Social Items

TPQ
Tricontinental ★ Recommended by Tommy McKearney

While the capitalist system rewards short-term cycles, building a dignified future is a slow task that requires disciplined organisation and an enduring struggle to bring forth the social forces of a new world.

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

In 1921, a few years into the Soviet experiment, V. I. Lenin published an essay with the revealing title ‘New Times and Old Mistakes in a New Guise’. The essay opened a line of inquiry that would remain with Lenin until the end of his life three years later. What captivated him was the issue of how to build socialism in a country ravaged by war, with minimal capital at its disposal, a largely peasant society with high rates of illiteracy (around 70%), and no public administration capable of running a socialist-oriented state. In the essay, Lenin reflected:

After an enormous, unparalleled exertion of effort, the working class in a small-peasant, ruined country, the working class which has very largely become declassed, needs an interval of time in which to allow new forces to grow and be brought to the fore, and in which the old and worn-out forces can ‘recuperate’. … 

Continue @ Tricontinental.

Socialism Is Slow to Mature

Christopher Owens đźŽµ with the 64th in his Predominance series.

“The sun went down and the ground started sort of grinding/A blinding light it tore the sky/A cyclone swept the landscape out and left it completely flattened out/And several twirls of smoke unfolded like gigantic flowers/The way the morning broke was quite unusual.” - Front 242

Horns up 

New Horizons


Extinction of Mankind – Slaves to No One

Amazingly, this is only their second album in 20 years (and fifth in total) but Scoot and the lads still deliver a punishingly cathartic set of metallic crust punk numbers that confront the problems in the world. Songs like ‘Defund the BBC’ are so crusty, they give the likes of Martyrdod a run for their money while ‘Fucked Up Society’ is a riif and a half.

The album can be streamed and purchased here.

Hard-Fi - Sweating Someone Else's Fever

15 years on, Hard-Fi aren’t as keen to go out the way they used to in case they get beaten up on the night bus or arrested. Musically, they’re still mining punk, house and dub for a sound that may not be a revolutionary as it once was but comes across as rejuvenated and boisterous in a sterile mainstream landscape. It’s time to get behind Hard-Fi and sing their praises.

The album can be streamed and purchased here.

Laibach - Musick

Turning their attention to these times, Laibach use the format of current chart music and its plastic platitudes to examine/celebrate/condemn Luigi Mangione, lockdowns, riots, AI, the cheapening of music and algorithms. It’s funny, until you consider how Laibach have mocked authoritanism in the past and you wonder if we are sleepwalking into a new kind.

The album can be streamed and purchased here

Golden Oldies


Dinosaur Jr – Bug

Although not quite as astonishing as the previous year’s ‘You’re Living All Over Me’, this is still an essential blend of noise rock, with ‘Freak Scene’ being one of the pivotal indie singles of the era and J.Mascis’ slack delivery of the line “so fucked I can’t believe it” summed up an entire generation. Closer ‘Don’t’ indicated that all wasn’t well with bassist Lou Barlow.



Antisect – The Rising Of The Lights

Waiting over 30 years to follow up an album as iconic as ‘In Darkness, There is No Choice’ seems like madness, but Antisect did so and while it doesn’t reach those lofty heights (how could it) it’s still an astonishing record that casts its eye over Britain in the 21st century while channeling Killing Joke and Hawkwind into its sound.



Afrika Bambaataa & Soulsonic Force - Planet Rock

Although now disgraced due to well documented allegations of child molestation, Afrika Bambaataa was a pioneer of hip hop and this record (essentially a comp) stands up as an example of old school rap when it could also be tagged as electro. ‘Who You Funkin' With?’, a collaboration with Melle Mel and Tack<<<Head, is an expected highlight.



Amy MacDonald – This is the Life

Nearly 20 years since its release, it’s amazing how this record still stands up. Written when she was a teenager in Bishopbriggs, MacDonald’s yearning vocals match the angst and sincerity of teenage life (check out ‘A Wish for Something More’ as such an example) while the production lifts the songs beyond mere acoustic music and into something a little more life affirming.



⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist and is the author of A Vortex of Securocrats and “dethrone god”.

Predominance 64

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand And Fourteen

 

Religious Derangement Syndrome @ 4

 

A Morning Thought @ 3187

Dixie Elliot ✊We know who the first man to set foot on the moon was. 

But did you know that the first people to set foot in Ireland were immigrants?
 
That and other things you might not know:

The first people to arrive in Ireland were Mesolithic hunter-gathers who travelled across Europe and arrived in Ireland by boat around 8,000 BC.
 
So were the first inhabitants of Ireland immigrants or were they Irish?

Well Ireland hadn't got an name yet so obviously they weren't Irish.
 
Then in 4,500 BC the Neolithic Farmers came from Anatolia, which would now be known as Turkey.
More bloody immigrants!

Ireland still wasn't called Ireland so they weren't Irish either which meant that the country was full of foreigners, even before the Irish came.
 
Fuck off! Where did the Irish come from if there was nowhere called Ireland?

During the Bronze and Iron ages the Celts were moving around central Europe including Northern Spain. These people were described as Keltoi by the Greeks and they spoke a precursor to the modern Celtic languages. Along the way they integrated with other tribes, stayed in the one place or moved on.

Around 500BC the first of these Keltoi people arrived in Ireland. They didn't invade, they just arrived and kept coming over the course of time and settled here. The language these people spoke is well over a thousand years older than the English language which originated in and around where Germany is today. The Anglo-Saxons eventually brought the English language to Britain.
 
The Celts called the land they settled in Ériu, their word for describing a 'fertile land.' In their mythology Ériu became the name of a goddess and together with her sisters, Banba and Fódla, she represented the spirit of the island.

So Ireland eventually had a name.

In 795 AD the Vikings began raiding the coastal areas of Ireland, plundering and pillaging. These Norsemen, who were primarily from Norway, were a right shower of baduns. They eventually began to settle along the coast, so that they'd have somewhere to park their longships. Viking ports were eventually established at Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Cork and Limerick, which became the first large towns in Ireland.

After they had been defeated by an army led by the High King of Ireland, Brian Boru, at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014, the Vikings gave up on the idea of conquering Ireland. Instead, the Norse established coastal settlements like Dublin and increasingly assimilated into Irish society.
However, the kinsmen of the Viking Norsemen, who were also primarily from Norway, had been at the same carry-on in in what would become known as Normandy in northwestern France, which was of course named after themselves and they became known as the Normans.
 
This lot eventually got round to invading England which, at the time, had been ruled by the Anglo-Saxons, who, as I already pointed out, originally came from Germany. The Normans, led by William the Conqueror, defeated the Anglo-Saxons, led by King Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Apparently he was keeping an eye on them when an arrow went clean through that eye killing him stone dead. Or so they say.
 
Over time the victorious Normans intermarried with the Anglo-Saxons and the Celts in Britain and became known as the Anglo-Normans.

In 1167 Dermot MacMurrough, the deposed King of Leinster, asked the English King Henry ll to help him regain his territory after rival Irish lords and the High King of Ireland Rory O'Connor forced him into exile. Henry told him to give a guy called Strongbow a shout. Strongbow had just discovered that if you crush apples you can get an alcoholic drink called cider, which was becoming very popular at the time, and he didn't want to go to Ireland in case others started into the cider making business while he was away invading.
 
MacMurrough told Strongbow that if he gave him a hand out he'd give him his daughter Aoife's hand in marriage. She was a fine looking colleen so Strongbow agreed to help him and in 1169 the Anglo-Normans invaded Ireland. MacMurrough became the King of Leinster again and Strongbow cider became the most popular alcoholic drink in Ireland until Arthur Guinness invented the black stuff.
Strongbow married Aoife and MacMurrough was glad to be back on his throne, although his arse wasn't on it for more than two years before he died in 1171. The Anglo-Normans went on to help themselves to the rest of Ireland.
 
Now here's the thing. Over time the Anglo-Normans assimilated into Gaelic society, adopted the Irish language, embraced local customs, and intermarried with the native clans. They famously became 'more Irish than the Irish themselves.'

The English Crown weren't having any of this as it threatened their control over Ireland, so Parliament passed the Statutes of Kilkenny in 1366. These laws strictly banned the Anglo-Normans from speaking Irish, adopting Irish names, dressing like the Gaels, or marrying native Irish people. However, these laws largely failed to stop the ongoing Gaelicisation of the Anglo-Normans.

So, in brief, the first people to arrive on these shores were immigrants. These immigrants kept coming until the first of the Celts turned up and they too were immigrants.
 
The Vikings and the Anglo-Normans came as invaders not immigrants, but Irish culture suited them just fine so they got tore into it and out came the jugs of Strongbow.

Irish culture, including the Gaelic language was as strong as it had always been. It remained that way until the time of the Irish Holocaust (The Famine) in 1845 when the deliberate starvation of the poor Irish people forced them to flee from the shores of Ireland, in coffin ships, seeking a better way of life. They went for the most part to America, where racism was waiting to greet them as soon as they arrived on Ellis Island in New York.

The London Times, at a time when the exodus was at it's most pitiful, screamed with delight in one of its editorials...

They are going! They are going! The Irish are going with a vengeance. Soon a Celt will be as rare in Ireland as a Red Indian on the shores of Manhattan. 

It is estimated that up to 2 million people left Ireland for North America, Australia, and Britain to escape starvation and disease between the years 1845 and 1855. Since then, between 9 and 10 million Irish born people have emigrated from this country.
 
Today the Irish diaspora; that being all those known to have Irish ancestors, is believed to be in the region of over 100 million people, which is more than fifteen times the population of the island of Ireland. Which is the reason why Saint Patrick's Day is the most widely celebrated national holiday across the world. More so than even the USA's 4th of July.

How ironic that the Far-Right in Ireland accuses todays foreign immigrants of being 'invaders' who are a 'threat to our culture' and that within twenty years Irish people will be as rare in Ireland as Eskimos in the Sahara Desert. Oh and Muslims will impose Sharia Law on the few remaining Irish people who will be driven into the likes of the Mourne Mountains or the bogs round Barnesmore Gap.
 
You don't need to ridicule that warped logic as it ridicules itself.

James Connolly wrote in July 1900:
 
All races are mixed more or less; a pure race does not exist. The modern Irish race is a composite blending - on the original Celtic stock have been grafted shoots from all the adventurous races of the continent.

Roger Casement made clear his feelings on racial purity back in 1904:

The more we love our land and wish to help her people the more keenly we feel we cannot turn a deaf ear to suffering and injustice in any part of the world . . . 
And remember that a Nation is a very complex thing – it never does consist, it never has consisted of men of one blood or of one single race. It is like a river which rises far off in the hills and has many sources, many converging streams before it becomes one great stream.
 
Bobby Sands scrawled his thoughts on racial unity on a filthy wall in his prison cell when he wrote his famous poem:

The Rhythm of Time

"It is found in every light of hope,
It knows no bounds nor space,
It has risen in red and black and white
It is there in every race.
It lights the dark of this prison cell
It thunders forth its might,
It is the undauntable thought my friend
That thought that says ‘I’m right’!"

The whole history of Ireland has been one of immigration. The immigrant came to these shores at the beginning of time in search of a better way of life. In more recent centuries the Irish immigrant was forced to leave these shores in search of a better way of life.
 
Racism is a refuge for the ignorant. It seeks to divide and to destroy. It is the enemy of freedom, and deserves to be met head-on and stamped out. - Pierre Berton

 

Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman.
Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie

Where Did The Irish Come From If There Was Nowhere Called Ireland?

Mohammed ibn Faisal al-Rashid ★ Recommended by Christy Walsh.

The US’s once-unwavering support for Israel is rapidly eroding due to shifting public opinion driven by open information and Netanyahu’s own actions.

The US’s once-unwavering support for Israel is rapidly eroding due to shifting public opinion driven by open information and Netanyahu’s own actions, leading to a rethinking of US-Israel relations.

From Political Taboo to Open Rejection

Not long ago, questioning Washington’s unconditional support for Israel was a political death sentence. American lawmakers, presidential candidates, and even human rights advocates steered clear of the topic as if it were a cursed circle. Today, that circle has been broken. Since October 2023, public opinion in the United States has undergone a tectonic shift. What was built over decades with billions of dollars in lobbying efforts is collapsing before our very eyes. And the numbers are relentless.

And the cruelest truth for Netanyahu isn’t even that America will soon start acting against his interests — it’s that it will no longer be a political scandal. It will be the new normal.

Numbers You Can’t Ignore

American approval of Israel’s military actions in the Gaza Strip has fallen to a catastrophic 32 percent.

The Collapse Of The Sacred Alliance 🪶 How Israel Is Losing America

Caoimhin O’Muraile  ☭ On 1st July 2026 the twenty-six-county government will take over the six-monthly rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union. 

Their term of office will expire on the 31st of December and this will be the Dublin Government’s eighth stint at the Presidency since joining the then Common Market back in 1973. England voted to leave the European Union back in 2016 and forced, against their wishes, Scotland and the Six-Counties with them while many in the Twenty-Six Counties started, encouraged by so-called ‘Brexiteers’ like far-right MP Nigel Farage, making silly noises about us leaving in line with the UK. This would, in my view, be foolish because despite the EU being a capitalist bloc based on the principle of exploitation of the many by the few it is one of the largest trading blocs in the world and Ireland, or three-quarters of it, are better off in than out even under capitalist conditions.

Just for clarity and in case Mr Farage does not know, the Twenty-Six-Counties stopped taking orders from Westminster 104 years ago! The EU certainly strengthens European capitalism but it also gives the working-class of the member states easier communication with each other. The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) represents workers at EU level representing 45 million workers acting as the primary voice of European workers in EU decision-making. Fortunately for British workers the Trades Union Congress (TUC) remain affiliated to ETUC despite the UK no longer being a member of the bloc.

The representatives of European business class interests will shortly be sitting at the table presided over by the twenty-six-county administration. Keep an eye open for some arse licking and backslapping as these self-interested capitalist brigands congratulate themselves on another successful year on the profit trail. This principle is no different to the practices of other large trading blocs such as the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) or the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) as these gangs of robber barons compete with each other dictating the futures of millions of workers. To ensure the protection of these representatives of native and overseas exploitation the Garda Siochana have requested assistance from the ‘Police Service of Northern Ireland’ PSNI (or RUC). Police services from Portugal and France will be involved in this security operation and that is just for starters. The Dail Justice Minister, Jim O’Callaghan, has already allocated €125 million for Garda overtime alone for the six-month operation which is likely to see more than a dozen high risk VIP summits. Perhaps the next time those far-right reactionaries - who blame immigration for social problems such as housing shortages - should cast an eye over these up-coming events and costs!

These European governments representing EU capitalism will continue pedalling the lie that it is the business classes which create wealth. They will occasionally point out how without these capitalist freeloaders people would not have jobs and it is they, not labour, which creates wealth. This flies in the face of the classical economists, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Karl Marx, all of whom despite a century between them agreed labour is the wealth creator, not capital, and despite being poles apart politically agreed on this aspect of economics. The reason these capitalists and their representatives try selling this myth is because they know full well that without their useless visages on stage nobody would notice their absence, they would be missed like invisible props, nothing would change in the appearance of the act, the show would go on. 

If the proletariat removed their presence from the boards, strike action, the whole show would grind to a halt, the stage would be empty. Without labour nothing at all would get done which is why the employers are eager to implement Artificial Intelligence (AI)! Adam Smith in his book; The Wealth of Nations argued “a nation’s wealth comes from its annual labour, rather than its hoarded gold or silver”. David Ricardo in his work On the Principle of Political Economy added to Smiths earlier calculation by adding “labour time” to the equation, proposing that the “value of a commodity is determined by the average labour time required to produce it”. Karl Marx really summed this subject up in his work, Wage Labour and Capital chapter 2, put the icing on the cake describing “labour power” as the driving force behind wealth creation. Labour Power is the ability to work, to sell this ability to an employer as a commodity which the employer pays a monetary wage for, a wage far less than the wealth this collective ‘labour power’ has created. The representatives of EU capitalism will be sitting at Micheal Martin’s table for six months discussing countless subjects, wealth creation being one, which we will be told of only a few. When it is all over and cost an arm and a leg many in the twenty-six-county population having watched the sanitised version of events which will, no doubt, be occasionally shown by RTE look on with admiration at these wonderful people who they wrongly believe create wealth. At many of these meetings the self-deluding ‘wealth creators’, representatives of capitalist class interests, will be discussing Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the cost efficiency of using these new marvels to do the work presently carried out by human workers. In other words they will discuss how many of their adoring admirers will be allowed to make a living and how many will not!

Back in nineteen-sixties Britain trade disputes were often reportedly resolved over ‘beer and sandwiches’ at Number 10 as Prime Minister, Harlod Wilson, invited the TUC round for talks. There will be no beer and sandwiches involved at the meetings presided over by the Dail government but perhaps huge banquets of at least four courses! These feasts will be paid for by the taxpayer, money which could be spent on necessary projects, and the EU leaders could have like Wilson and the TUC leaders, beer and sandwiches! Between them, the twenty-six-county government and the EU revisionists will continue to revise definitions within the political and economic circles of capitalism to benefit the bourgeoisie. It does not serve the minority class interests to tell the truth about wealth creation that it is working-class labour power which is the engine of wealth creation. The last thing the bourgeoisie need is a working-class which is conscious of the power it holds!

The €125 million is for Garda overtime only and how much more will be paid to the French and Portuguese governments for the use of their security services? The true cost of this operation will never be disclosed in case the people of the twenty-six-counties suddenly catch themselves on and stop blaming strawmen, immigration, for the societal inequalities faced by the proletariat and start looking at more realistic causes such as this obscene spectacle for the problems faced by working-class people daily. One subject which will no doubt be on the agenda will be ‘Irelands military neutrality’ and how to dump the ‘triple lock’. Now US President Donald Trump has decided the United Nations are of little or no consequence the EU and, in the case of military neutrality, the Dail government, may also now put the boot in removing the UNs mandate as a requirement of the triple lock. At the moment the triple lock requires, in order the Defence Forces can deploy more than twelve armed personnel on overseas peace keeping, firstly Government Approval. Secondly it requires Dail Approval and thirdly a United Nations Mandate is required. The government here wants to reform or dismantle the triple lock, arguing that the UN mandate requirement gives permanent Security Council members, like Russia and China, a veto over “Irelands” sovereign decisions to deploy peacekeepers. Note there is no mention of the US and UK in this explanation as they too are permanent members of the Security Council! Given the anti-Russian and anti-Putin sentiments across the EU support for this dilution of neutrality will be almost guaranteed taking into consideration the possible formation of a European Army which the EU are eager to have the Twenty-Six-Counties Armed Forces involved.

The EU is a large bloc of capitalist countries who exploit their workers to amass profits. It is no better or worse than other large trading blocs and, it could be argued, the EU is more preferable than some of its rivals. The aim here is not to be anti-EU but moreover anti global capitalism of which the EU is only one trading bloc, albeit a powerful one. A European socialist bloc would be far preferable and at least while we are inside the EU contact can be made through the ETUC with radical groups like the French CGT (Confederation Generale du Travail) to strengthen workers resistance in much the same way as European capitalism uses the bloc to strengthen the employer’s position. When the whole rotten capitalist applecart runs out of track the EU, like their north American counterparts, will be ‘hearing the death knell’ for the employers and their class. Until that time dawns we should exploit the possibilities presented by EU membership. We must use what we have and protest at the obscene waste of money on security during this term of Presidency while social needs persist.
     
Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.
I

EU Employers Representatives Coming To Ireland!

Ten links to a diverse range of opinion that might be of interest to TPQ readers. They are selected not to invite agreement but curiosity. Readers can submit links to pieces they find thought provoking.


Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand And Thirteen

 

A Morning Thought @ 3186

Jim Duffy ✍ Dr Gartner suggested Trump will use nuclear weapons. 

Trump may try to but the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs would almost certainly block him. Contrary to myth, the military are passionately opposed to using nuclear weapons. They know more than anyone what nuclear war would mean. 

Military leaders actually have the power to stop their use. A president physically cannot launch weapons. It needs the participation of the military and military leaders can deny that participation.

Rory Stewart revealed that senior figures in the Russian military told NATO generals that if Putin ever tried to use nuclear weapons, he would be instantly deposed by the military. Mark Milley, the then chair of the joint chiefs, made sure Trump could not use nuclear weapons during the interregnum in December 2020-January 2021, by requiring his counter-signature and making it clear that he would not sign off on using them.
 
The point of nuclear weapons is not to use them. They are designed to be a means to stop another nuclear country using weapons against you, as you could obliterate their country. It means in effect 'you cannot attack us using them, and we cannot attack you' based on MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction.
⏩ Jim Duffy is a writer-historian.

Mutually Assured Destruction

Heartlands Tribune ☭ Written by Paul Knaggs.

The Price of a Lie: What Cornton Vale Cost Women

There is a particular kind of violence that does not leave a mark. It is the violence of being told that what you know to be true is, in fact, bigotry. It is the violence of watching the institutions built to protect you, the courts, the unions, the party that once called itself yours, look you in the eye and ask you to doubt your own body.

For three years, women in Scotland’s prisons lived with that violence as policy.

On 19 June 2026, the Court of Session ended it. Lady Ross ruled that Scottish Prison Service guidance, in place since February 2024, allowing some male prisoners who identify as women to be housed in the female estate, was unlawful. Not unkind. Not old-fashioned. Unlawful. She found that Scotland’s statutory scheme “requires separate prison accommodation for men and women,” which means “sex segregation in prisons according to biological sex.”

It took a judicial review, a King’s Counsel, two statutory interveners and an opinion running into the hundreds of paragraphs to confirm something that every woman who has ever changed in a communal shower already understood without being told. Sex is real.

Scotland’s Trans Prison Policy Ruled Unlawful

Louth For Ever ★ writing on 15-May-2026

Two votes in the Dáil on a single evening, and what they showed about the political form a counter-hegemonic project actually requires.

Photo by Dahlia E. Akhaine on Unsplash

Section I: The Wednesday

On Wednesday evening, 13 May 2026, the Dáil took two votes the political class on this island had been waiting for. The first was the Social Democrats’ Reproductive Rights (Amendment) Bill, which would have ended the mandatory three-day waiting period for women seeking terminations, widened the criteria for terminations in cases of fatal foetal abnormality, and ended the criminalisation of doctors providing the care. The bill was defeated by 85 votes to 30 with 36 abstentions. Every one of those 36 abstentions came from Sinn FĂ©in. The second was a planning bill that the Green Party leadership has described as gutting the Climate Action Act, the legislation underpinning Ireland’s climate commitments. Sinn FĂ©in voted with Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Independent Ireland, and AontĂş in favour of the planning bill. The Social Democrats voted with them. Labour, the Greens, and People Before Profit voted against.

By Wednesday night, serious writers in the political readership were posting that they would wake up in a different Irish political landscape on Thursday morning. By Thursday morning, the parties whose positioning had been the subject of those posts were issuing graphics on Bluesky identifying which parties had voted to gut the Climate Act and which had voted to support the reproductive rights bill. Sinn FĂ©in appeared on the wrong side of the first graphic and on the abstention side of the second. The Social Democrats appeared on the right side of the second and on the wrong side of the first. People Before Profit, the Greens, and Labour appeared on the right side of both.

Wednesday showed something the body of work this essay belongs to has been pointing at for several weeks without naming directly. Not which party did better. Not which party deserves the harsher censure. The political form a counter-hegemonic project against far-right consolidation actually requires does not exist in the current Irish party system. The constituencies that the project would need to assemble are distributed across multiple parties, none of which holds the full set of terrains the contest demands. Wednesday was the evening this became visible across two contests on a single sitting.

Section II: The hegemonic frame

Five years ago, certain things did not feel ordinary. The phrasings that show up now in pub conversations and family WhatsApp groups on immigration, on gender, on what kind of country this is supposed to be, were available then only to a small constituency that the rest of the political culture treated as marginal. They are no longer marginal. They have become, for a constituency that grows visibly every electoral cycle, ordinary. This shift is the most important political fact on these islands and it is the one mainstream commentary is least equipped to engage.

The shift is not random and it is not spontaneous. It is the visible surface of a hegemonic project. The project does not seek only to win elections. It seeks to become the framework through which the constituencies it claims to represent understand their political situation. It seeks to make itself feel like common sense. This is what hegemony means. When it succeeds, it does not look like victory. It looks like ordinary people stating what everyone now knows.

The project operates on integrated terrains. Anti-immigration nativism is one. Patriarchal restoration through opposition to reproductive rights, gender equality, and trans recognition is another. Anti-EU sentiment positioned as the recovery of sovereignty is a third. The colonisation of working-class economic grievance through narratives that locate responsibility in external enemies rather than in structural failures is the fourth. None of these terrains is independent. They are aspects of a single coherent worldview that hangs together as an account of how the world works and what is wrong with it. When Reform UK voters cast their ballots in the English local elections last week, they were not protesting against Conservative or Labour failure. They were voting for an integrated worldview that explains why those failures happened and what would put things right.

This is the political sphere. The far right is consolidating on this terrain through electoral organisation, party formation, parliamentary alignment, and the recruitment of established political figures into its project. The DUP-Reform franchise relationship is one form of this consolidation. The blockades of April 2026 were another. The TUV’s alignment with Reform was a third. The political sphere is where the contest looks most like what political analysis is used to engaging. Most political analysis stays here. And then loses.

The ideological sphere is where the contest is actually decided. The ideological sphere is the cultural production, the everyday discourse, the assumptions that feel like common sense rather than like political positions. The far right’s project on these islands has been building on this terrain for far longer than its electoral breakthrough suggests. The WhatsApp groups. The international amplifiers. The cultural production around national identity in podcast and social-media space. The gradual rewriting of what it has become acceptable to say. None of this is visible in vote tallies. All of it shows up in the slow movement of the Overton window, in the conversations that have changed, in the phrasings that no longer feel marginal.

A counter-hegemonic project must contest both spheres. It must hold the integrated terrain on its own terms. Reproductive rights, climate, migrant rights, economic justice, EU realignment, gender equality, trans healthcare, constitutional change. These must hang together as aspects of a coherent alternative worldview, not as separate issues to be picked up or set down according to electoral convenience. The far right does not pick terrains. It cannot afford to. The project holds the terrain together or it forfeits the framework. And the framework is what is actually being contested.

Section III: What Wednesday showed

The two votes in the Dáil on Wednesday evening produced a specific empirical picture of where the existing Irish opposition stands against the requirement the previous section named. The picture is not what most contemporary commentary on the votes has captured. Most of the commentary has read the votes as a Sinn Féin failure on reproductive rights or as a Social Democrats failure on climate. Read in the framework Section II established, they show something different and more structural.

On reproductive rights, the parties holding the terrain were the Social Democrats, Labour, the Greens, and People Before Profit. Sinn FĂ©in abstained. The Coalition parties and Independent Ireland opposed. On the climate question, the parties holding the terrain were Labour, the Greens, and People Before Profit. Sinn FĂ©in and the Social Democrats voted with the Coalition parties and Independent Ireland on the side the Greens describe as gutting the Climate Action Act. The two alignments do not match. Sinn FĂ©in abstained on one terrain and voted with the Coalition on the other. The Social Democrats are on the right side of one terrain and the wrong side of the other. Labour, the Greens, and People Before Profit are on the right side of both, but they are also the three smallest opposition formations and the constituencies they currently mobilise are insufficient to be the political form a counter-hegemonic project would actually require.

The Green Party leader and former Cabinet minister Roderic O’Gorman named the structural fact within hours of the vote. It was “disappointing to see the Social Democrats and Sinn FĂ©in ally with the Government to undermine the Climate Act”, he wrote. “It is astonishing that parties of the left would endorse a Bill which undermines the very Climate Action Act they had supported only five years ago.” The framing is precise. Parties of the left, supporting a Bill of this kind, against a Bill of that kind, five years apart on the same legislation. The structural fact O’Gorman names is the same fact the voting alignments demonstrate. The parties categorised as the Irish left did not hold the climate terrain that the categorisation implies.

This is the structural misalignment in the Irish opposition. The contests do not line up. Sinn FĂ©in abstained on reproductive rights and then voted with the Coalition on the climate bill, compromised on both. The Social Democrats brought the reproductive rights bill but voted with the Coalition on climate too – clean on the first terrain, compromised on the second. Only Labour, the Greens, and People Before Profit held both lines, and none of them holds the scale. The structural fact this produces is that no existing opposition party in the Republic currently holds the full set of terrains the framework requires.

Wednesday made this visible in a single evening on two consecutive votes. The visibility is the political consequence the readership noticed. The structure was there before Wednesday. Wednesday was the evening it became impossible to miss.

The misalignment is the specific obstacle a counter-hegemonic project faces in Ireland that the far right’s project does not face on the same terrain. Reform UK does not have a Sinn FĂ©in problem or a Social Democrats problem. Its terrains are integrated by design. The opposition’s terrains are distributed across multiple parties by historical contingency, the accumulated effect of how different parties have positioned themselves through successive Irish political moments. The framework Section II established as the requirement is not currently available to be held by any single political form in the existing opposition. The form that could hold it does not yet exist.

This is the structural fact the rest of the essay engages. Sinn FĂ©in’s abstention on Wednesday is one symptom. The Social Democrats’ climate vote is another. The misalignment is the structural condition both symptoms reveal. The framework is what is being contested, and the form capable of holding the framework is what has yet to be built.

Section IV: The party the tradition is asking about

Five essays have built the body of work this one extends. The trilogy diagnosed how the leadership of one party absorbs structural critique through procedural framing. The fourth essay engaged whether political forms exist to carry the grievance the moment is producing. The fifth essay engaged the constitutional moment the May 2026 British elections produced. The sequence has been pointing at a question without naming it. Serious thinkers within the tradition that have engaged republicanism critically from inside the movement are now naming it.

Setting aside how Sinn FĂ©in reached its present position, what can the party offer in future against far-right consolidation and the contest for hegemony in both political and ideological spheres? The question is forward-looking and structural. The body of work has been earning the right to answer it.

The answer has to be honest. Sinn FĂ©in can offer real things. The largest opposition parliamentary presence in the Republic. A 32-county institutional architecture no other party on the island has built. An organised electoral machine that has converted political momentum into representation faster than any opposition formation in recent Irish history. Constitutional discipline rooted in a tradition that has spent a century working out what self-determination actually requires. These are not nothing. They are the structural reasons the question is being asked of Sinn FĂ©in rather than of any other party in the Republic.

What the party cannot currently offer is the structural capacity to hold integrated terrain. The trilogy diagnosed the absorption pattern under cost-of-living pressure. The fourth essay diagnosed it under the pressure of recognising gendered grievance. Wednesday’s abortion abstention is the latest instance. David Cullinane’s stated reasons, concerns about the fatal foetal abnormality definition, concerns about the decriminalisation provisions, the existence of a separately tabled bill, are not invented. They are the procedural framing the pattern produces every time the substantive question is hard. The pattern is not contingent on the issue. The issue changes. The pattern does not.

This is the structural reading the body of work has built. The absorption pattern is constitutive of how the party operates. It is not a series of separate tactical decisions. It is the visible operation of a structural feature. The feature is the party’s relationship to the question of what it is willing to contest substantively versus what it is willing to absorb procedurally. On the terrains where the substantive question has been put to the leadership over the past month, cost of living, gendered grievance, reproductive rights, the answer has been procedural absorption. There is no reason to expect the next terrain to produce a different answer.

The answer to the tradition’s question therefore has to be precise. Sinn FĂ©in can offer scale, constitutional discipline, and 32-county presence. It cannot offer the capacity to hold integrated terrain on the framework the contest requires. A counter-hegemonic project that requires both will find part of what it needs in Sinn FĂ©in. The rest will have to come from somewhere the party in its current form is not.

Section V: What would have to be built

On Wednesday night, the writer Philip O’Connor posted on Bluesky that he would wake up on Thursday morning in a different Irish political landscape, that any idea of Irish left unity had been killed stone dead by Sinn FĂ©in’s abstention, and that the lines would have to be redrawn and something new built without them. The Dublin Bay North Greens posted that it was pretty lame for Sinn FĂ©in and the Social Democrats to ape Coalition populist posturing, and that the two votes together explained why so many people thought politicians were all the same. The Social Democrats themselves posted that they would fight on, because the women of Ireland deserve better.

These are not the same response and they are not coming from the same political tradition. What they share is a recognition that what is required now cannot be supplied by the existing party formations in the form those formations currently hold. The recognition is being articulated, in different vocabularies, by writers and party voices in real time. The propositional task is being named, in public, by people who would until very recently have located their politics inside one or another of the existing opposition projects.

This essay does not propose its own version of what should be built. The structural work it has tried to do is upstream of the propositional question. What it can name is what the body of work has been earning the right to name. The framework, a counter-hegemonic project against far-right consolidation requires is integrated terrain held by a coherent political form. The terrain runs across reproductive rights, climate, migrant rights, economic justice, EU realignment, gender equality, trans healthcare, and constitutional change. The form capable of holding all of it does not currently exist in the Irish party system. The constituencies that would assemble inside such a form are distributed across multiple existing parties. The misaligned divisions that run through the opposition are structural rather than accidental. Wednesday made them visible. They were there before Wednesday and they will be there next week.

The work of building the form is what the political moment is now asking of everyone. It is not work that can be done from outside the parties or from inside any single one of them. It is work that requires conversations the existing party structures have not yet had with each other or with the constituencies they each represent. The writers who have begun to name the task in public this week are doing one part of that work. The voters who are now publicly reconsidering their party loyalties are doing another. The institutional voices of the existing parties are doing a third part of it, whether they intend to or not, by demonstrating in real time what their current forms cannot hold. The framework is what is being contested. The form capable of holding it is what has yet to be built. What is built from here is the next chapter.

References

Primary commentary engaged in this essay

O’Gorman, Roderic. Statement on Bluesky, 14 May 2026, on the Climate Action Act vote. Posted with the Green Party graphic identifying parties that voted to gut the Climate Act.

O’Connor, Philip. Statement on Bluesky, 13 May 2026, on Sinn FĂ©in’s abortion abstention and the implications for Irish left unity.

Cullinane, David. Statement on the Sinn FĂ©in position on the Social Democrats’ Reproductive Rights (Amendment) Bill, Dáil Éireann, 13 May 2026. Reported across RTÉ News, The Irish Times, and The Journal.

Dublin Bay North Greens. Statement on Bluesky, 14 May 2026, on the abortion and climate votes.

Social Democrats. Statement on Bluesky, 13 May 2026, We fight on. Because the women of Ireland deserve better.

Empirical sources

Dáil Éireann. Reproductive Rights (Amendment) Bill 2026, defeated by 85 votes to 30 with 36 abstentions, 13 May 2026.

Dáil Éireann. Planning legislation vote, 13 May 2026, described by the Green Party as gutting the Climate Action Act.

Voting alignment data for both votes drawn from RTÉ News, The Irish Times, The Journal, and the Green Party graphic on Bluesky.

Companion essays in this sequence

The Blockade Is the Message: A first note on the weekend the blockade ended. Published April 2026. Republished on The Pensive Quill.

The Money Is Not There: A second note on the weekend the blockade ended. Published April 2026. Republished on The Pensive Quill.

What Would Have to Be Built: A third and propositional note on the weekend the blockade ended. Published 20 April 2026.

The Tools of Their Livelihoods: A fourth note on the questions the political moment is asking. Published 5 May 2026.

The Franchise: A note from a moment when the political ground in Britain shifted. Published 9 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.

No Form To Hold It

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)