Europe

The National Front at Villeneuve sur Lot : a wake up call

3rd July 2013 Socialist Action 0

By Najete Michell

The by-election on 23rd June in Villeneuve sur Lot was a wake up call for the French political class. The second round run-off posed the question of whether the National Front candidate would win in the election for this Southern France parliamentary seat.

In the event, the NF candidate lost, but he nevertheless got 46 per cent of the vote in the run off against the UMP, apparently getting 7,000 more votes than in the first round, although the exact figures have yet to be released.

Defending the Good Friday Agreement, and the lessons of 1916

2nd April 2013 Socialist Action 0

Next week will see the 15th Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, described recently by Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness as ‘the single most important political agreement in our time’.

In his speech to the Dublin Commemoration of the 1916 Easter Rising, Martin McGuinness speaks of the Agreement as a turning point in Irish history, and resulting in a period in which republican objectives can be realised. He also warns against complacency and of the threats posed to the Good Friday Agreement by those who oppose equality and change.

Situating today’s struggle for a united Ireland in the context of the revolutionary struggle of 1916 which ‘started a bush fire of decolonisation, which engulfed the British Empire’, he spoke of the inspiration it inspired in ‘generations of people throughout the world who rose up against colonial rule’.

Photo: Sinn Féin

SDLP join unionists in attacking Good Friday Agreement

22nd March 2013 Socialist Action 0

By Frances Davis

Sinn Féin have correctly condemned attempts of anti-Good Friday Agreement unionists to push through an anti-peace process bill in Stormont this week – and hit out at the fact that the latest stage of the bill’s progress was backed by the SDLP.

Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness commented: ‘by supporting TUV legislation against former prisoners the SDLP have thrown the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement out of Stormont’s windows’.