Workers Solidarity Movement

In this session from the 2012 Dublin Anarchist Bookfair Socialist Party TD Clare Daly and Dctors for Choice spokesperson Mary Favier look at the ongoing pro-choice struggle in Ireland and in particular at the recent attempt by Clare to get legislation for the X-case passed through the Dail.

Mark Hoskins of the WSM debates MEP Paul Murphy on what positions the left should take on the Fiscal Compact to be voted on in Ireland May 31st.  The SP is arguing for a No vote, the WSM argues that the vote doesn't matter, what matters is resistance to austerity. This debate took place at the 2012 Dublin Anarchist Bookfair in Liberty Hall.

The sectarian row over the former Girdwood army barracks site in North Belfast is  part  of a larger picture of sectarianism and segregation forming the bedrock of the status-quo, with our local political class depending on it for their very political survival. 

In a recent report, Trademark, the Belfast-based social justice co- operative affiliated to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, "Sectarianism still remains a serious problem in Northern Ireland." The group conducted a major survey with more than 40 interviews in private sector companies and surveyed 2,500 workers in a large retail company as part of its study. It found that "low-level but persistent sectarian harassment is a feature of too many workplaces in Northern Ireland".

Anarchist organisation, Workers Solidarity Movement (WSM), has claimed that voting in the Fiscal Compact Treaty referendum “will not make one whit of difference”.

“The pro-side are calling it a Stability Treaty but if it’s passed does anyone seriously think that we are going to get financial stability?”, asked Gregor Kerr, WSM PRO.  “On the other hand the anti-side are calling it an Austerity Treaty, but everyone knows that even if we vote no the austerity agenda will continue.”

Last night a WSM member along with members of the pressure group 'Republican Network for Unity' was stopped and searched under the Justice & Security Act.  This happened while they were conducting an interview highlighting the growing problem of police harassment in a personal journalistic capacity.

The media frenzy may have settled for now over  Cardinal Sean Brady’s failure to pass on information about a notorious clerical sex abuser in his midst but we need to make sure we don’t let this extremely wealthy multi-national chiefdom called the Catholic Church off the hook.

On Tuesday 1^st May, a BBC spotlight programme revealed that cardinal, and then Fr Brady was at interviews in 1975 where two children were asked to sign a vow of silence after they were abused by paedophile priest Brendan Smyth.  One survivor, Brendan Bolan told This World that he had given details of other children to Fr Brady(who was the ‘note taker’ at the time) he suspected were being abused but the problem found that none of their families or the police had ever been warned.

The slow-motion car crash that is the ongoing Eurozone crisis has hit yet another seizure point. The previous weekend’s French and Greek elections, Sunday’s German election in Nordrhein-Westfalen and the threat of a second Greek election next month, has raised the Eurozone stress levels back to panic levels. Hanging over the whole situation is the spectre of a death foretold - a funeral for the vision of the Euro as the party that no-one ever leaves.

The WSM organised a successful public meeting on Saturday in Na Croisbhealai workers co-op on the topic of anarchists-who we are and what we are up to.  Leading up to the event leaflets and posters were distributed at the annual Mayday march and other meetings in the city. A similar meeting was held recently in Dublin which was attended by 80 plus people and the WSM aims to hold similar meetings across the country so feel free to get in touch.

Thousands of civil service workers in Northern Ireland have been taking part in a 24-hour UK-wide day of strike action today. Members of Nipsa, Unite, the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) and the University and College Union (UCU) are protesting against pension cuts.  Workers have been picketing outside job centres, tax offices, passport offices and other public sector workplaces. Several hundred attended lunchtime rallies in Belfast and Derry.

Tens of thousands of public workers from the North are expected to take part in the UK wide industrial action this Thursday in protest over cuts to pension and attacks on living standards. In the North, civil servants are expected to join immigration officers in the day of action while healthcare workers are taking limited action over lunchtime, involving Nipsa and Unite! members. While this latest strike action is sending out a message that we won’t work longer, pay more into the pension fund and get less, it is significant climb-down from the public sector strike last November which was the largest in decades.