Annual Conference 2008

Download the Press Release

on Saturday 29th of November 2008 (11.00am –5.30pm)
at the Ireland Institute, 27 Pearse Street, Dublin 2
Speakers include:

  • Kieran Allen, National Secretary, Socialist Workers Party
  • Roger Cole, Chair of PANA
  • Hans van Heijningen, General Secretary Dutch Socialist Party
  • Ed Horgan, International Secretary of PANA
  • Padraig Mannion, Secretary of PANA and Research of the WP
  • Mary Lou McDonald MEP, Chair of Sinn Fein
  • Patricia McKenna, Chair of the Peoples Movement
  • Dr. Andy Storey, Afri

Admission is free, but donations will be requested.

All welcome but votes are restricted to paid up members
For further information contact Roger Cole at
01-2351512 / 087-2611597

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Hans van Heijningen

Hans van Heijningen

Hans van Heijningen was born in Naaldwijk - a small agricultural village between The Hague, Rotterdam and Delft - on 15th March 1953 and attended primary school in the village. He finished his secondary education at the Stanislas College in Delft. From 1972 to 1979 Van Heijningen studied sociology at the University of Amsterdam.

In 1980-81, Hans van Heijningen was a member of the executive committee of the soldiers' union VVDM, representing conscripts. Following his military service he worked as a neighbourhood development worker in Amsterdam.

In 1984 he left for Nicaragua where he would work until 1992, at first as a freelance consultant and journalist, and later, in the period of the Sandinista revolution, as a policy advisor to the Nicaraguan government and a researcher. From 1992 to 1995 Van Heijningen wrote a thesis on the relations between the peasantry and the Sandinista government, taking his doctorate in 1994 from the Catholic University of Nijmegen.

In addition to his thesis, he has written or edited numerous publications on Central America and has been a writer and editor at the Latin American periodicals Fuente, America Ventana and La Chispa. Hans van Heijningen was co-initiator of Attac Nederland, the Dutch affiliate of an organisation with branches worldwide which campaigns against neoliberal globalisation.

From 1998 to 2002 Van Heijningen worked as a coordinator of the development solidarity fund Solidariteitsfonds XminY in Amsterdam.

Via the anti-war movement (Afghanistan, Iraq) and globalisation initiatives he came into contact with the SP - www.international.sp.nl

From 2002 to 2005 he worked as a foreign policy advisor to the party's parliamentary group and was a member of the SP executive. In June 2005 he was elected General Secretary of the party.

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