Launching a New Online Political Magazine – Irish Left Review

A little less than a year ago, if you can remember back that far, we were all in thick of pre-election mania. Irish Election was buzzing with successive posts on the important matters of the day. Some were brilliantly incisive, bringing keen analysis far beyond the abilities of many journalist hacks, but most were just thickly irreverent – a veritable queue of posts taking pot shots at our fumbling politicians and providing the serious politics junky with their regular fix of info and entertaining agro.

At around this time, through the most august portal of this very site, a number of Left leaning bloggers started to notice that they had a great deal in common and that they shared a frustration at how the Left wing parties in general were conducting their campaign. So, an initiative was taken and a meeting was organized in Cusack’s Pub on the North Strand Road, with the objective of joining together in some way online and exploring political issues in a more elaborate and hopefully coherent way.

The meeting went well, everyone was polite and conversation was animated. At the end of the evening several objectives for a new project were set out and we agreed to meet again – only not in a pub!

Now, almost a year later the project has just been launched. It’s a new online political magazine called Irish Left Review, which over the coming months and years will argue for the development of an alliance between all the Left wing parties in Ireland and to work toward bring about a change in Irish politics.

The objective of Irish Left Review is to create a platform to discuss political ideas and develop them for a wider audience, by which I mean, the Irish Electorate. It will also be a space to connect up activists of all different shades on the left, including those within the Green party with others who would normally identify themselves as being broadly sympathetic to the Left.

So, rather than being just a magazine its also a means to develop strategies for the left to fight upcoming local and national elections.

The launch edition of the magazine, which was designed by WorldbyStorm of Cedar Lounge Revolution and built by John Blackbourn (of IE’s redesign fame), has a number of articles covering topics like class identity and how it is being replace by consumer categorizations, the Irish immigrant communities and a Left vote, the chances of a formal alliance of Left wing parties and the under representation of women in Irish politics. It won’t be a monthly or bi-monthly magazine in the traditional sense because it’s entirely web-based, so articles will appear regularly over time. Not every day, at first, but regularly enough so that if you check every week there should be new stuff there to read.

We also plan to invite experts in various fields to contribute and our hope is that, in time, it will become a platform for a sophisticated debate on politics on the Island of Ireland.

However, I would like to emphasis that we do not want to create a dry boring journal discussing the finer points of politics. We plan to make it a lively magazine, with plenty of irreverence and humour and Frank Prendergast of Biffsniff and Bob Byrnes of Clamnut have offered their cartoon-based support.

We are also hope that a little bit of wit and satire will provide some relief from the worthiness of the enterprise.

Should be fun.