Irish Left Archive Podcast

In this episode we talk to David Costelloe. David writes on history and politics on his website Never Felt Better , and in particular has written an extensive series of articles on Irish military history entitled “Ireland’s Wars”, which spans from the earliest recorded conflicts on the island right up to the revolutionary period. We discuss with David his background and interest in history and in...

In this episode we talk to Brian Hanley about his experience of Left activism as a member of the Socialist Workers Movement (SWM) in the late 1980s and early 90s. We discuss the cultural and political influences that led him to join the SWM as a teenager in Limerick; the nature and political position of the organisation at that time; the experience of being an active member; and how the SWM change...

In this episode we talk to Danny Morrison . Danny is a writer and Republican political activist from West Belfast. He was national director of publicity for Sinn Féin in the 1980s, and editor, first, of the Sinn Féin paper Republican News in Belfast, and then of An Phoblacht when the two papers were merged. He is the author of several fiction and non-fiction works. He is also secretary of the Bobb...

In this episode we talk to Sarah Clancy. Sarah is a poet and activist from Galway, and currently based in Clare. Her published collections include Stacey and the Mechanical Bull in 2011, Thanks for Nothing, Hippies in 2012, and The Truth and Other Stories in 2014. Sarah has often performed her work both at literary and at political events. We discuss Sarah’s background and how she came both to pol...

In this episode we talk to Laura Broxson. Laura is an activist focused on animal rights and founder of the National Animal Rights Association (NARA) . NARA is a non-hierarchical organisation, taking a radical animal rights and vegan perspective. We’ll discuss how Laura came to activism and founding NARA; the anti-fur and hare-coursing campaigns in which she’s been involved; different methods of ca...

We’re back after a taking break for a few months, so this is just a quick update on the podcast and the Irish Left Archive project. We’ll have full episodes with more guests coming out fortnightly, starting next week. One of the new elements we’ve added to the site in recent months is to start a collection of personal accounts and recollections from people who have participated on the Left in Irel...

In this episode we talk to John Goodwillie . John is a long-time political activist, who has been involved in a number of progressive parties and organisations. He was a member of Labour in the 1960s and belonged to the Young Socialists, Socialist Labour Action Group and subsequent Socialist Labour Alliance . He was involved with the Socialist Workers’ Movement (SWM) in the 1970s, and joined the S...

In this episode we talk to historian Brian Hanley about The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers’ Party , the book which he co-authored with Scott Millar, published in 2009. We discuss the history of Official Republicanism from the move to the Left in the 1960s up to the contemporary, and how Brian and Scott went about researching and writing the history of that movement....

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 Sociali...

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...

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...

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...

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 Th...

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 Righ...

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 c...

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 ran...

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 p...

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 sev...

Introducing the Irish Left Archive Podcast! In this episode, Ciarán Swan and Aonghus Storey discuss how the project got started in 2007 and how it has developed since then. The Irish Left Archive was started as part of the Cedar Lounge Revolution (CLR) blog and later developed into the separate website at leftarchive.ie . We discuss the background to the project, the advantages of a non-institutio...