Irish Left Archive Podcast

In this episode we talk to Ciara Galvin. Ciara is a Labour party councillor in Kildare for the Celbridge Local Electoral Area. She has been a member of Labour since 2010, and was involved in Labour Youth, serving as Trade Union Co-ordinator. She was elected to Kildare County Council in the 2019 local elections. Outside her local council role, Ciara works for SIPTU in the Workers’ Rights Centre.

We’ll discuss how Ciara got involved in politics and the Labour party; her experience as a member through the period of coalition government; standing in the local elections and the role of local politics; and the political and personal challenges of being a local councillor.

View this episode on our website: #21: Ciara Galvin: Labour.

In this episode we talk to David Costelloe. David writes on history and politics on his website Never Felt Better, and in particular has written an extensive series of articles on Irish military history entitled “Ireland’s Wars”, which spans from the earliest recorded conflicts on the island right up to the revolutionary period.

We discuss with David his background and interest in history and in writing, and what led him to create the site and write about military history, before delving in to that history itself and David’s perspective on Irish revolutionary history in particular.

The Ireland’s Wars series of articles is indexed here

View this episode on our website: #20: David Costelloe: Irish Military and Revolutionary History.

In this episode we talk to Brian Hanley about his experience of Left activism as a member of the Socialist Workers Movement (SWM) in the late 1980s and early 90s. We discuss the cultural and political influences that led him to join the SWM as a teenager in Limerick; the nature and political position of the organisation at that time; the experience of being an active member; and how the SWM changed and grew during that period.

Brian is a historian in Trinity College Dublin. We’ve spoken to him previously in that capacity on the podcast in episode 13, where we discussed The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers’ Party, which Brian co-authored.

Below are some links that might interest listeners in the context of this episode:

Brian provided a few additional clarifications to the discussion below:

Thanks again to Aonghus and Ciarán for the opportunity to do this. A couple of things struck me afterwards which maybe I wasn’t very clear on.

A couple of technical points, that might be lost on a ‘younger’ audience was that postering involved going out with buckets of paste and plastering up posters on anything that didn’t move. You postered until the paste or posters ran out, or you were stopped by the Guards. Generally they took the posters and your name, though I was never fined. Uniformed Guards usually couldn’t care less what the posters were about (as long as it wasn’t about them), but the Special Branch could give you more hassle.

The various trips to Marxism in London were by bus and boat, which if there was a few of you could mean a good drink on the ferry and trying to sleep until you got to Victoria.

View this episode on our website: #19: Brian Hanley: Socialist Workers' Movement, 1980s and 90s.

In this episode we talk to Danny Morrison. Danny is a writer and Republican political activist from West Belfast. He was national director of publicity for Sinn Féin in the 1980s, and editor, first, of the Sinn Féin paper Republican News in Belfast, and then of An Phoblacht when the two papers were merged. He is the author of several fiction and non-fiction works. He is also secretary of the Bobby Sands Trust, and was chair of the West Belfast festival, Féile an Phobail, until 2014.

Danny was spokesperson for Bobby Sands during the 1981 hunger strikes and subsequently called for a dual strategy of armed struggle and electoral politics in Sinn Féin. He was elected on an abstentionist ticket to the 1982 Northern Ireland Assembly. In 1990, he was charged and imprisoned in connection with the abduction of an IRA informer, and released in 1995. The charges were later overturned in 2008.

Danny’s books include Then the Walls Came Down, based on his prison letters, and the novels West Belfast, On The Back of the Swallow, The Wrong Man, which he later adapted as a play, and Rudi. He is also a regular reviewer and political commentator in newspapers.

We discuss Danny’s background and analysis of the political landscape during the Troubles; his work with Sinn Féin and as editor of Republican News and An Phoblacht; and his work as a writer, and how his creative work is informed by his experience and politics.

You’ll find more information on Danny’s writing and regular articles on his website at dannymorrison.com.

View this episode on our website: #18: Danny Morrison: Sinn Féin, An Phoblacht / Republican News, and Political and Fiction Writing.

In this episode we talk to Sarah Clancy. Sarah is a poet and activist from Galway, and currently based in Clare. Her published collections include Stacey and the Mechanical Bull in 2011, Thanks for Nothing, Hippies in 2012, and The Truth and Other Stories in 2014. Sarah has often performed her work both at literary and at political events.

We discuss Sarah’s background and how she came both to political activism and to poetry, how the two inflect each other, her experience of activism and analysis of the political Left. We also discuss the challenges for the contemporary Left in Ireland during the pandemic crisis.

During the episode you can hear Sarah recite her poem, “And Yet We Must Live in These Times”.

You’ll find a video of Sarah performing “Cherishing For Beginners” at the Stand for Truth rally during the visit of the Pope in 2018 on Youtube (thanks to the WSM).

Lyrikline.org has the text and a recording of the Rita Ann Higgins poem, “Some People”, which Sarah discusses.

View this episode on our website: #17: Sarah Clancy: Poetry, Activism, Politics, and the Contemporary Left.

In this episode we talk to Laura Broxson. Laura is an activist focused on animal rights and founder of the National Animal Rights Association (NARA). NARA is a non-hierarchical organisation, taking a radical animal rights and vegan perspective. We’ll discuss how Laura came to activism and founding NARA; the anti-fur and hare-coursing campaigns in which she’s been involved; different methods of campaigning, from street protest to legislative change; cooperation and interaction with Left parties and organisations; and how Laura integrates animal rights campaigning in a wider anti-fascist, anti-capitalist and Left perspective.

For more information on the National Animal Rights Association, you can visit their website at naracampaigns.org.

Here are some NARA leaflets included in our collection:

• Ireland's Official Animal Rights March to Close All Slaughterhouses
• Tell your TD to Vote in Support of the Prohibition of Fur Farming Bill
• It's Time to Ban Hare Coursing in Ireland

Some additional resources on animal rights suggested by Laura in the discussion:

View this episode on our website: #16: Laura Broxson: National Animal Rights Association (NARA).

We’re back after a taking break for a few months, so this is just a quick update on the podcast and the Irish Left Archive project.

We’ll have full episodes with more guests coming out fortnightly, starting next week.

One of the new elements we’ve added to the site in recent months is to start a collection of personal accounts and recollections from people who have participated on the Left in Ireland. We hope these will provide an interesting context to Left activity, in addition to the document collection. If you have participated in Left political activism or organisations on any level, we’d be grateful if you would add your experience to the collection: you can send us your account on the website.

View this episode on our website: #15: We're back! More Podcasts for 2021.

In this episode we talk to John Goodwillie. John is a long-time political activist, who has been involved in a number of progressive parties and organisations. He was a member of Labour in the 1960s and belonged to the Young Socialists, Socialist Labour Action Group and subsequent Socialist Labour Alliance. He was involved with the Socialist Workers’ Movement (SWM) in the 1970s, and joined the Socialist Labour Party (SLP) when the SWM merged with that party as a tendency, and remained on the National Executive until the SLP’s dissolution.

John was on the editorial board of Gralton magazine. He has also participated in a number of campaign groups, including the Dublin Clean Seas Group, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) - on the executive of which John served in various roles - and the National Lesbian and Gay Federation. Since 1990 he has been a member of the Green Party, and was the party’s candidate in Dublin South Central for Dáil and local elections through the 1990s. He has been involved in policy formation and served as Secretary of the Party’s Policy Council.

We discuss the history of Irish Left organisations since the 1960s and John’s own political trajectory: from Labour in the 1960s, through organisations seeking to form a party of the Left. We also discuss Gralton magazine and John’s political activity in the 1980s and in the Greens since 1990.

John created a ‘family tree of the left’ diagram, which provided an overview of the splits, merges and relationships between organisations on the Irish Left, printed in Gralton in 1983. It was an online copy of this which inspired the creation of the Timeline of the Irish Left on our own website - John’s diagram gave us a starting basis for it, and we are indebted to John both for that and for subsequent suggestions and corrections to the initial version.

Some materials in the archive may be of interest to listeners in the context of the discussion.

From the fourth issue of The Worker, the aims of the Socialist Workers’ Movement (SWM):

The Fintan Lalor branch of the Labour party mentioned in the podcast was expelled in 1971. Listeners may be interested in this article from Labour News Bulletin announcing the expulsion:

Gralton magazine was published in 1982-83. This is the first issue of the magazine:

View this episode on our website: #14: John Goodwillie: Young Socialists, Socialist Labour Alliance, SWM, Socialist Labour Party, Gralton magazine and the Green Party.

In this episode we talk to historian Brian Hanley about The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers’ Party, the book which he co-authored with Scott Millar, published in 2009. We discuss the history of Official Republicanism from the move to the Left in the 1960s up to the contemporary, and how Brian and Scott went about researching and writing the history of that movement.

Brian Hanley is Assistant Professor in Twentieth Century Irish History in the Department of History, Trinity College Dublin. His other books include The IRA, 1926-1936 (2002), A Documentary History of the IRA, 1916-2005 (2010) and The impact of the Troubles on the Republic of Ireland, 1968-79: boiling volcano? (2018).

The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers’ Party is published by Penguin.

View this episode on our website: #13: Brian Hanley: The Lost Revolution - The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party.