Product Description
Allen's recently published book The Bitter Word - Ireland's job famine and its aftermath gives a remarkable insight into him as a person and his journey through the unemployment mill.
It also provides an excellent overview and analysis of the Irish economy in the 1990s. Written in a simple readable format, The Bitter Word moves back and forth between Allen's own experience of being unemployed in Galway to setting up an unemployment group, a drop in centre and then a national group which transcended partition and organised the unemployed as an all-Ireland group.
What makes the book all the more readable is that it is divided into four sections. It outlines the economic and political failures that led to mounting unemployment in the 26 Counties. It explains the difficulties Allen and others had in organising the unemployed and how the INOU came into being.
In a section of the book titled ``Why don't the Unemployed fight back'' Allen writes of the difficulties he and others faced organising unemployed people in Galway. They leafleted their local dole office for a week, talking to those signing on. On the day of the meeting only eight people turned up, five of whom had been giving out leaflets.
It is the story of experiences like these and others that make this book.
Allen writes in another section of a Cork man who used to cut his neighbour's grass for no payment while he had a job. After redundancy he still cut the neighbour's grass and still for nothing.
However, the local social welfare office considered that he was not available for work and threatened to cut his payment. Allen explains that he could have filled a book with stories like this, including the man who was docked unemployment benefit for attending the birth of his own child.
All of our books are second hand, and while you may not get the exact copy shown in the picture, all of our books are in very good condition. Removing stickers from a book may damage it, so we refrain from doing so. If you see a price sticker on a book, please ignore it.