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1 March 2019 Edition

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Postcards from a New Republic

The ‘Postcards from the New Republic’ series is a hat tip to British designer, artist, entrepreneur and Socialist William Morris’s News from Nowhere series of articles from 1890 published in the Commonweal, the newspaper of the Socialist League and set in a distant future where Morris’s socialist, and romantic, utopia has been secured. Our story’s protagonists are Willa Ní Chuairteoir and Lucy Byrne accompanied by their four children James, Afric, Banba and Alroy who together enjoy and endure the equity and exigency of the future’s New Republic.’ To find out what the family are up to in-between editions go to:

FACEBOOK: fb.me/PostcardsfromtheNewRepublic

Poor tortured Willa is in her study desperately trying to steal a couple of hours away from the kids. Her wife Lucy is stuck in Belfast for a debate in the shared Parliament, one of the outcomes of Irish unity. Ireland’s national representatives spend one week in four of a Dáil term in a beautifully repurposed Belfast City Hall. The rest are in Dáil Eireann. Stormont, the former home of the north’s Assembly in the final decades of partition, is now the European headquarters for the United Nations Human Rights Council. Belfast Dáil week always falls on production week, and that drives Willa bonkers. 

Willa is the Editor of Dublin’s oldest monthly magazine. She loves The Voice, and has given her entire professional life to it. It was first published in 1971 by four friends in their twenties who felt totally out of step with conservative Ireland. Senator Mary Robinson had just tried to introduce legislation to lift the ban on contraception but couldn’t even get the draft Bill on the floor of the Seanad. Hard to imagine, right? The friends knew Mary well and wanted to give her a Voice, so they did just that. It started off as The Peoples Voice, a smart quarterly jam-packed with a counterculture rooted in the sexual, civil and political rights politics that defined the era. Over time the magazine has reinvented itself ten times over. Now it’s a funky intelligent read rooted in rights, a champion of climate change action with an array of alternative voices and a great dash of culture. It’s Willa to the bones. 

A high pitch squeal shatters Willa’s visualisation for the front cover. Mother of all that is good in world she mumbles to herself, I am literally going to strangle that young one. Their eldest Afric is a messer who gets a great kick out of tormenting her siblings. Lucy stomps into the sitting room ready to read the riot act, stops in her tracks and breaks out laughing. Her angelic seven year son Alroy is festooned in a traditional suffragette sash and is reluctantly holding a small decorative ‘Votes for Women’ placard on one side and a picture of abstentionist MP Countess Markievicz on the other. ‘I suppose this is your handiwork Willa’ says to Banba, their bookish take on the world 12 year old who is now standing behind her elder sister looking a little sheepish. ‘Ah Ma, it’s for Unity Day, and you haven’t even seen the best bit!’ With a swoop Banba grabs a veg crate from behind her and plonks Alroy on it, placard and all. ‘Go on,’ she urges him, ‘show Ma what we practiced.’ ‘I’m Countess Markyvit,’ he says with his chest puffed out, ‘and I’m the first woman elected AND,’ he says with great emphasis, ‘the FIRST woman Minister of the FIRST Dáil.’ He has the cutest lisp that lingers on an s. 

Alroy then looks quizzically over at Willa, ‘were there really no women allowed in the Dáil in the old days,’ he asks. ‘Son’, she replies, ‘once upon a time there wasn’t even the Dáil. That’s why Unity Day is such an important day for the country. It marks women’s suffrage, the First Dáil and the Irish Unity Declaration.’ Willa looks over at Banba who is every ‘lick’ of Lucy, gives her a big wink and says, ‘we did all of that Alroy, the great people of this island in all our hues.’ Afric, who has been sending photos of her poor unfortunate brother to the world and its mother looks up from her mobile and asks, ‘any chance one of these great people of Ireland cooking the dinner.’???

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