Over 30 years of anarchist writing from Ireland listed under hundreds of topics
Shell's peat removal continues to be seriously disrupted in Erris
Date: Mon, 2011-11-28 12:58
Friday 25th November saw over 5 hours of Shell’s peat and stone haulage completely blocked by campaigners in the ongoing struggle against Shell's experimental gas pipeline & refinery. No arrests were made. Solidarity camp member Grainne Clancy said of the ongoing disruption of Shell's construction, “We are doing all we can with the numbers we have at the moment, but we really need more people up here right now. Sometimes there’s only a couple of us blocking, if we had even a few more people we could be doing a lot more to disrupt Shell’s peat removal.”
Join the Dublin Council of Trade Unions Budget protest with us
Date: Fri, 2011-11-25 16:00
The WSM will be taking part in the Dublin Councils of Trade Unions Budget demonstration Saturday 26th November. We plan to meet at 11.30 before the march just south of the Parnell monument for a bloc expressing discontent with the union leadership AND the lack of attempts to build real grassroots organisation and democracy in the unions. We need a General Stike but we won't get there by demanding ICTU call one, we need to build organisation at the base of every union. We think it is essential that as many anarchists as possible participate on the day and would also urge other anti-authoritatian organisations & individuals from union, environmental, community & Occupy movements to meet up with us there.
The call from the DCTU follows.
A general strike requires organisation not just rhetoric
Date: Fri, 2011-11-25 15:54
With the first massive union demonstrations against the cuts the WSM argued that only a general strike could force the government to stop targeting workers and the poor to pay for the crisis. Three years on it has become clear that such a strike will not materialize unless we rebuild mass participation at the base of the unions.
The one day public sector strike revealed just how weak our unions have become at the base. Almost none of us had been on strike and a culture had been allowed to develop in most unions where members are not expected to turn up to local meetings or AGM's unless they have a grievance. Although the organisation was often chaotic the public sector strike was just about pulled off but it was a one day symbolic action - to win we would need an indefinite strike that lasted until the government backed down. Could you organize your fellow workers in your branch to agree to, organize for and implement such a strike?
Millions to strike on Nov 30th against cuts in the north & Britain
Date: Fri, 2011-11-25 12:57
Millions of public sector workers will be taking to the picket lines across the UK including tens of thousands in the North on the 30th November against the latest Government austerity measures that seek tol force workers to work for longer for less. All the mainstream unions from NIPSA, Unison to GMB have successfully balloted their members, from teachers & council workers to bus drivers for the co-ordinated industrial action against the proposed new pension scheme. The scheme which will see people who day in, day out, care for our young, our frail, our elderly, our homes, streets and parks; the people who, after decades of service, be lucky to have £5,600 per year to live on when they retire.
We need to develop a new strategy in the unions
Date: Fri, 2011-11-25 12:04
Since the start of the economic crisis the trade union movement have produced excellent analysis of government policy warning that the austerity measures being pursued “could turn Ireland into a social and economic wasteland”[1] But our movement has failed to come up with a strategy to resist the government/EU-IMF attacks. We’ve been marched around Dublin on an annual basis and listened to speeches that are more about letting off steam than planning a fightback. Our union leadership do not have either a vision of how resistance can be built or confidence in the membership to develop an alternative economic strategy.
An Egyptian anarchist on the renewed revolution in Egypt
Date: Tue, 2011-11-22 17:43
As revolution once more erupts in Egypt Yasser Abdullah from the Egyptian Libertarian Socialist Movement has explained what is going on in two interviews with Anarkismo.net. He outlines the origins of this latest phase of the revolution, of note is how a sit-in of just a few dozen a few days ago was the catalyist that has resulted in the mobilizations of hundreds of thousands. (Image: Lilian Wagdy)
Yasser looks at the relationship between the Islamists including the Muslim Brotherhood and the military council (SCAF) and how those defending the square on the 20th were the "the main revolutionary forces and the unorganised youth" and not the brotherhood. On the 20th Yasser concludes by saying "the people now realize that their power lies in a leaderless, collective movement."
By the 22nd Sharraf’s government is offering to resign and Yasser is outlining what the demands of the people are and that the Egyptian anarchist communist movement is using the slogan "All power to the people" and "calling for civil disobedience all over Egypt and for a general strike by the Egyptian workers."
Occupy the Crisis - how the WSM sees the Occupy Movement & the current phase of the crisis
Date: Tue, 2011-11-22 16:02
It is becoming very clear is that there is no national solution to the crisis, even at the level of seizing the wealth of the 1% who live in Ireland. The debt is now too colossal and, in any case, the 1% have been given the needed time to move much of their liquid assets out of the country. The recent payment of a billion dollars in unsecured debt to those who gambled on Anglo is one of the final steps in that process. Confiscation of what they cannot move continues to be needed but there is no longer a radical social democratic solution based on taxing the wealth of the domestic 1%.
Become a WSM supporter
Date: Mon, 2011-11-21 17:23
After some months of preparation the Workers Solidarity Movement is launching our supporter program. We started working on this after debate at our Spring conference around the fact that there are many people who broadly agree with our political positions and the organising we do but for one reason or another are not yet looking to become members. We decided to launch our Supporter program so that such people could have ongoing formal relationship with the WSM that would involve some participation in internal discussion, helping us out financially and working with us in areas of activity they have a particular interest in when they have time. With members we expect a commitment to a minimum level of such activity, but we are not expecting the same from supporters rather we hope they will help us out when they are able.
We need a programme of class war
Date: Sun, 2011-11-20 22:27
Six months after the assembly elections our sectarian politicians at Stormont have finally revealed their programme for government.
Typical of the media spin and economic gobbledegook that pervades the realm of politics in the wee north it talks of creating ‘more than 25,000 new jobs’ in the next four years as part of a package that seeks to attract 300m in Foreign Direct Investment through the unelected quango of Invest Northern Ireland and a 50m loan to small and medium size businesses.
The programme of course was positively greeted by our arch class enemies the bosses union under the umbrella of the CBI and its Northern Ireland chairman. A sure a sign of bad news for the rest of us. Terence Brannigan welcomed the ‘strong commitments to the economy and the priority attached to creating jobs.’
Reform vrs Revolution- What change do we want and how do we get there?
Date: Fri, 2011-11-18 14:37
There’s a lot to be angry about. On the one hand mass unemployment, cut backs and pay cuts, we have death and destruction on a grand scale. On the other, the crushing boredom and alienation of everyday life. All of these various horrors are tied together, different faces of a single system. It exploits and exaggerates every tiny little difference between us from sexism to racism and nationalism, making us compete for scraps and hate each other as we fight while a tiny minority enjoy all the benefits. This system is global capitalism backed by the armed force of the state, a pattern of economic and political exploitation that reaches into every aspect of our lives. Class oppression is not simply a small cabal of the ultra-rich in Wall Street or Washington or London it's in every workplace, every police station, every dole queue, every courtroom, every prison and every territory occupied by Western militaries, and can only be sensibly understood as such.