Workers Solidarity Movement

As the morning of Friday 13th of June grew towards midday, the government watched and ... realised with mounting horror that they had not only lost the referendum for the Lisbon treaty, but had lost badly. In the end, with a turnout higher than both Nice referendums and European elections, the Irish electorate had cast more No votes, than the number that elected the FF government last year.

With a large number of conflicting interpretations in circulation, many voters’ voting decisions depended on whom they trusted the most. 

When it came down to it, the side that was represented by politicians and IBEC was always going to be in trouble. In the end, the loyalty test split the electorate on class lines. The wealthier constituencies trusted their politicians and business leaders more, the rest of the country sided against them and with the left or the nationalists.

So building social housing is "not viable" for the profiteers at construction firm Michael McNamara & Co. What they really mean is that they've got themselves in a bit of a sticky situation by riddling the country with overpriced and unsustainable housing developments and the profits from the "Public Private Partnership" aren't sufficient to get them out of it.

The major problem with any discussion of the 'Green Movement' is that it does not exist as a single body of ideas. Instead both individuals and organisations hold a range of positions from anarchism right across the political spectrum to ideas influenced by fascism. Any of the terms, environmentalist, ecologist etc are very vague definitions of a wide bodies of idea and practise, probably even wider and vaguer then socialism. Therefore we should not create a false choice between anarchism and environmentalism but rather ask what sort of environmental theory and action should anarchists favour on the one hand and on the other explain why any environmentalist should also be a class struggle anarchist

Britain, France, Germany, the US, and a host of other countries the last 25 years have seen very large movements seeking to close down nuclear power stations. Ireland hasn't. We didn't need to. A big victory was won here when we stopped the then Fianna Fail government going ahead with their plans to build not one, but four, nuclear power stations at Carnsore Point in Co. Wexford in the late 1970s.

The war may be long over and our political rulers have finally decided to get it together but there has been no ceasefire in the class war against working-class people both locally and globally despite the promises of ‘prosperity’. With the onset of economic ‘recession’, continued decimation of our manufacturing industry and public services, increase in the cost of living (energy costs such as heating and electricity have risen by over 30% since 2006 never mind 1998), lack of affordable housing combined with the lowest wages in the UK and highest level of people on incapacity benefits in the UK, the wee ‘North’ isn’t a bed of roses that our rulers are keen to promote. Sectarian divisions institutionalised under the voting system at Stormont, and racist attacks are more evident and visible now more than ever as the ‘peace-walls’ have got higher and there are more of them.

The 1st of May as International Workers’ Day dates back to the struggle for the 8-hour working day in the USA. 
In 1886 the American Federation of Labour declared that after May 1st, “8 hours shall constitute a legal days labour”. Between that declaration and May 1st workers all around the United States went on strike to make their employers agree to a shorter work day.

The Paddington Rail crash in London in 1999 led to 31 deaths and well over 400 injuries. At fault was a simple set of rail signal lights which were difficult to see (from the train driver’s point of view). When the crash was investigated it quickly emerged that Network Rail (then called Railtrack), the company responsible for rail line maintenance, had been repeatedly warned about the danger. A number of drivers had been involved in near misses and reported this to management, yet nothing was done. Then two high-speed trains collided.

Jointly organised by Organise!, WSM and National Union of Journalists

Last year, the EU Constitution was defeated in referenda in France and the Netherlands. Europe’s governments quickly got together and rewrote the constitution as an incredibly complicated list of amendments to existing treaties. Together these amendments make up the “Treaty of Lisbon.” Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the president of the Convention on the Future of Europe which did much of the ground work in drafting the constitution, has concluded that “the difference between the original Constitution and the present Lisbon Treaty is one of approach, rather than content”.