IV: The position and the act

The Occupied Territories Bill has been before the Oireachtas since 2018. It was first introduced by Senator Frances Black to give material expression to Ireland’s stated position on the illegality of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory. The bill has passed stages in the Seanad and the Dáil at various points in its history. It has been called for by every Irish opposition party, by civil society organisations, by international legal scholars, and by Palestinians themselves. It has not been moved into law. Successive governments have argued that the legal advice they received from the Attorney General concluded the bill was incompatible with EU competence. Successive governments have declined to publish that advice or to enact the bill in a form that would address the legal concerns. The bill has sat where the bill has sat.

On Tuesday 18th May, Israeli forces intercepted the Global Sumud Flotilla in international waters. Around 430 activists were detained. At least 14 of them were Irish citizens. The Taoiseach said the interception was absolutely unacceptable. He said that it was no longer tenable that it could be business as usual with Israel. The Tánaiste said that the actions of the Israeli government were despicable and could not be consequence free. Both said that they would discuss with EU partners how to ensure the safety and wellbeing of Irish citizens.

On Wednesday and Thursday, Itamar Ben-Gvir released videos of himself walking among the bound detainees holding an Israeli flag, telling them welcome to Israel, we are the landlords, and pushing one detainee to the ground. He told Prime Minister Netanyahu in a second video to give them to him for the terrorist prisons. The Taoiseach said he was appalled and shocked by the footage. The Tánaiste said it was a further clear breach of international law and disgusting. The Coalition continued to decline to move the Occupied Territories Bill. The Taoiseach explained in the Dáil that passing the bill would not change Israel’s behaviour.

This is the structural pattern. The Coalition can describe Israeli state behaviour in the strongest available rhetorical terms — appalling, despicable, disgusting, unacceptable, breach of international law — and decline to translate the description into material action. The rhetorical position is performed at the level the political ground demands. The action is withheld at the level the position would require. The gap between the two is the gap.

The sixth essay diagnosed this pattern in Sinn Féin’s procedural absorption of structural critique. The same pattern is operating here, from the other direction. Cullinane absorbed the reproductive rights question through procedural framing about the bill’s specific provisions. The Coalition absorbs the Occupied Territories question through procedural framing about EU competence and the bill’s expected effect on Israeli behaviour. In both cases, the position is performed and the act is withheld. In both cases, the procedural framing is not invented — it is the form the structural feature produces every time the substantive question is hard.

The bill that would translate Ireland’s stated position on illegal settlements into material consequence has been before the Oireachtas for eight years. The President’s sister was among the detainees Ben-Gvir was filming. The bill still has not moved.

Section V: The terrain Coalition policy is making

The Coalition’s reform of the rental sector came into effect on 1st March 2026. It was advertised as a stabilising measure that would protect renters by introducing six-year minimum tenancies and a national two per cent annual cap on rent increases inside Rent Pressure Zones. The Taoiseach and the Minister for Housing said the reforms would bring greater security to tenants and stimulate investment in supply.

The first verified quarter of the new regime is now in the record. The Residential Tenancies Board reports that 7,062 termination notices were served on tenants by landlords in the first quarter of 2026, a fifty-one per cent increase on the same period in 2025, and the highest quarterly figure since the data series began. Sixty per cent of the notices were issued because the landlord intended to sell the property. The Daft.ie report for the same quarter records that market rents rose by 4.4% between December and March, the largest quarterly increase the series has documented since it began in 2002. Average market rent for a two-bedroom apartment has now passed €2,100 per month. The economist Ronan Lyons, who compiles the Daft.ie series, described the initial impact of the new system as an increase in market rents larger than any seen over the past twenty-five years.

In its preliminary results for 2025, Ires Reit — Ireland’s largest commercial residential landlord, owner of 3,627 rental properties — told investors that the Coalition’s reforms could produce a 25% potential rental income uplift with minimal added costs across its portfolio. The company’s chief executive said its existing rents had been assessed as approximately 20% below market value, and that the new framework would allow them to be gradually reset. The Coalition’s signature housing policy serves a specific constituency, and that constituency is not renters.

This is the economic terrain the previous essay named as one of the four terrains the far right’s hegemonic project is integrating. The colonisation of working-class economic grievance through narratives that locate responsibility in external enemies rather than in structural failures. The structural failure on this terrain is in plain view. The Coalition’s reforms have produced, in their first verified quarter, the largest rent rise in twenty-five years, the highest eviction figures on record, and a documented twenty-five per cent uplift in income for the country’s largest commercial landlord. The grievance the far right is colonising is being made more material every quarter by the policy.

The Coalition is, in a precise sense, the supply line for the project it claims to oppose. The economic conditions on which the far right is building hegemonic capacity are the conditions Coalition policy is producing. The policy is not failing to address the grievance. The policy is the source of new grievance the project has yet to colonise.

Section VI: What two electorates answered

On Saturday 23rd May, the counting in Dublin Central reached its third count by the late afternoon. The Social Democrats’ Daniel Ennis topped the poll on the first count with 4,903 first preference votes. Sinn Féin’s Janice Boylan was second on 4,348, a margin of 555 votes. The political correspondent Gavan Reilly described the seat as a done deal by midday. By the third count Ennis still held the lead. The seat will be filled by the Social Democrats. In Mary Lou McDonald’s own constituency, in the week the Coalition’s housing policy delivered the largest rent rise in twenty-five years and the highest evictions on record, in the week of Sakila, in the week of the flotilla and the Occupied Territories Bill still unmoved, Sinn Féin has come second.

The Galway West first count was completed in the early evening. Independent Ireland’s Noel Thomas led the count with 10,007 first preference votes. Fine Gael’s Seán Kyne was second on 9,647, a margin of 360 votes. The seat will be decided on transfers and the count will adjourn into Sunday. Whichever of Thomas or Kyne takes it, the seat goes to a Coalition party or to a party explicitly campaigning on cost of living and immigration from the political terrain the far right is colonising. Sinn Féin’s Mark Lohan finished seventh with 3,208 first preference votes. Behind the Social Democrats. Behind one independent. Behind Labour. Behind Fianna Fáil.

These are the answers two electorates gave to a question the political ground had spent the week putting to them. The question was whether the political form representing the constituency the Coalition is failing exists in the current Irish party system. The Dublin answer was the Social Democrats — the party clean on reproductive rights, compromised on climate, the party closer than any other major opposition formation to the framework the previous essay named. The Galway answer was a contest between the governing party that produced the conditions and the anti-immigration party that promises to restore control over them. In neither answer was Sinn Féin the form.

This is what the previous essay’s structural argument predicted. The absorption pattern is constitutive of how Sinn Féin operates. The pattern is not contingent on the issue. The pattern produces electoral consequence on the terrain where the political ground is most favourable to the party, in the week when the conditions for an opposition project building on cost-of-living grievance are most legible to voters. The argument has now been tested by two electorates on a single day and the test has produced the result the argument anticipated.

The Coalition is in a precise sense the supply line for the project it claims to oppose. The Social Democrats hold the progressive terrain in Dublin but did not hold the climate terrain on Wednesday 13th May. Labour and the Greens and People Before Profit held both terrains but the constituencies they currently mobilise are insufficient to the scale the contest requires. Sinn Féin has the scale and not the form. The form a counter-hegemonic project requires does not exist in any single party.

What the week showed is that the framework is operating on every terrain at once. The flotilla. The policy. The death on Henry Street. The two by-elections. None of these is a separate story. They are aspects of a single contest for the framework through which a generation makes sense of its political situation. The far right is contesting that framework with an integrated project across all the terrains. The Irish opposition is contesting it with parts of the framework distributed across parties that cannot or will not hold them together.

The Social Democrats won a seat on Saturday. Independent Ireland is positioned to take another. Sinn Féin finished second in McDonald’s own constituency and seventh in Galway West. The body of work is seven essays long now. The argument the previous essay made has been answered by two electorates on a single day. The form that could hold the framework does not yet exist. What is built from here is now being built by the people the argument is engaging.

References

The Global Sumud Flotilla. Reporting from RTÉ, The Irish Times, the Irish Examiner, IrishCentral, and the Associated Press, 18–22 May 2026.

Itamar Ben-Gvir video statements. As reported by RTÉ, The Irish Times, and the Irish Examiner, 20 May 2026.

Statements by Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Tánaiste Simon Harris on the flotilla interception and the Ben-Gvir video. As reported in The Irish Times and RTÉ, 18–21 May 2026.

The Occupied Territories Bill. Introduced in the Seanad by Senator Frances Black, 2018. Statutory history available at oireachtas.ie.

Residential Tenancies Board, quarterly data, Q1 2026. Reporting by The Irish Times, the Irish Examiner, RTÉ, and The Journal, 14 May 2026.

Daft.ie quarterly rental report, Q1 2026. Reporting by The Irish Times and the Irish Examiner, 20 May 2026. Compiled by Professor Ronan Lyons, Trinity College Dublin.

Ires Reit preliminary results for 2025, as reported by RTÉ News and The Irish Times, February-March 2026.

The death of Yves Sakila on Henry Street, 15 May 2026. Reporting by RTÉ, The Irish Times, The Journal, and breakingnews.ie, 15–20 May 2026. Statements by the Irish Network Against Racism and Laure Zoya of the Congolese Community in Ireland.

Dublin Central by-election, 22–23 May 2026. First-count results as reported by RTÉ News (Samantha Libreri) and The Irish Times. Tally reporting by Gavan Reilly (Virgin Media News) and Simon McGarr.

Galway West by-election, 22–23 May 2026. First-count results as reported by The Journal and RTÉ News (Pat McGrath). Tally reporting by Gavan Reilly (Virgin Media News).

🞹The sixth essay in this body of work, No Form To Hold It, published on Medium 15th May 2026.

⏩Louth For Ever writes on Irish politics and constitutional change. Follow for analysis of Ireland’s democratic future as it’s constructed by those actually engaged in the work.

The Week The Framework Spoke

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