It was revealed to me, amid attempts to persuade me that Stalin was a very good thing, that the Communist Party had the best shindig in town on Good Fridays. This was before widgets that made canned stout allegedly taste like the real thing, and further technological developments which made it taste more like the real thing. The only alternative to the real thing in those days was a bottle of stout, and while bottled stout had its connoisseurs, it was emphatically not the real thing. [ ‘A blessing for the country’ how The Irish Times greeted the Good Friday drink law in 1927Opens in new window ]So the goo contributed to left-wing causes in the inner city. The north inner city had long been designated the most disadvantaged area in the country, with tragic levels of unemployment, bad housing and educational neglect.

Source: The Irish Times April 03, 2026 08:05 UTC