Author Archives: andrewnflood

THERE IS LITTLE hope of a new IRA ceasefire, the loyalist death squads may restart a full campaign of assassinations and terror. We may be heading back to a situation of bloody murders every other day. After the British government’s carry on during the ‘peace process’, after Drumcree, after the bombs, after Harryville there is […]

The peace talks represent the ditching of Sinn Féin’s left gloss and a return to good old nationalist politics, pure and simple. They started with the Hume – Adams dialogue, a still secret document but one which clearly set out to demonstrate that the northern nationalists could be trusted (by both Dublin and London) to […]

 In August of 1968 NICRA called its first march. 2,500 marched from Coalisland to Dungannon to protest against local housing discrimination.

  The huge vote, North and South, in favour of the ‘Good Friday Agreement’ shows that the vast majority do not want a return to pre-ceasefire violence. Can this agreement get to the root of the sectarian problem and deal with the hatreds, fears and suspicions that have bedevilled our country?

The real cause of the housing crisis is neither the tens of thousands of returning Irish born migrants nor the 15,000 or so asylum seekers. The reason housing is in short supply and expensive is because of the hoarding of land and super profits of a handful of speculators.

After six years of massive house price increases it is now (2000) almost impossible for the average worker to buy a house in Ireland. Average house prices in Ireland rose from 11.3 times the average income in 1989 to 18.2 times income in 1999. The increases in rent and house prices have, for many workers, […]

Sellafield is a great vote winner for political parties come election time. It has got to be the single issue on which almost every person in Ireland agrees: Sellafield is bad and it should be shut down. So in the next months we can expect pickets of the British embassy, press conferences and the promises […]

The mouthpiece of millionaire Tony O’Reilly, the Sunday Independent, got terribly excited when it ‘discovered’ there were anarchists involved in the bin tax campaign. Or, as it oddly put it, anarchists of the Workers Solidarity Movement had "infiltrated the campaign in significant numbers"

WHAT USED TO be called the white man’s civilising mission has returned with a vengeance. Suddenly white Europeans and Americans once more have to bring peace and harmony to the rest of the world by stamping on dictators, stopping the Islamic bomb and introducing economic stability.

When Columbus reached the Caribbean in 1492 he had little interest in the new plants and animals of this land. Instead he was confident that the Spanish crown could make the Arawaks and Caribs collect and give "what was needed".