🎙️New podcast episode! We talk to John Fay about Newshound, the daily news source on the North that he ran from 1996 until 2018.
podcast.leftarchive.ie/@ILAPodcast/...
podcast.leftarchive.ie
Newshound, with John Fay
In this episode we talk to John Fay about Newshound. John set up Newshound in 1996, after moving from the U.S.A. to Ireland, as a daily curated source of news on the North and the development of the peace process. It later became part of Irish-American news site, Irish Central, and ran daily until 2018. We discuss the founding of Newshound and its growth in the early days of the web; its reception in the media and political spheres; interactions with journalists and users; and the role of a project of its kind as the web developed over the years of its existence. While no longer online, you can find the Newshound site on Archive.org’s Wayback Machine.
![Scanned article, reading:
On August 28, three families from the East Wall area of Dublin moved in and squatted the Mansion House. The squat lasted for almost a week. The families on one side of the Mansion House and the Ideal Homes exhibition on the other. The families were homeless after being evicted by their landlord at 104 Church Road. The Corporation refused to house them because they did not have enough points. With 12,000 people on the housing list in Dublin, the points system is just a form of rationing and quite a vicious one at that. When young couples have to resort to having babies to increase their number of points, which is common practice, then it is more than time to declare a housing crisis and start a massive building programme with direct labour.
The Corporation insisted that it could not house these three families because it would not be fair to all the other families on the waiting list. Yet within a week of squatting the Mansion House they were all housed. This was a great victory for direct action and against the faceless bureaucracy which hides behind the points system.
Decent housing is a basic human right which is heing denied to thousands of people at the moment. Another generation of children is growing up in overcrowded conditions, living with all the tensions that kind of situation produces. It is quite amazing how fast the Corporation could find the resources to give Sean McDermot Street a facelift for the papal visit, but can never find the resources to provide decent housing and maintainence.
There is an unorganised squatters ‘movement’ in Corporation housing at the moment because of the demand for housing. However it is still possible for the Corpo. to play off the legal tenants against the squatters.
[Alt text truncated by Bluesky limit. The linked page in this post has the full article text.]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:voubmrdtjrduaaqwmfwsqsvj/bafkreigeplwpwe65souqizkavkvtplqwecn7zggc2xxn4dibotxp5i33da)
![Website screenshot, reading:
1981: Serious clashes between Republican demonstrators and Gardaí outside the British Embassy took place
On 18th of July 1981, a march in support of the Hunger Strikers campaign, ongoing since March of that year, ended with violent clashes outside the British Embassy after a Garda baton-charge, in which more than 200 people were hurt.
A document from Revolutionary Struggle after the event, ‘Organise Against State Repression’, states:
On the 18th. July thousands of people from all over the country mobilised in Dublin for a march on the British Embassy in support of the Hunger [Strikers]. Before reaching the Embassy however, the marchers were stopped at Merrion Rd. by a wall of cops in riot gear, [several] rows deep. This strategy of confrontation and intimidation, meant to frighten people off the streets and deny them expression, was resisted by many brave comrades who tried to fight their way through. The cops held rank for fifteen minutes and then charged. Their violence and brutality as they ran riot, beating everyone in their path was [psychotic].
Related Pages:
Hunger Strikes, 1980/81
Organise Against State Repression](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:voubmrdtjrduaaqwmfwsqsvj/bafkreib3zxnourttgoianyxslpfbtxocluqnwrphxrfu4hyiflr5ghttce)
