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- Author or Editor: Christopher Brian x
Between 1968 and 2010 more than one thousand groups and many more individuals on the left of the political spectrum were targeted by intrusive police surveillance.
This intervention gives an overview of what has become known as the Spycops scandal and the active role of the grassroot movements that were spied on, while focusing on the authors’ own organisation, the Undercover Research Group.
It explores how a critical approach to the Undercover Policing Inquiry had been productive, while conceding that misgivings about engagement are understandable and valid as well.
This paper also considers how the impact of this mode of policing are still being felt today and discusses whether the current hostile environment for protesters makes a reoccurrence of these abuses more likely.
In 1997 the Irish Government adopted the National Anti-Poverty Strategy (NAPS), a global target for the reduction of poverty which illuminates a range of issues relating to official poverty targets. The Irish target is framed in terms of a relative-poverty measure, incorporating both relative income and direct measures of deprivation. In the previous decade, particularly in the second half, Ireland experienced an unprecedented period of economic growth that makes it particularly important to assess whether the target has been achieved. In doing so, we cannot avoid asking some underlying questions about how poverty should be measured and monitored over time. In this paper our aim is to draw on a range of quantitative empirical work conducted at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) to address such questions in a non-technical fashion.
Following the United Nations Social Summit in Copenhagen in 1995, the Irish Government decided to draw up a strategy to combat poverty in the medium to long term. The centrepiece of the National Anti- Poverty Strategy (NAPS), which was launched in 1997, was a global target for the reduction in poverty to be achieved over the period 1997- 2007. This was based on what was known about the extent of poverty in Ireland from 1994 survey data. Since 1994, Ireland has experienced extremely rapid economic growth rates, by far the fastest in the European Union over the period. In this context, monitoring poverty trends becomes especially important.
As mentioned, NAPS adopts a poverty measure incorporating relative income and direct measures of deprivation; Callan et al (1993) set out the basis for this measure, illustrated with results for 1987.
This chapter explores how reproductive rights were denied in both the legal jurisdictions after partition in Ireland and how the state institutions stonewalled legislation. It examines how ‘biopower’ of the Church reached into almost all aspects of life and was thoroughly gendered and served as a disciplining force for the working class. It explores how activists confronted the inaction of the state(s), forcing bodily autonomy onto the legislative agenda. Through a range of methods, many with a focus on personal testimony, campaigns served to neutralize the grip of Church and state institutions. These had previously monopolized debate through narratives of ‘deviance’ and ‘shame’. While abortion was legalized in the south of Ireland and decriminalized in the north of Ireland, the denial of access in many areas remains. At a time when access to abortion is being threatened globally it is clear that only sustained confrontation with the state will secure provision of comprehensive reproductive healthcare services.
