The last year has marked a huge turning point in the Irish economy and most importantly a huge shift in the relations between the classes in Ireland. While the Celtic Tiger had been on life support for a while, 2009 saw a huge crisis that has had massive economic consequences and political change that will play out for a whole period. This year represented a shift from one historical period to another; a whole new perspective has opened up for Irish society, not just in the 26 counties, but increasingly across the whole island as the impact of the capitalist crisis begins to be felt to its full extent in the north.

Well over 250,000 Irish workers in the public sector were on strike on the 24th of this month. There would have been many more, but the unions guaranteed emergency cover including flood relief in the west, the midlands and the Shannon area and in Cork City. It’s a feature of every major strike, not just here, but throughout the world, that the well fed representatives of the bourgeois and particularly  the mean spirited and greedy petty bourgeois attempt to criticise and attack the worker's movement. These fine gentlemen and ladies are always the first to reach for the box of tissues as they weep crocodile tears about the poor and the vulnerable who they claim (wringing their hands in woe) are being let down by the strikers. The fact that the government have been slashing and burning public services for the last year and attacking the vulnerable seems conveniently to have been forgotten.