Irish Left Archive Podcast

In this episode we talk to Colm Breathnach. Colm was a member of the Workers Party throughout the 1980s, and was elected as a local councillor for the party in 1991 in Dún Laoghaire. He subsequently joined Democratic Left when that party split from the Workers Party, but left over the issue of coalition when the party entered government. He was later involved in the formation of the Irish Socialist Network. Since then Colm moved to Scotland where he was involved with the Scottish Socialist Party and RISE, and remains politically active.

For an article from Colm on the ‘third way’ position between orthodox communism and social democracy he discusses in relation to the Workers Party, see this issue of Making Sense:

Listeners may also be interested in the 1989 Ard Fheis speech by Proinsias De Rossa mentioned in this episode.

The Marx quote mentioned by Colm is in the afterword of the second German edition of Capital (Vol. 1):

The Paris Revue Positiviste reproaches me in that, on the one hand, I treat economics metaphysically, and on the other hand — imagine! — confine myself to the mere critical analysis of actual facts, instead of writing recipes … for the cook-shops of the future.

View this episode on our website: #11: Colm Breathnach: Workers Party, Democratic Left and Irish Socialist Network.

In this episode we talk to Ber Grogan. As an activist, Ber was involved with the Abortion Rights Campaign, and was a co-ordinator in Dublin North West during the referendum to repeal the eighth amendment. She also ran a Seanad campaign for the NUI panel, and is currently active in Communities Against Racism.

We discuss the Abortion Rights Campaign, Together for Yes and the Eighth Amendment Repeal campaign, and the experience of organising, canvassing, producing campaign material and building community groups and activist networks. We also discuss Ber’s Seanad campaign focussed on registering eligible voters, and her involvement in Communities Against Racism, which draws in part on those established community networks.

Leaflets from the Dublin North West repeal campaign:

• Repeal the Eighth - Dublin North West Repeal
• Please Vote YES With Us on May 25

Some further links of interest:

View this episode on our website: #10: Ber Grogan: Abortion Rights Campaign, Repeal, and Communities Against Racism.

In this episode we are joined by Michael Pidgeon. Michael is a long-standing member of the Green Party and was elected to Dublin City Council in the 2019 local elections for the South West Inner City Local Electoral Area. He is chair of the city’s environment and climate policy committee, and leader of the Green Party group on Dublin City Council.

Michael is also the creator of the Irish Election Manifesto Archive site, which hosts manifestos from Irish parties going back to the 1950s.

We’ll be talking first to Michael about his experience as an activist and then councillor with the Green Party, through electoral losses after their first period in government, to the recent resurgence in the 2019 local elections and 2020 general election.

We’ll also discuss the Irish Election Manifesto Archive project, and the role of party manifestos and how they have changed over time.

View this episode on our website: #9: Michael Pidgeon: Green Party, and Irish Election Manifesto Archive.

In this episode we are joined by Orla Egan of the Cork LGBT Archive. Orla founded the project in 2015, and has developed it to now encompass a digital archive available at CorkLGBTArchive.com, which is also retained as part of both the Digital Repository of Ireland and Europeana; a physical archive now housed in the Cork City Council Public Museum; a book entitled Queer Republic of Cork; and a number of exhibitions.

We talk to Orla about how she developed the archive as a volunteer with limited resources to the multi-format project it now encompasses; the histories and stories of the Cork LGBT community represented in the archive material; the challenges of a community archive project; and the value of community archives as activism.

These are the open projects and tools for archives mentioned by Orla:

Some materials from the Cork LGBT Archive mentioned in this episode:

View this episode on our website: #8: Orla Egan: Cork LGBT Archive.

In this episode we talk to Mary Muldowney about her political background and experience campaigning in the trade union movement and working in the Socialist Party; pro-choice campaigns including the Women on Waves ship and the abortion referendums; and her work as a historian, and how that relates to her activism.

Mary is a historian in residence with Dublin City Libraries. She is the author of The Second World War and Irish Women: An Oral History, originally her PhD thesis. She has a particular interest in oral history, and was involved in the founding of the Oral History Network Ireland, edited the Alternative Visions Oral History Group book 100 Years Later: the Legacy of the 1913 Lockout on the centenary of the lockout, and is also involved in the Labour History Society.

As an activist on the Left, Mary has been involved in trade unionism, was formerly a member of the Socialist Party and worked with Joe Higgins in the Dáil, and has been involved in many campaigns over the years.

An archive of some of the SIPTU fightback publication discussed in this episode is available on Struggle.ws.

The Dublin Festival of History is currently ongoing throughout September, and includes online talks from Mary Muldowney. Visit the Dublin Festival of History website for details.

View this episode on our website: #7: Mary Muldowney: Trade Union and Left Campaigns, the Socialist Party, and Oral History.

In this episode we talk to Rhona McCord about her political background, the Right2Water and Right2Change campaigns, community organising, and the challenges for the left and Trade Union movement in the contemporary period.

Rhona is a longtime activist on the left, she has been involved in Militant, union activism, the United Left Alliance, and a number of campaigns including Right 2 Water and Right 2 Change. She currently works for Unite in Strategic Research, Community Development and Communications. She also has a doctorate from TCD for research into the ‘Post World War Two Suburban Development of Dublin’.

The Right2Change document discussed:

View this episode on our website: #6: Rhona McCord: Trade Unionism, the Right2Water Campaign, and Community Organising.

In this episode we talk to Alan Kinsella about his Irish Election Literature collection, how it has developed, and the advantages of a wide online network that has spread internationally; how political activity has changed during the Covid19 pandemic; his podcast “The Others” and the histories that that explores; and also the state of the contemporary party system since the last election and the current coalition was formed.

Alan will likely be known to any followers of Irish politics as the man behind the Irish Election Literature collection. He digitises a lot of documents on his website and on social media, as well as having exhibited materials several times, including in the National Print Museum (in an exhibition that also included a small selection from the Irish Left Archive), and at party Ard Fheiseanna. He regularly appears in the media as the de facto expert on election material and Irish political ephemera, and has recently started a podcast called “The Others - the Alan Kinsella podcast” in which he tells the stories of some of the smaller groups and parties to have stood in elections over the years.

Alan has also been very generous in donating material to the Irish Left Archive over the years.

Visit the Irish Elecion Literature website at irishelectionliterature.com, or find Alan’s collection on the Irish Political Ephemera Facebook page and on Twitter at @electionlit.

View this episode on our website: #5: Alan Kinsella: Collecting Political Ephemera, "The Others", and Politics During a Pandemic.

In this episode we talk to Conor Kostick of Independent Left, and formerly the Socialist Workers Party, about a range of areas including his own history, activism and historical research, materials in the Left Archive that he has contributed to and issues like the use of social and other media in Left organising.

Conor is an activist on the left, an historian, a researcher, and a novelist in a range of genres. Amongst other things he was twice chairperson of the Irish Writers Union, and a member of the Board of the National Library of Ireland. He was a long time member of the SWP, a former editor of Socialist Worker, and subsequently joined Independent Left in 2019.

You’ll find Left archive documents to which Conor has contributed on his page, as well as some of his other writing, which Conor has kindly made available to the archive.

These documents in particular are discussed in this episode - a pamphlet written by Conor Kostick for the SWM, and public meeting notices from Independent Left:

Some further documents mentioned in the course of the discussion may also be of interest:

Correction: The introduction to this episode describes Conor as a founding member of Independent Left. It had in fact been in existence for some months before he joined.

In this episode we talk to Catherine Stocker of the Social Democrats. Catherine is a local councillor in Dublin City. She has been a member of the Social Democrats since 2016, and since then has been involved in policy formation, sat on the National Executive of the party, and in 2019 was elected to Dublin City Council for the Clontarf LEA.

We discuss her experience of joining and building a new political party, policy formation, working with other parties in the repeal referendum campaign, and her experience as a local councillor.

This is the policy document mentioned in the discussion:

You’ll find more on the Social Democrats on their website.

View this episode on our website: #3: Catherine Stocker: Social Democrats.

We talk to activist, writer and academic, Laurence Cox about publications in the archive in which he has been involved, the organisational and political aspects of those projects, and the contexts in Left politics and movements from which they emerged.

Laurence is an activist and writer on social movements, working class community activism, and global justice struggles. He has been involved in several publications included in the archive: An Caorthann, a magazine for environmental and Green movements associated with the Green Party in the 1990s; and Ireland from Below, an independent newspaper for social movements and activists in the 2000s. He is currently an editor of Interface, an online journal for and about social movements internationally. He is Associate Professor of Sociology in Maynooth University. His books include Why Social Movements Matter, published in 2018, and most recently The Irish Buddhist: the forgotten monk who faced down the British Empire, which tells the story of a working class Irish man who became a leading Buddhist reformer and anti-colonial activist.

For more information on Interface, visit their website at interfacejournal.net. The most recent edition, “organising amidst COVID-19: sharing stories of struggles”, has articles from a huge range of movements around the world.

These are the examples of the publications discussed:

• An Caorthann, No. 5
• Ireland from Below, January 2006
• Interface, Vol. 1, No. 1

View this episode on our website: #2: Laurence Cox: Left Publications, Social Movements and Activism.