Workers Solidarity Movement

The June bank holiday saw over half the membership of the WSM travel across Ireland to take part in a weekend of activity organised by the Rossport Solidarity Camp. Rossport is a very isolated village on the Atlantic shore where Shell and Statoil are trying to impose a dangerous gas pipeline on the local population. Last year five local men spent months in prison for defying Shell. We asked one of the RSC organisers to write for our paper about the weekend.

Many parents of Irish born children are currently facing the threat of deportation.

At the Dublin May Day rally, the guest speaker from the Belfast & District Council of Trade Unions quoted from an article, Direct Action in Belfast, written by Connolly and published in the Irish Worker, September 16th, 1911.

“We have just had, and taken, the opportunity in Belfast to put into practice a little of what is known on the Continent of Europe as ‘Direct Action’.

“Direct Action consists in ignoring all the legal and parliamentary ways of obtaining redress for the grievances of Labour, and proceeding to rectify these grievances by direct action upon the employer’s most susceptible part – his purse. This is very effective at times, and saves much needless worry, and much needless waste of union funds.

“Direct Action is not liked by lawyers, politicians, or employers. It keeps the two former out of a job, and often leaves the latter out of pocket. But it is useful to Labour, and if not relied upon too exclusively, or used too recklessly, it may yet be made a potent weapon in the armoury of the working class.”

Why are anarchists always dragging class into everything? Isn’t class struggle something more at home in a history book than in Celtic Tiger Ireland? After all you don’t see too many downtrodden workers wandering around in donkey jackets, cloth caps and heavy boots.