Workers Solidarity Movement

At a public meeting of the Campaign Against Home and Water Taxes (CAHWT) in Kildare last month, a query was raised from a woman anxious about the upcoming local elections. She explained her complete frustration with the austerity policies of the Fine Gael-Labour Government, and described her despair at not having the power to challenge policies that were ravaging her community, stating there “really is no one legitimate left to vote for.”

A talk from the 2013 Anarchist Bookfair which will discuss emergent radical queer politics which resist assimilation and question the foundations of gender and sexual identity

Kevin Doyle (a supporter of the WSM) and Alan Gibson, both of whom have been actively involved in helping to build the Campaign Against Home And Water Taxes, talked about the lessons learnt from the fight thus far against the household and property taxes and explored what type of campaign and campaigning is needed for the fight against the property tax (and the forthcoming water tax) to be successful.

Having spent the early part of this week at the annual conference of my union – the Irish National Teachers Organisation – I’m struck by the view that unions today appear to be a different world entirely from that of 100 years ago.  My talk will focus less on 1913 and more on where the trade union movement finds itself today

The austerity policies of the latest phase of capitalism have wreaked havoc on the lives and living standards of working class people across Europe and beyond.  The struggles in which communities find themselves as they attempt to resist these policies have a lot to learn from each other.  As we strive for a better world and to build communities free from poverty, exploitation and hopelessness we need to find time and space to listen to each other, to find common cause and to support each other’s struggles.

In the North of Ireland, abortion is prohibited under the Offences Against the Persons Act (1861) - with some common law exceptions.  If continuation of the pregnancy threatens the life of the woman, or would adversely affect her mental and physical health where the effects are ‘real and serious’ or ‘long term’, are two such examples.

2013 marks the 100th anniversary of what many see as the most significant industrial dispute ever to have taken place in Ireland - the Dublin Lockout. The employers of Dublin, led by William Martin Murphy, locked out over 20,000 workers in an attempt to starve them into submission and to smash the increasingly popular Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU).

An analysis of the voting results on the first Croke Park Agreement shows that the votes of a few hundred union members in a couple of unions could decide the fate of the ‘Croke Park Extension’ deal currently being voted on by union members. Because of the bizarre - and rather anti-democratic - system of voting at the public services committee of the ICTU, a small margin in favour or against the deal in any particular union swings all the votes of that union either for or against. 

It is quite incredible that the majority of the union leadership had the nerve to stay in the Croke Park talks and return to us, the members, asking us to vote for such a terrible deal.  All of the unions should have had a ballot before entering into negotiations and we should have voted to refuse to enter discussions at all as long as a billion euro of cuts was a precondition of talks.  Once we entered on that basis, nothing good could come out of talks.  And after making the mistake of entering on that condition, all the unions should have had a change of heart and walked out once the reality of what would have to be accepted became clear.

We have to ask ourselves how we have found ourselves in unions where the leadership was allowed take such an approach.  And we have to work out how we create unions that we control and which will help us organise together to defend our common interests.

The Campaign Against Household & Water Taxes has produced this useful FAQ on the new Property Tax that answers basic questions about the tax that will be of interest to those determined to resist it.