Irish Left Archive Podcast

In this episode we speak to Pádraig Mannion. Pádraig has been a member of Official Sinn Féin and then The Workers’ Party since joining as a student in Galway in 1974, and has had several roles within the party, including on the Ard Comhairle / Central Executive Committee. He is also Secretary of the Peace and Neutrality Alliance (PANA).

We discuss Pádraig’s background and early involvement in student politics as a Student Union rep and later Education Officer with the USI; joining Official Sinn Féin, the political issues at that time, and his experience of the many elections and referendums since; wider campaigns such as the Resources Protection Campaign and international solidarity work; and also his involvement in publications from the party. We discuss how core issues such as housing, civil rights and separation of church and state have changed since Pádraig became involved in politics; and also the politics and development of The Workers’ Party, its electoral advances in the 1980s, the emergence of Democratic Left in the early 1990s, and the party’s continued political work since then.

This interview was recorded in June 2022. Many thanks to Pádraig for talking to us for this episode.

Pádraig mentions some pamphlets from the early 1970s in the course of the episode. The Resources Protection Campaign pamphlet on Navan is linked below:

And The Workers’ Party pamphlet, Tony O’Reilly’s Last Game, is also available in the archive thanks to Pádraig, from whom we originally received a copy:

You’ll also find a large number of periodicals and documents from Official Sinn Féin and The Workers’ Party on their respective pages.

View this episode on our website: #41: Pádraig Mannion: Official Sinn Féin and The Workers' Party.

A quick update on the Irish Left Archive project and the podcast as we start back after a break with more interviews with activists on the left.

We’ll be switching to putting out interview episodes once per month in future and hope to keep that rolling without the series gaps we’ve had before. As always, thanks to everyone who has been a guest on the podcast, made suggestions and contributed to the Irish Left Archive project.

View this episode on our website: #40: Podcast Update.

This episode is a quick round up of the current podcast series and future plans for the Irish Left Archive. Thanks to all of our guests so far, and to everyone who has listened, contributed material to our document collection, and got in touch with information and feedback.

We appreciate all the contributions we receive - the accuracy of the information on our site about organisations, publications and the timeline of the Left is greatly improved by the knowledge and experience of people who have got in touch or been directly involved. Sometimes our knowledge of a group or document is limited, so if you can expand on the information we have, or have spotted an error, we’d be delighted to hear from you!

As ever, if you yourself or someone you know has been involved in Left activism or organising in Ireland and can contribute documents to our collection or would be willing to talk to us as a guest on the podcast, please do send your suggestions.

You can get in touch with us via the contact form, send us an email to [email protected], or find us on Twitter (or Mastodon, if you’ve been converted to the open and decentralised web!).

View this episode on our website: #39: Break Time - More to Come!.

In this episode we’re joined by Charles Tuba to discuss the book Ruairí Ó Brádaigh: The Life and Politics of an Irish Revolutionary, by Robert White (Indiana University Press, 2006). The discussion looks at Ó Brádaigh’s strand of Republicanism, and in particular the policies of abstentionism and the Éire Nua policy outlining a federal Irish state.

This is one of a series of episodes centred on particular books, to discuss key issues in the history of the Irish Left and Republicanism. We’ve spoken to Charles previously in episode 25 when we discussed Official Irish Republicanism, by Seán Swan, and also heard about Charles’ own political background and interest in Irish Republican history, including visiting Ireland and finding himself inadvertently on a Republican Sinn Féin march.

The discussion mentions the Éire Nua policy which you’ll find in the archive: Éire Nua

There are further editions, including from Republican Sinn Féin, listed under the Éire Nua subject heading.

Listeners may also be interested in the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis ’86 Clár agus Rúin: Sinn Féin Ard Fheis ’86: Clár agus Rúin

Update: The discussion looks at the issue of abstensionism at national level while participating in local government. Thanks to listener Gearóid Clár for noting that the position of Ó Brádaigh, outlined in White’s book, was that local government does not claim sovereignty over the area administered, whereas the Dáil does.

Update 2: Since this episode was released, we moved to a new podcast platform to which existing comments couldn’t easily be migrated. We don’t wish to remove considered and critical responses to the podcast and have made the original feedback available on our website.

In this episode we talk to Mags O’Brien about her political background; the divorce referendum campaigns of 1986 and 1995; her experience with the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza in 2011 - which was captured at sea and the crew held in an Israeli jail - and subsequent Palestine solidarity work with Gaza Action Ireland; her work as a tutor with the SIPTU College and combining her activism and trade unionism; and Left Lives in 20th Century Ireland Vol. 4 – Women, which was published last year and is edited by Mags.

Mags is a trade union activist and tutor at SIPTU College. She has been involved in many campaigns, including as Chair of the Divorce Action Group during the 1995 divorce referendum. She is part of the ICTU Global Solidarity Committee and has served as Chair of Trade Union Friends of Palestine. She has formerly been in Labour as part of Labour Left, and briefly in Democratic Left.

You’ll find the Left Lives series of books on the Umisken Press website.

View this episode on our website: #37: Mags O'Brien: Divorce Action Group, Gaza Freedom Flotilla, Women and Trade Unionism.

In this episode we talk to Jason Brannigan. Jason is an anarchist activist in Belfast and member of the anarcho-syndicalist group Organise!, as well as being involved in Just Books, which encompasses a library of radical material, meeting space and education project.

We discuss Jason’s background in Belfast, his involvement with Just Books and Organise! and the development of both since the 1990s, political organising in workplaces and communities in the context of the North, and the current focus and prospects for anarchist organising in Ireland.

The Organise! website is at organiseanarchistsireland.com, where you’ll find their publications, Black Star and The Leveller, as well as background on the organisation and Just Books project.

Just Books provides an open-access library of anarchist and Left publications. If you have books or materials to donate, get in touch with Just Books via the Organise! website.

View this episode on our website: #36: Jason Brannigan: Organise!, Just Books, and Anarcho-Syndicalism.

In this episode, to mark the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, we’re joined by historian Dr. Brian Hanley to discuss the reaction in the Republic of Ireland to the events in Derry on 30th January 1972, when British soldiers opened fire on civil rights marchers, killing 14 and injuring several others. The reaction in the South saw walkouts and strikes, a national day of mourning, the burning of the British embassy in Dublin, and mass protests around the country.

Brian Hanley is the author of The impact of the Troubles on the Republic of Ireland, 1968–79: Boiling Volcano? (Manchester University Press, 2018) which details the effect of the Northern conflict on the South, responses to Bloody Sunday and other events, mobilisations of support, the experiences of refugees, and the debates in the public discourse throughout that period.

We recommend the excellent Museum of Free Derry for anyone who wants to explore the history of the events of Bloody Sunday. The museum is run by the Bloody Sunday Trust, which includes victims’ families, and civil society and political representatives in Derry.

You can also hear Brian Hanley on these previous episodes of the podcast:

View this episode on our website: #35: Bloody Sunday: Reactions in the Republic of Ireland, with Brian Hanley.

In this episode we talk to Mark Fitzpatrick. Mark is an animal rights and vegan activist originally from Cork and now based in New Zealand, where he is on the board of the Vegan Society of Aotearoa.

We discuss Mark’s politicisation in the anarcho-punk scene in Cork in the late 1980s, his involvement in hunt sabotage in Ireland and the UK, his perspective on the animal rights movement and its relationship with the Left, and his newly launched website project to document the history of animal rights in Ireland, The Humanity Trigger.

If you are or were involved in animal rights in Ireland and can contribute information to the history of that movement, you can contact Mark about the project by email at [email protected].

Listeners can also hear Mark discuss hunt sabotage and the police response in more detail on episode 17 of the Policed podcast, from February 2021.

View this episode on our website: #34: Mark Fitzpatrick: Anarcho-punk, Hunt Sabotage, and Animal Rights.

Our guest in this episode is Tony Novosel. Tony is a historian at the University of Pittsburgh and the author of Northern Ireland’s Lost Opportunity: The Frustrated Promise of Political Loyalism (Pluto Press, 2013).

We discuss Tony’s own background and how meeting Irish people in the US in the early 1970s led to developing a life-long interest in the politics of Northern Ireland, and how he came to study progressive unionism in particular, leading to the publication of his book Northern Ireland’s Lost Opportunity. We then discuss his research itself, tracing the development of a left analysis within the UVF and the Progressive Unionist Party through the 1970s and 80s, and the key figures and political documents in that process.

A minor correction noted by Tony, is that Gusty Spence was in the Royal Ulster Rifles and not, as stated in the discussion, its successor the Royal Irish Rangers.

The Sharing Responsibility document from the Progressive Unionist Party in 1985, discussed in this episode:

Further information:

View this episode on our website: #33: Tony Novosel: Northern Ireland's Lost Opportunity - The Frustrated Promise of Political Loyalism.

Our guest in this episode is Jess Spear. Jess is an eco-socialist and socialist feminist activist based in Dublin. She is National Organiser of RISE, a revolutionary Marxist network of People Before Profit (PBP). She is the editor of the eco-socialist quarterly magazine, Rupture, and co-authored the pamphlet What is eco-socialism?. She was a research scientist at the US Geological Survey and Burke Museum of Natural History before moving to Dublin in 2017.

We discuss how Jess came to political activism in the US, and particularly, as a climate scientist, to environmental activism; her experience campaigning with Socialist Alternative (then part of the Committee for a Workers’ International) in Seattle, and as an electoral candidate there in 2014; moving to Ireland, the foundation of RISE, and decision to join PBP; and the development and aims of Rupture as a broad eco-socialist magazine and means to explore contemporary Marxist and socialist ideas and strategies.

Find out more:

View this episode on our website: #32: Jess Spear: RISE.