Ukraine, Marxism and the National Question

In September Marko Bojcun’s book, The Workers Movement and the National Question in Ukraine, 1897-1918, was published. The Republican Socialist Platform co-hosted a Zoom meeting on 22nd September, at which Marko and others spoke and the issues raised by the book were discussed.   Chis Ford of the Ukraine Solidarity campaign wrote the following introduction…

A Jewish socialist responds to Guardian article on the Holocaust

The Guardian published an article showing that more than half pf people living in Great Britain are unaware of the extent of Jewish deaths at Nazi hands, or that the UK government shut the door to Jewish immigration at the outbreak of the Second World War. Jeff Lever, a Jewish socialist, has responded to this…

Mary MacGregor reviews ‘Ghosts of the Early Morning Shift’

Culture Matters have published the second volume, Ghosts of the Early Shift – An anthology of radical prose from contemporary Scotland, following A Kist of Thistle – An anthology of radical poetry from contemporary Scotland. These have both been edited by Jim Aitken. Here Mary MacGregor, following her review of the first volume, writes a review…

Rayner O’Connor Lysaght Presente!

Rayner O’Connor Lysaght, born in 1941, passed away on 2nd July, little more than a year after his comrade Kevin Keating, both members of Socialist Democracy (Ireland). Before meeting Rayner I had read some of his earlier books, being particularly impressed by his writing on the 1919 Limerick Soviet. Deidre McCartan, who was a former…

Recovering repressed memories from Scotland’s formative period

We are pleased to be able to re-open the historical debate which began in Emancipation & Liberation and which involved a number of socialists (see later links). Johnnie Gallacher of the Republican Socialist Platform takes us back to the period of the Covenanters and the clans. And the illustrations are so much better this time…

Ballymurphy Massacre

Mark Laggan posted this message on Facebook in the 50th anniversary of the Ballymurphy Massacre and asked for it to made public. 50 Years. Now we see the very reason there can be no amnesty for British troops who have served in Ireland during the Troubles. Fifty years it has taken to uncover the truth around…

The Paris Commune’s revolutionary ideas – 150 years on

This article by Ben Wray on the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune was first posted on bella caledonia. In the morning of 18 March 1871, a crowd of women in the Parisian working class district of Montmartre demonstrated. They were responding to the regular army of the French Government, fresh from defeat in a…

Notes On Transphobia

Emancipation and Liberation is reposting this article by Rowan Fortune of Anti-Capitalist Resistance, which has appeared on the Republican Socialist Platform website. The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. Karl…

Popular Culture, Brexit And One Nation Toryism

The following article by Jim Aitken, first appeared on the Culture Matters blog. There was a palpable sense of euphoria on the BBC during the morning after the night before of the General Election of December 12, 2019. It had a feeling of glee about it; a childish excitement that the un-English dragon of socialism –…