Rundale

The title for this month’s issue is taken from a Derek Mahon poem – our Socialist laureate, as Ciarán O’Rourke describes below. Mahon’s words speak to the themes of resistance, experimental practice and alternative forms of organising that link the five articles collected here. From anti-colonial thought linking Ireland and Martinique, to models of cooperative ownership and socially useful labour, we hope Derek Mahon would approve.

In The Bohemian Cooperatives – From the Terraces to the Local Economy, Katlyne Armstrong and Seán McCabe describe how the Bohemian Cooperatives has grown from Bohemian Football Club’s climate justice work and their long-standing history as a fan-owned club. Since 2021, starting with the Spark project, they’ve built a foundation for community-led action and collaboration. Now, they’re moving into delivering a community wealth building initiative capable of reclaiming our economy.

In Ireland’s Socialist Laureate: Derek Mahon’s “Lost Futures”, Ciarán O’Rourke recalls how the poet Derek Mahon (1941-2020) ended his days as a proponent of revolutionary transformation, advocating for “the ownership of the country” to be devolved “to the people of the country, not the few”. Mahon’s poems can be read as a roadmap and rallying-call for socialist citizenship: a living resource of anti-capitalist thought.

In The case for a ‘good’ job guarantee for Ireland, Lucy Bowen asks a subtley subversive question: what if you could rely on well-paid, local and meaningful work – whenever you wanted it? As she outlines, a public job guarantee does just that, and such a program could be transformative in tackling Ireland’s interlocking labour and ecological crises.

In Reading James Connolly and Frantz Fanon together, James Beirne asks why James Connolly has been overlooked as a political theorist? Placing him side by side with his much better known counterpart, Frantz Fanon, shows striking similarities, suggesting that it is past time to revisit the deeper implications of the work of this Irish revolutionary.

Finally, in Usable Pasts and Anti-Imperialist Memories, Nathan Hutchinson Edgar explores the relevance of Irish history to contemporary progressive movements. He argues that past anti-colonial struggle provides motivation for present action, and that through creating “usable pasts” we can discover new tools in approaching our current juncture. The article reflects on the contested nature of history, as progressive readings clash with revisionism from government figures.