Posted in Irish Middle Class, Fianna Fáil, Irish Society, Irish Economy, Irish Working Class, Ireland on Oct 28th, 2008 3 Comments »
“”All I’m saying is that I want to take one step back to take two steps forward,” Batt O’Keefe on Education cuts.
I teach History and English in a medium sized secondary school in Wexford Town. My sister lectures Economics in an Institute of Education. We don’t talk about it much but a big part […]
Posted in Irish Middle Class, Marx, dublin, Irish social history, Irish Working Class, Irish Labour History on Sep 30th, 2008 15 Comments »
Night is gone, a dawn
comes up in birds and sounds of the city.
There will be light
to live by, things
to see: my eyes will lift
to where the sun in vermilion sits,
and I will love thee and have pity. (Michael Hartnett)
I’m sitting on the small fenced stone wall that surrounds the central bank on Dame Street, drinking […]
Posted in Irish Middle Class, Marx, Irish Society, Irish social history, Irish History, Irish Working Class, Irish Labour History on Sep 11th, 2008 1 Comment »
I’m standing at the corner of Cathal Brugha Street and Thomas Lane, waiting for my friend Lida to arrive. She’s starting up her own business soon, and wants me to write a blurb for the website. The buses are running a bit late but she gets here around 6.30pm and so we head off for […]
Posted in Irish Middle Class, Marx, Irish Society, Irish social history, Irish Working Class, Irish Labour History on Sep 4th, 2008 6 Comments »
It is not the poverty
Of soil in Leitrim that makes me raise my hat
To fools with fifty pounds in a paper bank” (Lough Derg, Kavanagh)
A friend of mine is fond of saying, “he who tires of Bray, tires of life”. And there’s more than a line of truth in that one. As for myself, today […]
Posted in Irish Economy, Irish social history, Irish Working Class, Irish Labour History on Jul 28th, 2008 4 Comments »
In the Saorstát there is a very large internal trade in cattle, the 13 central eastern counties importing great herds of calves and store cattle from the seven south-western and from the six north-western counties. Before describing this trade it will be helpful to obtain an accurate impression of the ages of the calves and […]
Posted in Irish social history, Irish Working Class, Irish Labour History on Jul 22nd, 2008 No Comments »
It’s been a busy couple of weeks. I have a two-month summer teaching contract, after which I’ll be visiting my post office on a weekly basis. At the same time I’m trying to get some research done, and so I’m snapping up stuff in the library after classes, and mulling over it as I walk […]
Posted in Irish social history, Irish Working Class, Irish Labour History on Jul 20th, 2008 2 Comments »
A couple of months back I was putting together a research proposal that would look at the social, economic, cultural life and kinship of an ordinary housing estate in Dublin, from its planning inception in the 1950s through to the start of the “Celtic Tiger” boom in the early 1990s. The idea is to collate […]
Posted in Irish journalism, Irish Working Class, Media on Jul 14th, 2008 No Comments »
The main difference between the Irish Times and the Irish Independent at the moment seems to be style rather than content. For example, the Irish Independent created the debating point that immigration was a factor in the Lisbon Referendum using the leak from the European commission as the basis to do it, and the Irish […]
Posted in Irish journalism, Irish Times, Irish Middle Class, Irish Society, Irish Working Class on Jun 16th, 2008 8 Comments »
Indeed, the evidence from last Friday’s opinion poll in the Irish Times showed a No majority across virtually all age cohorts and social groupings. And as is evidenced from Dublin South West, turnout was unusually high in some working class areas, where there was a clear anti-treaty sentiment. (I.T. 13/06/06, Harry McGee.)
Tallies from early on […]
Posted in Irish Working Class, Irish Labour History, Labour on Apr 3rd, 2008 No Comments »
I was going through some old files on my hard drive and came across these scans of letters from Connolly that I had picked up a couple of years ago. They relate to his time in New York. The first letter is dated 28 January 1907, the last one, 6 June 1910.
For more on […]