“Struggle or Starve” could be an epithet for UK in 2017 as the government pursues its policy of persecuting the poor. In this new book Sean Mitchell, socialist and founder of Ireland’s People before Profit Party, reminds us of an important part of Belfast history when Protestants and Catholics united to oppose a draconian Poor Law. It’s more than just a history book, as Sean shows us that the conditions of the poor in Belfast in the 1930s had a direct relationship with the creation of the Northern Ireland state in 1920, and its continued existence today.
Northern Ireland was created as a one party state to enshrine Protestant hegemony. But as the economic depression took hold after 1929 the position of both Catholics and Protestant workers reached a catastrophic condition of poverty and hunger. Unlike in Britain and over the border in the south of Ireland, the 1834…
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