General secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions GAWAIN LITTLE calls for support and participation in the national partnership organised to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 1926 general strike
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Pearse McKenna – Laoch ar Lar. An Appreciation
Remembering a dedicated T&GWU activist, internationalist and anti-sectarian
MAN OF PRINCIPLE: (Right) Pearse McKenna pictured on May Day 2016; (above) with International Brigade comrades from Hamburg; and (below) distributing copies of Unity
After brutal police crackdowns on pensioners and the forced approval of secret IMF deals, trade unions are finally responding to grassroots pressure and fighting back against savage neoliberal reforms, reports BERT SCHOUWENBURG
Bizarrely, Trump’s latest attacks now include the National Zoo, but his real and racist agenda is to strip everything black from the country’s cultural institutions, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
The transformation of a stable secular state into a fractured ruin largely ruled by Western-backed fundamentalists exposes the hollow nature of ‘multipolarity’ and the absence of principled anti-imperialism today, writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY
Facing economic turmoil, Jim Callaghan’s government rejected Tony Benn’s alternative economic strategy in favour of cuts that paved the way for Thatcherism — and the cuts-loving Labour of the present era, writes KEITH FLETT
The economic value of disability benefits far outweighs their cost, argues Dr DYLAN MURPHY
As tensions rise in the Middle East, the role of Iran in the region’s political balance becomes ever more significant. STEVE BISHOP assesses the current situation
A REAL hero of the trade union, labour and socialist movement has left us. Pearse McKenna, a bakery worker from the Falls Road in Belfast, became an activist in the Transport and General Workers Union and fought in numerous campaigns on behalf of the workers.
He was targeted for assassination by the pro-empire Ulster Freedom Fighters in 1991 because of his active intervention in the Ormeau Bakery in South Belfast, to secure a neutral, non-partisan workplace, in pursuit of the policy of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu), in this case free of Orange and loyalist flags and bunting.
Pearse was seriously injured. Thankfully another one of the bullets missed, grazing his head, after McKenna dived for shelter under a bakery lorry outside of his workplace where he was shop steward.
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1930-2024