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TPQ
Barry Gilheany ⚽ It must be the Ides of March.

But a familiar but not less horrible feeling is knotting the collective psyches and stomachs of Leeds United fans. With seven fixtures left in the Premier League season, we find ourselves in 16th place; two places and four points (and superior goal difference) above West Ham United who occupy the third relegation place. 

If one accepts that Burnley (19th) and Wolves (20th) are already Championship bound; then the third relegation place is between us, the Hammers, Nottingham Forest, and the rolling, 24-hour disaster show that is Tottenham Hotspur. Yes, we remain in charge of our destiny and, after this weekend’s results, we are now outside the margin of error (a statistical concept that I have borrowed from political psephologists meaning that just as in electoral forecasting pollster allow themselves a margin of three points in their analysis; so in football terms a three point advantage can by wiped out by a single defeat). 

But as a fan base we are traumatised by memories of disastrous run-ins such as the 2022-23 season when a 5-1 rout at home by Crystal Palace on Easter Sunday presaged a rapid descent into the Championship in a run which saw just two points from eight matches and all sorts of unwanted defensive milestones. Now it is the paucity of goals at our end that is the cause of much of our angst; the last goal was another trademark free kick Exocet missile from Anton Stach at Aston Villa four matches ago. Since then, it has been a story of frustration at Daniel Farke’s apparent reversion to a defensive formation which has ground out two successive bore draws but is lacking the attacking verve we were displaying not so long ago.

But it has also been a tale of anger at the inconsistency of refereeing decisions which, rather than being echoes of Leeds United’s experiences in the 1960s and 1970s, reflect wider dysfunctions within the culture of football officialdom. Anyway, we are truly into the squeaky bum, sphincter twisting ‘business end’ of the season which is the annual challenge to the emotional resilience of football fans whether the goal are winning trophies, promotion or avoiding relegation.

While we have won a lot of plaudits for being competitive in the Premiership (except against Arsenal!) and for our uptake in form since the end of November; the statistical reality is that we have won just four games in thirteen PL fixtures; lost four and drawn the remaining five. Only Wolves have won fewer away games than our solitary victory at their gaff. But what is really concerning is that our last three home fixtures have yielded just one point and no goals. Yes, our football was exciting to watch where we have gone onto the front foot especially at Newcastle, Everton, and Aston Villa but we only accumulated a points total of only two from these journeys despite having led in all three games (three times at St James Park where we eventually lost 4-3). 

At the Hill Dickenson Stadium and Villa Park, we could have been ahead by a bigger margin of one goal at half-time; but we played too much on the backfoot in the second half, inviting the inevitable onslaught and equaliser. But there was little cause for worry nor was there after our one goal defeat to Manchester City at the end of February, an outcome which could have been so different had Dominic Calvert-Lewin converted an early chance laid on for him by superb Leeds forward play. At this stage we were a comfortable six points clear of the bottom three, were we to maximise returns from our remaining five games we should be safe. But it is at this stage the worm begins to turn as it inevitably does for Leeds in the month of March.

The home defeat by City was overshadowed by some noises off. First of all, a Ramadan break at sunset for City’s Muslim’s players to take which had been pre-announced by Leeds United led to a cacophony of boos and jeers from the Elland Road stands. The optics looked terrible; were Leeds United being disgraced again by a fan element notorious for their racism in the 1980s? The anti-racist body Kick It Out condemned the crowd’s reaction and the club expressed its disappointment as did many Leeds fans on social media. It looked and felt embarrassing for those of us who want Elland Road to be an inclusive space and never want a return to those dark days. 

However, what was the booing really about? For during the FA Cup tie at home to Norwich City there was a Ramadan break to facilitate our forward Joel Piroe. What had aggrieved the home crowd at the City game was that City manager Pep Guardiola had used the Ramadan break for an informal coaching session for his players, surely a violation, at least in spirit, of the laws of the game. Of more serious consequence were other decisions taken by the referee Peter Bankes. He and that supposedly failsafe mechanism VAR failed to see a stamp by City’s Cherki on Paschal Struijk which would surely merit a straight red. Instead it was manager Daniel Farke who saw red when after the final whistle he walked onto the pitch to protest that Bankes had not added on additional time to take account of two substitutions that Pep had made in stoppage time; the ref had obviously rehearsed his reaction as he had the card in his pocket primed for instant, almost reflexive, impact. Fortunately, his touchline suspension was reduced on appeal from the mandatory three games to one which was the next game at home to Sunderland.

It was this fixture against the Black Cats that birthed the latest Leeds United crisis of confidence. Sunderland, who secured their Premiership spot through a dramatic stoppage time winner in the Play Off final against Sheffield United who were in the automatic promotion spots for much of last season, have defied the laws of promotion gravity by securing Premiership safety well before the automatically promoted sides, us, and Burnley. Their style of play is markedly physical and ‘in your face’ with Northern Ireland defender Dan Ballard, a particularly uncompromising stalwart. That night the Makems deployed the Dark Arts symbolic of their nickname or in less elegant football parlance “shithousery.” We were muscled out of almost every opportunity we tried to create; their high line and low block would not allow us to stamp any authority on the game. We lacked the fluency that had become a defining feature of our play for the last three months or so. 

The game turned on two VAR decisions around the mid point of the second half. First, in the 64th minute, Joe Roden raised to head into the net a free kick from Anton Stach. The joy and relief felt by us all soon turned to disappointment and frustration as VAR ruled that Joe was marginally offside. Worse was to come when captain Ethan Ampadou was adjudged after a typically prolonged VAR check to have handled in his penalty area. Habib Diarra in the 70th minute converted the spot kick to take all three points back to Wearside. All our possession and shots we peppered on their goal were met with blocks, last ditch tackles, and heroic goalkeeping. It was definitely not our night and a stonewall penalty denied when Sunderland’s Luc O’Nien as much as strangled Struijk in the six-yard area at a corner kick left a bitter taste in the mouth.

Worse was to come on the following evening when a plucky 2-2 draw earned by Forest at the Etihad and, worst of all, a West Ham victory by 2-1 at Fulham meant that the gap between us and 18th place had been cut to three points. Cue panic alarms among the more excitable and doom mongering of the fan base.

So it was down to London for a Sunday 2pm encounter with Crystal Palace and another chance to break our hoodoo in the capital city where we have not won a Premiership match since the 3-2 victory at Highbury in May 2003 which guaranteed our topflight safety that season while simultaneously dashing Arsenal’s hopes of retaining their Premier League title. Both Forest and West Ham had drawn on the Saturday so a victory would increase the gap from us to 18th place. The first half was for the most part uneventful until another double disaster just before the break. After Palace’s Will Hughes inexplicably handled in their penalty box, we were presented with an opportunity to break our clean sheet record at the wrong end and put more distance between us and the drone. Eager anticipation turned to horror for Leeds fans, as Dominic Calvert-Lewin dragged the resultant spot kick to the left of the post and wide. This ghastly miss has not deterred Thomas Tuchel from recalling him to the England squad, however. Then, in a comedic moment (except for Leeds fans) before half time, referee Thomas Bramall after drawing back from issuing a second yellow card to Jakob Bijol, then hesitatingly gave a yellow to Gabriel Gudmundsson for a mistimed but innocuous challenge before realising that as he had already booked him, he would have to issue a red card to arguably our star performer of our season. Cue a thoroughly unprofessional and frankly contemptible act of applause at Gabriel’s departure by Palace’s Jaydee Carvot. In the circumstances, Farke’s decision to park the bus for the second half was entirely justifiable and we survived a marginal offside call for a Palace close range effort to take what we all recognised was a valuable point. A late equaliser for Spurs at Anfield was mildly irritating. So the status quo remained at the bottom of the Premiership.

So onto last Saturday’s 8pm Elland Road encounter with Brentford in 7th place and chasing the prospect of European football next season. Again we fired blanks but fortunately so did the Bees and we did an excellent containing job on their 19 goal Brazilian international striker, Igor Tiago. Both defences were dominant but Brentford’s tactics particularly its liberal use of the “Garryowen” made it very difficult for us to play fluently. But the main talking point in a match devoid of any serious goal scoring opportunities was another flagrant violation of the spirit of the beautiful game when the Bees’ keeper Caoimhín Kelleher sat down at the edge of his penalty area convincingly feigning injury and affording another opportunity for an opposition coach to hold an informal, no let’s call it out, illegal session. 

The brand name and reputation of the Premiership is being damaged by the reluctance of match officials to enforce, for example, the maximum eight second possession of the ball rule for goalkeepers; the exploitation of false stoppages by coaches and their failure to stay within their confines and the persistent infringements in penalty areas at corners or other dead ball situations. Anyway, rant over for another time. What felt two points dropped turned into a point gained with West Ham’s loss at Aston Villa revitalised by the return of John McGinn and with Spurs’ 3-0 home collapse to Forest. Now we stand four points plus a superior goal difference ahead of the Hammers in 18th place.

But the questions are not going away. Why is DCL misfiring and dropping off the pace? Why are those players who can make things happen like Gnonto and Tanaka continuing to warm the bench? Is Farke reverting to a passing game which is not delivering the goods? It is my hope that Dan James makes a full recovery to match fitness by the time of the resumption of the Premier League in three weeks’ time after the international break and FA Cup quarterfinals in which we go to West Ham and will hopefully be a bit of R&R for us. When business does resume, it will do so on the second weekend of April which has proved so consequential for us in the past, ref Palace collapse cited above. What a time then to visit Old Trafford to renew acquaintances with the Auld Enemy! We have to get those survival wins from somewhere.

Paris Update

This splendid documentary about the European Cup Final that football tried to forget is being shown again at the Irish Film Institute in Dublin on 26 and 31 May. Tickets are available from the documentary.

⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter. 

Tis The Season To Be Worried ⚽ Leeds United And The Relegation Run In

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Nine Hundred And Twenty

 

A Morning Thought @ 3095

People And Nature ☭  Written by Simon Pirani.

12-March-2026
Russian bombing of Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and blocks of flats has continued uninterrupted this month, while attention has been diverted by the criminal US-Israeli military adventure in Iran. Ukrainian cities are emerging from their hardest winter yet, during which Russia tried its best to freeze them into submission.

How, or whether, socialists in Europe get their heads around the political and practical challenges posed by Russia’s war is surely very, very far down the list of things that most Ukrainian people care about right now.

Demonstration in London on the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion, February 2025.
Photo by Steve Eason
I am going to write about it here nonetheless, because if “socialism” is to mean anything, then how European socialists are responding to the bloodiest war on this continent for eighty years matters a great deal.

I will argue that, whatever small steps we have taken, to support Ukrainian resistance in the spirit of internationalism, are overshadowed by our collective failure to understand and discuss the profound changes caused by the Russian war and to work out effective responses.

By “we”, I mean socialists who from the start supported Ukrainian resistance to imperialist attack. In this first article I offer a view of what we have done and not done. In a second article, I comment on the enduring influence of those who oppose Ukrainian resistance, in practice, words or both.

The small steps we have taken can be summed up as follows. First, sections of the organised labour movement have given direct, material support to their Ukrainian counterparts in the form of medical and other supplies. While this is probably a relatively small component of the overall flow of support from civil society and from Ukrainians living in Europe, up to and including military equipment and volunteer soldiers, it is significant.

Second, we have sought to unite support for Ukrainian resistance to Russian imperialism, and indeed for the tiny, fiercely suppressed anti-war movement in Russia, with the massive anti-war movement that opposed western governments’ support for Israeli genocide in Gaza. We raised our voices against the hypocrisy of governments who sought forcibly to silence pro-Palestinian voices while permitting Ukrainian ones.

Demands on western governments from within the labour movement to take stronger specific actions in support of Ukraine, by making economic sanctions more effective or freeing up supplies of particular types of weapons, have in my view been less effective, due to the relative weakness of the labour movement politically and the crisis of social-democratic parties across Europe.

Our most serious failure, though, in my view, has been the lack of deep-going discussion about the way that the Russian war has changed Europe, and what that means for the labour movement and social movements.

Too little attention is paid to Ukrainian socialists’ attempts at critique. Meaningful discussion about military issues that stare us in the face is almost completely absent, in the UK at least. Clear thought about what war and its effects means for society, for social movements, for working people as the motive force of change – as distinct from what it means for the state – is rarely articulated.

One consequence of this failure is that our responses to crude “anti-imperialism” that makes Ukrainian resistance invisible – voiced recently, for example, by Zarah Sultana – are insufficiently robust.

Among Ukrainian socialists’ critiques, there is an implicit challenge to us in western countries in the reflections by Taras Bilous on the last four years of war, building on his widely-circulated “letter to the western left” written on the day Russia invaded.

Asked about prospects for a negotiated peace and security guarantees – the lack of which is a key outstanding obstacle to a settlement, according to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky – Bilous said:

In the context of the collapse of the international order, no written security guarantees are reliable. For Ukraine, there are two main security guarantees: the army, and the fact that Russia has suffered heavy losses in this war. Now they will think twice before attacking us again.

Bilous on one hand points up the significance of the direct Russia-Ukraine negotiations that are now taking place, as distinct from the US-Russia “great power” farce. On the other he sees no evidence that Putin has abandoned his plan to destroy the Ukrainian state, and sees calls to surrender the unoccupied part of Donbas to Russia as, potentially, “just a step towards this”.

These stark warnings imply dilemmas for socialists across Europe. If the only real “security guarantees” are the force of arms, what does that mean in Estonia? Lithuania? Poland? What does it mean further west?

Hanna Perekhoda, a Ukrainian socialist who lives in Switzerland, argued last year that any left-wing perspective had to start not from the nation-state or European community, but the “global working class”. It has to “keep in mind that neither human life nor workers’ rights, nor the environment can be protected” in any state trapped in the “zone of influence” of imperial extractivist powers such as Russia, China or the US.

In her view, this requires socialists in Europe, first, to “ensure the structural survival of a democratic space” and, second, to “fight from within that space to redefine its political and social content”. In the Baltic states, Poland and Finland, this means “rebuilding their stocks [of armaments] and reinforcing infrastructure”. She continued:

When your neighbour is the world’s second military power, bombing cities daily, spending a third of its budget on war and calling your country a “historical mistake”, the ability to defend yourself is not an arms race. It is survival.

Eastern European states can only undertake this with the help of western European allies, Perekhoda writes. In western Europe, “the threat is different. Less about invasion, more about the rise of the far right”; and defence means:

[C]ountering disinformation, protecting infrastructure, blocking foreign money in politics, defending against cyberattacks, sabotage, and energy blackmail. And helping those who need weapons immediately for their survival.

Perekhoda argues that socialists should not oppose the production of weapons; the real battlefield is who controls it; “the problem is letting the market decide what is produced, for whom, under what rules”.

If we in western Europe are not discussing these issues, what are we playing at? It is not Ukrainian comrades’ job to sort out our problems. They have enough other things to worry about. It is to our collective shame that Oleksandr Kyselov, a Ukrainian socialist based in Sweden, should mark the fourth anniversary of all-out war by protesting that:

Too many of the European left are busy stretching familiar old frameworks over a changed world. As if continuing to hope that, should they just deny, condemn, and denounce loudly enough, selectively pontificating about internationalism while reinforcing the borders of their national units, they will be spared the new reality of the world.

There are (at least) two sides to the discussion we need to have: one (“political”) concerning any effect we might have on the situation now, when all decisions about military matters are effectively in the hands of the ruling class, its state and its puppet politicians; and, second (I’ll call it “movement-focused”), about principles around which to build a movement strong enough both to counter the state and to bring about social transformation.

On the political side, socialists in Nordic countries are streets ahead of us in the UK, perhaps because they are geographically closer to Russia.

Bjarke Friborg of the Red-Green Alliance in Denmark underlined in a recent interview the “very real” threat posed by Putin’s regime, “not necessarily in terms of ‘tanks rolling into Paris’, but certainly as a threat to democracy, sovereignty and the principle that borders can not be changed by brute force”. He continued:

We oppose Russian imperialism just as we have opposed American and NATO imperialism: not by supporting one bloc against another, but by defending the right of peoples to self-determination and supporting democratic and progressive forces in Russia and its client state, Belarus.

Friborg argued that “opposing militarism” and recognising “the need for people to resist aggression” are entirely compatible, and formulated this in terms of “popular defence – a democratic defence based on citizens and rooted in civil society, not a militarised state apparatus serving the interests of business, the arms industry and imperialist interventions”. The alternative to “popular defence” is to leave the field open to authoritarian powers.

There is no contradiction between military support for Ukraine and criticism of NATO and the arms industry.

Where do socialists in the UK stand? In October last year, a group of us held a (small, not publicly advertised) discussion about “How we can effectively support Ukrainian resistance, while opposing general European rearmament”. A friend who opened the discussion – let’s call him Gerald – began by saying that he didn’t think this was possible; that we could not do one without the other (in contrast to Friborg’s view).

As I understood it, Gerald reckons that European nations’ military spending has been relatively low in recent years, and that without multi-billion-euro investment in weapons systems, they would be unable to counter Russian militarism in eastern Europe.

Military technologies (about which I know very little) were also referred to in our discussion. The extent to which the US, European countries, Israel and others rely on each other for these is relevant.

Where could we start, in forming a collective view of this difficult subject? The working-class and socialist movements can and must pick and choose which actions of the capitalist state we support, and which we oppose. We must pick and choose technologies.

We support building schools and employing health workers; we oppose building new airport runways. Why can’t we support the provision of air defence systems to Ukraine, while opposing sinking billions into Trident and aircraft carriers? Why can’t we call on the government to refuse to purchase Israeli-made weapons systems?

In order to develop a socialist approach along these lines, we need, for a start, an honest assessment of the extent and nature of the Russian military threat (i) to Ukraine, (ii) to other eastern and central European states, and (iii) to western Europe (likely in the form of cyber and other sabotage, covert support for right-wing parties etc).

Furthermore, we need an honest assessment of the limits of European “democracy” that claims to be defending Ukraine – the same “democracy” that reinforces the power of corporations against working people, that supported Israel’s genocide to the hilt and that maintains a “fortress” against defenceless refugees. This is the issue raised point-blank by Hanna Perekhoda, as I mentioned above.

It is this “democracy” that controls military technology. Its claims that investment in military systems is justified by support for Ukraine need to be assessed in that context. We know that that support is strictly rationed, and that it goes alongside the continuing arms trade with Israel, the Gulf states and other autocracies.

In my view, political demands that the European “democracies” supply to Ukraine defensive weapons it needs must be integrated into broader opposition to imperialist militarism, as Friborg does. Could the call for a Europe-wide embargo on arms sales anywhere except Ukraine, mentioned by Taras Bilous, be a starting point?

One UK politician has timidly hinted that there are good, and bad, weapons supplies: John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister. In September last year, he lifted restrictions on the use of public support for munitions production “in light of Russia’s invasion of and continued war against Ukraine”, but blocked new awards of public money to defence companies trading with Israel, due to the “plausible evidence of genocide” in Gaza.
Ukrainian soldiers with anti-aircraft gun, Rivne, April 2023.
Photo: Creative commons/ Ukrainian ministry of defence
A very limited commitment, to be sure. But could it be one stepping-stone to a set of radical political approaches? Could the distinction between arms for Ukraine, and arms for genocidal regimes, be incorporated into such initiatives as the “Plan for an Alternative to Russian occupation”, issued last year by Labour MPs, trade union leaders and others, and supported by the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign?

The Plan urges increasing weapons supply and tighter sanctions on Russia, and calls for Ukraine’s international debt to be cancelled and for frozen Russian financial assets to be transferred to Ukraine.

It also advocates “an emergency ‘Save Ukraine’ summit of European and allied nations” be convened, “for necessary military and financial support”. In my view this is a pandora’s box.

How would the labour movement, and/or politicians allied to it, stop such a summit being a vehicle for European governments to compel Ukraine to do their bidding? What can we learn from the experience of the conferences on Ukrainian economic reconstruction in 2022-23, at which European corporations jostled for pride of place in post-war EU-financed programmes?

There is a dearth of frank, serious discussion about the logic of such political demands.

We need discussion, too, about how such political demands about arms supplies, addressed to the UK and other reactionary governments, relate to broader socialist principles on which the development of the labour movement and social movements can be based. (This is what I meant, above, by movement-focused approaches. It is underpinned by the idea that socialism implies the transformation of the whole of society, by society, with the working class at its centre, as distinct from political changes in the state.)

Opposition to imperialist militarism, and support for all those attacked by it, has to be at the centre, in my view. This means, for a start:

🞺 Working to unite European support for Ukrainian resistance to support for Palestinian resistance to Israeli colonialism and genocide – in other words, working to unite movements of human liberation on both sides of the geopolitical divide.

🞺 In the UK and Europe, supporting the human rights of all refugees and asylum-seekers in the face of governments’ racist, divisive manipulation of rules to play off Ukrainian refugees against those from African, Asian and Middle Eastern countries.

🞺 Bringing together such basic internationalist principles with the struggle to reverse the assaults on working-class living standards and public services in the UK and Europe, that is, to direct the fight on these issues against capital, to counter the extreme right-wing attempts to set working-class people in Europe against Ukraine and/or against refugees and migrants.

🞺 Cooperation and coordination with Ukrainian labour movement and civil society organisations, which are allied with the right-wing Zelensky government against Russian aggression, but in conflict with it in their efforts to extend social and civil rights, to resist authoritarianism and corruption in the Ukrainian state, and to resist economic policies designed to suit western corporations.

Such basic principles are not heard loudly enough. Our banner “From Ukraine to Palestine, occupation is a crime” is warmly welcomed on demonstrations, but that remains a minority’s slogan. Voices such as Adeeb Shaheen’s, identifying the commonality of struggles against western and Russian imperialism, need to be amplified.

If support for Ukrainian resistance is not anchored in such principles, there is a danger that it will be turned into an adjunct of Labour’s militarist politics.

That seems to be the current mission of Paul Mason, the left-turned-right journalist, who parades his support for arms supplies to Ukraine, while simultaneously expressing “pride” in Labour’s backing for Israeli genocide, applauding the authoritarian clampdown on pro-Palestine protest and bemoaning Labour’s punishment by left-wing voters.

Mason advises the government that the UK’s general rearmament programme can be to society’s benefit.

Identification of Ukraine’s struggle with imperialist militarism is anathema to genuine solidarity with Ukrainian resistance, and the mirror image of “campist” opposition to that resistance, that I have written about in a second article.

🞺 A linked article: Russia’s war: stop trying to delegitimise resistance

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European Socialism, Imperial Militarism And Defence Of Ukraine

Dixie Elliot ✊A generation of brave young Irish men and women, some while still in their teenage years, willingly gave their lives for a dream.


That dream was of a 32-County Socialist Republic.
 
Today they lie in cold graves and the dream has been reduced to the hope that one day, at a time of their choosing, the British will grant a referendum on Irish Unity.
 
Yesterday Gerry Adams stood in front of the image of one of those brave young Irish men, Bobby Sands, and spoke of the civil case taken against him, referring to it as a show trial.
 
You'd almost believe that he had been through a Diplock Court. Incredibly there are deluded fools who actually believe that he was.
 
I have noticed that Adams uses the image of brave Bobby in a way which makes it appear that he is looking over his shoulder.
 
In interviews there will be a photo of Bobby visible in the background. I noticed on one occasion Bobby's biography, Nothing But an Unfinished Song which had been placed facing out on a book shelf.

Adams, the man with whom Bobby trusted with his funeral arrangements.
 
Bobby wanted to be buried in Ballina alongside Frank Stagg and Michael Gaughan. He was buried in Milltown Cemetery.
 
Bobby asked that he be wrapped in a blanket and not a suit nor a humiliating shroud. He had the heart of a poet and he knew that the screws would never hand over a blanket for him to be buried in.
What he was requesting was a similar type of blanket which would be symbolic of his time on the blanket protest.
 
That simple request was even denied to him as he was buried wearing a humiliating shroud.
 
Bear that in mind the next time you see Adams using Bobby's image or his name to try and sell something.

Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman.
Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie

Denying Bobby Sands HIs Dying Wish

Dr John Coulter ✍ The annual Alliance Party conference had a lot of pomp and pageantry about what it will do for the people of Northern Ireland come the May 2027 council and Assembly polls, but one question is still eluding the electorate - when will the party come clean on its new-found republican roots?

Of course, spokespeople will be wheeled out to champion the soundbite that Alliance is currently neutral on the constitution and the Union, and prides itself in the propaganda that it is supposedly a ‘middle of the road, centrist’ party.

Long gone are the days when if you wanted to avoid a political debate, you simply said: “I’m Alliance!” Long gone, too, is the perception - especially under the leadership of my schoolboy chum and fellow Presbyterian minister’s son Lord John Alderdice - that Alliance was a ‘soft U’ Unionist party.

In those days, Alliance’s power base was in traditionally Unionist constituencies east of the River Bann. But in the years under current boss Naomi Long, Alliance realised that if it was to become a significant third force in Northern Ireland politics behind Unionism and Nationalism, it would have to expand west of the Bann.

But therein lies the problem for Alliance. How do you ride two political horses at once who are pulling in opposite directions? How do you get moderate Unionists to vote for you thinking you are a ‘soft U’ Unionist movement, whilst at the same time convincing SDLP and Sinn Fein voters to transfer to you under the guise that you are a ‘soft R’ republican party?

It prompts the question - will the real Alliance Party please stand up? Indeed, when will moderate Unionists waken up to the reality that Alliance has hitched its caravan to the pan nationalist front of Dublin, Sinn Fein and the SDLP?

Alliance sent a clear message about its new-found republican and Left-wing roots to the pro-Union community by having Andy Burnham, the controversial Left-wing Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester as a keynote speaker at its recent conference.

The message is simple as to where Alliance - coming into the 2027 elections - now stands. Forget the ‘middle of the road’ spin. Constitutionally, Alliance has now taken over the ground once occupied by the now defunct democratic nationalist movement, the Irish Independence Party. Ideologically, it is occupying the ground once held by the now defunct Northern Ireland Labour Party. Alliance is no longer a liberal party.

Another horse Alliance seeks to ride out of its political stable is that it has become an openly environmentally friendly party in a bid to soak up the Green Party vote in Northern Ireland.

Alliance may be looking over its shoulder at the seeming resurgence of the Ulster Unionists under Jon Burrows, a trend which could see moderate Unionists who used Alliance in the past as a protest vote returning to the UUP fold.

Over the other shoulder, Alliance may be keeping an eye if the trend in mainland Britain where the Greens are having an electoral boost could make its way across the Irish Sea in time for the May 2027 showdown. Put bluntly, could Alliance be squashed electorally between a Green Party bounce and new-found UUP bounce?

Alliance also has the problem of being unable to retain its Westminster seats. It currently has only one MP - Sorcha Eastwood in the traditionally Unionist seat of Lagan Valley.

Having lived in that constituency for 28 years myself, she only won the seat because of a fairly even three-way split in Unionism and tactical voting by republicans. If Unionism can reach an accommodation on an agreed candidate, Alliance in Lagan Valley will suffer the same electoral fate as it has suffered in the past in East Belfast and North Down - losing the seat to a Unionist.

With much talk about realignment in Unionism currently taking place, Alliance must be asking itself - is there room in the pan nationalist front for a third nationalist party?

With Unionism holding discussions on transferring to one another in the May 2027 polls, can Alliance reach an accommodation with the SDLP and Sinn Fein on transfers, or has the Alliance bubble finally started to leak air at a rapid rate?

Has courting the nationalist vote west of the Bann backfired on Alliance? Is Alliance now seen as too nationalist to attract moderate pro-Union voters? And if Alliance tries to rebrand itself yet again as a ‘soft U’ Unionist party, is that the end of republican transfers from the pan nationalist front?

Whilst there has been much talk of a so-called border poll, one is not likely before May 2027. But at some point over the next several months, Alliance will have to finally come clean on where it stands on the Union.

The danger for Alliance is that this debate between the rival factions in the party - namely, the pan nationalist front element who favour Irish unity, and the traditional Lord Alderdice-style ‘soft U’ Unionists - could pull the party asunder in the same way as the Good Friday Agreement created the rival Yes and No camps in the UUP during the Lord Trimble era.
 
Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
John is a Director for Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. 

Alliance Must Come Clean On Its Republican Roots

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Nine Hundred And Nineteen

 

A Morning Thought @ 3094

Anthony McIntyre ☠ For ten hours last week, the former IRA leader Gerry Adams took to the witness box of a London court to deny that he was the former IRA leader Gerry Adams.

Given the allegations made against him, the presiding judge might have felt he was listening to Harold Shipman deny that he was ever a doctor. Like Shipman, the allegations about a body count have been persistent, the Belfast Telegraph 
proclaiming in the immediate wake of his Dublin libel case, Gerry Adams is a man of towering ambition who’d no moral qualms about securing his goal through murder. If the accusations against Adams were upheld as being true - that he was a member of the IRA army council - then critics would feel free to contend that he has been responsible for even more autopsies than Shipman. 

In the end the London case against Adams collapsed, giving him not quite his preferred outcome which was a dismissal of the claim on the basis of the evidence before the court. Still, he got a much better result than the claimants who had issued the proceedings against him. And it must be conceded that in his post-court media interview in Belfast he spoke truthfully about one matter - the claimants had been badly advised from the outset - leaving the observer to wonder if they were prompted to take the case by the same element that badly advised them.

While some of the Trump-style lying in London opened him to ridicule - as in his nonsensical contention that he was not the author of the Brownie columns - apologists for Adams have long insisted that he must deny IRA membership otherwise he would be prosecuted and imprisoned. Yet, as Brendan Hughes observed in the H Blocks some months before his release in 1986, he would not expect Adams to admit membership for that very reason, but went on to point out the obvious: a mere 'no comment' would suffice to prevent prosecution. There was no need to lie about membership.

The real reason for the unrelenting organised lying is arguably the need to give cover to those movers, shakers and gatekeepers in the world of politics who could open doors to an extended and enhanced political career for Adams whereby he could prance around as Percy Pompous on the national and international stage, a human rights champion, a statesman, so long as he kept his end of the bargain and strangled the IRA, forcing it to accept British terms for disengagement - unity only by consent. In rendering himself a major asset (as distinct from an agent) to the rich and powerful of this world, his disavowal of IRA membership made it easier for them to open doors for the man they could do business with, while simultaneously serving as the lubricant with which he could oil the wheels of his political career.

Does the London ruling change anything? Not in the slightest. Nobody who last Sunday believed Adams to have been in the IRA believes this Sunday that he was not in it. Even had he lost, it would have changed the minds of no one. A judgement that he had been a member of the IRA would have been less uncomfortable for him than it would have been for the British state. A court finding against Adams would have left the state exposed for having - despite all its protestations to the contrary that it had never talked with 'terrorists' - previously negotiated with a person legally acknowledged as an IRA figure, even allowing him to cross the threshold of 10 Downing Street. For the British, better that such is left judicially unsaid. 

Perhaps the institutional instinct of the judge kicked in. As a barrister Jonathan Swift's “favourite clients were the security and intelligence agencies”, so he was well positioned to readily understand  how any ruling was likely to play out. He, rather than the Adams legal team, raised the issue of a possible abuse of process which in the end relieved him of any responsibility to make a determination on the merits of the case. While much less robust on the bombings of English cities the evidence of membership seemed pretty compelling in circumstances where only a balance of probability slope had to be scaled in order to reach the summit of culpability. So, while Adams rails against the British establishment's supposed involvement in the case, that same establishment secured the outcome most suitable to it. The London court case was no battle between Gerry Adams and the British state, but a common purpose enterprise that both satisfied and sanctified the preservation of a legal fiction  beneficial to both.

Gerry Adams is fortunate. He lied for Ireland into his seventies while others died for it in their teens and twenties. He was regarded by key colleagues as an effective, ruthless and courageous, but ultimately unsuccessful, IRA leader. The guerrilla organisation of which he is reputed to have been chief of staff in 1977-78 spent almost thirty years replacing the unity only by consent principle with . . . the unity only by consent principle: a truth as irrefutable as it is uncomfortable for those who prefer to mystify it by seeking validation not in breaking from London but through lying in London. 

⏩Follow on Bluesky.

Shipman And Adams

Ukraine Solidarity Group ✊ A Digest of News from Ukrainian Sources ⚔ 16-March-2026.

In this week’s bulletin

⬤ Ukraine union leader interviewed.
⬤ Dnipro miners.
⬤ UN defines Russian crimes against humanity.
⬤ Militarism and defence of Ukraine.
⬤ Sanctions-busters identified.
 ⬤ Civilians tortured to death.

News from the territories occupied by Russia

29 civilians abducted from Kherson oblast were tortured to death or died from lack of treatment in Russian captivity (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 13th)

Russia sentences Crimean to 15 years for sharing information available on Google Maps (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 13th)

The Face of Resistance: Crimean Tatar Activist Eskender Suleimanov (Crimea Platform, March 13th)

I repeated it like a prayer: ‘Donbas is Ukraine! ’ (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 12th)

Russia’s deportation and enforced disappearances of Ukrainian children are crimes against humanity – UN Commission (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 12th).

Ukrainian political prisoner faces new 'trial' and life sentence for opposing Russia's occupation of Crimea (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 11th)

Weekly Update On The Situation In Occupied Crimea (Crimea Platform, March 10th)

Occupiers are blackmailing the families of prisoners of war by demanding they register Starlink terminals in their names (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 10th)

10-year sentence for love of Ukraine against 71-year-old pensioner under Russian occupation (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 10th)

Crimean Tatar political prisoner with a malignant brain tumour forced to sign a fake ‘clean bill of health’ (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 9th)

Russia sentences 69-year-old Ukrainian pensioner to 11 years for sending money to Ukraine (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, March 9th)

Ukrainian PoW fined for “discrediting” Russian army during 18-year sentence (Mediazona, 3 March)

News from Ukraine

Train as a Witness (Tribunal for Putin, March 13th)

Russian Forces Attack Trade Union Office and Bus Carrying Miners in Dnipropetrovsk Region (Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine, March 11th)

3,000 women march in wartime Kyiv demanding rights the state is rewriting (Euromaidan, March 9th)

“Change is inevitable” and Free Iryna Danylovych: the ZMINA team joined the Women’s March to become the voice of women prisoners held by the Kremlin (Zmina, March 8th)

'We work to gather coal': Ukraine's mines are war's second frontline (Sianushka writes, March 7th)

Dispatch from Ukraine (Krytyka, March 2026)

‘The part of our work – and truly of my life – which is connected with war is never ending’ (Unison magazine, February 26th)

Saving Putin from justice. Who in Europe is stalling the trial and who is helping Ukraine (European Pravda, February 26th)

War-related news from Russia

The War on Poverty (Russian Reader, March 14th)

“Join the elite drone forces, and you’ll come home famous!”: Russian universities are luring students into paid military service (The Insider, March 13th)

Lost in translation: How Russia’s new elite hit squad was compromised by an idiotic lapse in tradecraft (The Insider, March 13th)

Polina Yevtushenko: 14 years behind bars for nothing (The Russian Reader, 12 March)

The Insider identifies 6,000 exporters trading with sanctioned Russian firms or defense industry suppliers, 4,000 of them based in China (The Insider, March 11th)

Pro-war bloggers welcome arrest of Sergey Shoigu’s top deputy as Russia’s Defense Ministry purge continues (Meduza, March 9th)

A phantom refinery: How Georgia helps Putin bypass oil sanctions (The Insider, March 9th)

Our Dear Friends in Moscow: from journalists to propagandists (Posle.Media, 4 March)

Analysis and comment

Sultana Is Right About Zelensky. Now What? (Red Mole, March 13th)

Trump’s US temporarily lifts sanctions on Russian oil (Meduza, 13 March)

European socialism, imperial militarism and defence of Ukraine (People and Nature, March 12th)

Russia’s war: stop trying to delegitimise resistance (People and Nature, March 12th)

The US-Russia-Ukraine negotiations: Architecture of tactical theatre and strategic deception (New Eastern Europe, March 9th)

Interview with Andriy Movchan: "If the Occupation of Ukraine Is an Acceptable Price, What Else Is Acceptable? (Europe Solidaire, March 8th)

Presentation of the Research “Words that Kill: How Russian Propaganda Shapes Mobilization and Combat Motivation” (Lingva Lexa, February 27th)

Putin’s Four Antifascist Myths (Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, May 2025)

Research of human rights abuses

UN concludes that forcible transfer of children and enforced disappearances are crimes against humanity (UN Commissioner for Human Rights, 12 March)

International Criminal Justice: Beautiful Myth or Imperfect Reality? (Tribunal for Putin, March 10th)

International solidarity

“That’s How We Founded the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign”: An Interview with Chris Ford (Commons.com, March 12th)

Art Exhibition on Crimea Opens in Warsaw (Crimea Platform, March 11th)

Upcoming events

Saturday 28 March: Together March in London – Eastern European bloc against the far right, meeting 12.0 midday at Deanery Street, off Park Lane.

Wednesday 15 April, 6.0-7:30 pm. Try Me for Treason: Voices Against Putin's War - Part of the Think Human Festival 2026 Actors will perform extracts from speeches made from the dock by Russian oppositionists who have been tried for sabotage for actions taken against the Russo-Ukrainian war Clerici Building, Clerici Learning Studio, Oxford Brookes University, Headington Campus, Oxford.


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News From Ukraine 💣 Bulletin 187

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