In this episode we talk to Madeleine Johansson of Red Network. Madeleine moved
from Sweden to Ireland in the 2000s where she became active with the Socialist
Workers’ Party (SWP) and People Before Profit (PBP). She was a party organiser
and director of elections for the 2016 General Election campaign in Dublin
Mid-West, subsequently co-opted on to South Dublin County Council in 2016, and
returned in the 2019 and 2024 local elections. Madeleine was a founding member
of Red Network, which was formed in 2021 within People Before Profit before
becoming an independent party in 2025. She is the author of
Class War – Not Culture War
(2025) and
Reform or Revolution – Sweden, Socialism and The Welfare State
(2022), available from the Red Network website.
We discuss Madeleine’s early political experience and the contrast between
Sweden and Ireland; her work as an activist and organiser with SWP during the
austerity years and campaigns against household charges, property tax and water
charges; her experience as a local councillor and the particular challenge of
the housing crisis; the formation of Red Network and the political differences
that led them to leave People Before Profit; and her position on the politics
of class, identity politics, reform and revolution.
You’ll find more details of Red Network’s politics on their website at
rednetwork.net.
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Rebel Notes: Popular Music and Conflict in Ireland, with Stan Erraught
In this episode we talk to Stan Erraught about his book, Rebel Notes: Popular Music and Conflict in Ireland. We discuss Stan’s own political background and work leading to his research for the book; the different facets of Irish popular music since the mid-20th Century; the particular cases of the Wolfe Tones and Kneecap and perceptions of their political and Irish cultural expression; and the changing relationship between popular music and Republicanism, politics more broadly, and Irish culture and language.
Stan is a Lecturer in the School of Music at the University of Leeds. His research includes popular music and aesthetics, the political economy of the music industry, and critical theory. As well as several journal articles, he previously published On Music, Value and Utopia: Nostalgia for an Age Yet to Come? in 2018. Before moving to academia, Stan was a member of the band, The Stars of Heaven, in the 1980s.
Rebel Notes is published by Beyond the Pale Books
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1:07:28
Hotel Lux: An Intimate History of Communism’s Forgotten Radicals, with Maurice Casey
In this episode we talk to Maurice Casey about his book, Hotel Lux: An Intimate History of Communism’s Forgotten Radicals. Hotel Lux tells the story of May O’Callaghan and her social circle in the Comintern’s Moscow accommodation for international communists. We discuss Maurice’s PhD research, its transformation into the book, and the lives and interactions of May and other communists with whom she crossed paths.
Maurice is a historian based at Queen’s University Belfast. His work focuses on the history of modern Ireland, queer history, and the history of international communism in the interwar world. He holds degrees from Trinity College Dublin, Cambridge University and the University of Oxford, where he completed his doctoral studies in 2020. He was a Fulbright Scholar at Stanford University from 2018 to 2019. His writing has appeared in a variety of publications including History Today, the Irish Times and Tribune magazine. Hotel Lux: An Intimate History of Communism’s Forgotten Radicals is his first book.
Hotel Lux is published by Footnote Press. You can follow Maurice’s research on his Substack at archiverats.substack.com.
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The Party is Always Right: The Untold Story of Gerry Healy and British Trotskyism, with Aidan Beatty
In this episode we talk to Aidan Beatty about his book, The Party is Always Right: The Untold Story of Gerry Healy and British Trotskyism. We discuss the history of the Socialist Labour League and Workers’ Revolutionary Party in the UK; the role of the party and their Galway-born leader, Gerry Healy, in Trotskyism; the implosion of the party in 1985 with allegations of sexual abuse against Healy in a context of an already diminished Left; and responses to Aidan’s book.
Aidan is a lecturer in history at Carnegie Mellon University and President of the American Conference for Irish Studies. He is currently writing a book about capitalism and Irish nationalism and is also co-editing, with Brian Hanley, a forthcoming edited collection on the global history of the Irish far-right.
The Party is Always Right is published by Pluto Press and available on their website.
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Gearóid Ó Faoleán: The Provisional IRA in the Republic of Ireland
In this episode we talk to Gearóid Ó Faoleán about his research into support for the Provisional IRA in the Republic of Ireland during the Troubles. Gearóid is the author of A Broad Church: The Provisional IRA in the Republic of Ireland, 1969–1980 and A Broad Church Vol. 2: The Provisional IRA in the Republic of Ireland, 1980-1989, published by Merrion Press in 2019 and 2023, respectively. He is currently working on a history of traditional music in west Clare with support from a bursary from the Irish Association of Professional Historians.
We discuss the extent of support and sympathy for the IRA in the South and its role in the armed campaign; how public support manifested in training, arms, and the legal system; and the wide, cross-party political spread of IRA sympathy, discrete from the political wing of the Provisional movement.
Both volumes of A Broad Church are available from Merrion Press.
A podcast looking at Left politics in Ireland from the Irish Left Archive.
We talk to activists, writers, historians, politicians and others involved in Left organisations and movements about their experiences of participating in Left parties and campaigns; Left publications and political documents they’ve been involved in; and the history and development of progressive politics in Ireland. We also look at the role of the Irish Left Archive and similar informal projects.
The podcast is hosted by Ciarán Swan and Aonghus Storey.
Ireland