Workers Solidarity Movement

Since the first Dublin Anarchist Bookfair 5 years ago, this event has grown to be one of the biggest left wing political events in Dublin every year,” said Ciaran Murphy, a member of Workers Solidarity Movement and one of the Bookfair organisers.  “This year’s event promises to be an exciting and interesting occasion, bringing together a wide variety of anarchists, activists and just ordinary people who are looking for new ideas.

The first copies were distibuted as Gardai attacked the Anglo Irish bank occupation and then attempted to stop the anti-capitalist bloc march but this is the formal launch of the new WSM magazine Irish Anarchist Review much of the content of which looks at the fight against the capitalist crisis in the workplace. Authors & editors will introduce the articles, there will be some formal discussion and lots of hanging out and informal discussion. BYOB event, Friday night - 20:00 - Seomra Spraoi

The book can be read in a number of ways; on one hand it rescues the IWW from Stalinist critics that fashionably flounced after Russian Bolshevism; it gives insight to the politics and personalities of the union itself and rescues Hill the man. But as suggested by the subtitle, it’s Rosemont’s treatment of how the IWW built a counter hegemonic working class culture that is the most interesting facet of this brick thick work.

A rather strange figure is moving to centre stage in Irish politics, that of the trade unions - absent from mass struggles until recently and weakened over the decades of social partnership, they are now the only possible source of a movement that can confront attemps to transfer the cost of the recession to working people. This statement does not come with out some qualms. Already this year we’ve seen the union movement back away from its role in galvanizing its members in the run up to planned day of action on March 30th when resistance was taking shape among the public sector unions.