Workers Solidarity Movement

ON APRIL 25TH 1974 a radical faction within the Portuguese Armed Forces, the MFA, revolted against the government. Until that day Portugal had been under a fascist dictatorship for over half a century. Whether the MFA was left or right wing inclined was unclear at the time. The military revolt created a space where people could effect change in their lives and the opportunity was grasped eagerly.Left-wing activists began returning from exile, and new political parties sprouted up. The parties all used the situation to gain political power in the government. Ordinary folk, in contrast, used the situation to improve social conditions in their communities and workplaces through new autonomous organisations. It was here that the true revolution was fought and is of most interest to anarchists.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees is spending about 11 cents a day per refugee in Africa. Some refugee camps hold as many as 500,000 people and have just one doctor for every 100,000. Up to 6,000 people there die each day from cholera and other public health diseases.1

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In the ten years from 1987 to 1997 (the first decade of 'social partnership') the share of 26 county earnings going to wages, pensions and social welfare declined by 10%; from 69% to 59%. The share going to profits, rents and dividends rose by 10%; from 31% to 41%.2

LAST SUMMER, the Irish News ran an article titled 'SDLP slams Britains record in East Timor'. (August 6th). SDLP assembly member Carmel Hanna rightly criticised the British government for continuing arms sales to Indonesia. She even went so far as to describe Britain's role in relation to East Timor as "sordid" because of this.

Quite right, but...

ONCE AGAIN this small little area of the world has been front-page news as the horror of mass murder and genocide of the Timorese people is being witnessed. What was supposed to be a safe referendum carried out under the auspices of the United Nations has led to thousands of East Timor people being gunned down in cold blood and hundreds of thousands of these brave people are now displaced and being held in West Timor. This part of the island remains a media black hole - and the Indonesian forces are allowing no one in or out of the area so we can only fear for the lives of the people there.

"Only the truth is revolutionary". Whoever first coined this phrase displayed a deep insight into the true nature of politics and political ideas. What passes for political debate in the mainstream media seldom moves beyond the soundbite and the clever turn of phrase. Only a handful of journalists or commentators ever appear to delve beneath the surface and to question what we are all expected to take for granted - Noam Chomsky, Robert Fisk, John Pilger...

The WSM were greatly saddened to hear of the death of Dutch anarchist Karl Max Kreuger from The Hague. Karl used to sell Workers Solidarity in Holland and many of us also remember him from the annual Anarchist Book Fair in London. We send our sincerest sympathy to his family, friends and comrades.

"Ireland unfree will never be at peace" according to the oft quoted phrase of Padraig Pearse. Of course, he was right. But what exactly did Pearse and the republicans of 1916 mean by freedom? What do you think it means? Why does it seem to be so highly prized by anarchists.The anarchist is, according to Bakunin (himself one of the greatest), "a fanatic lover of liberty, considering it as the unique condition under which intelligence, dignity and human happiness can develop and grow" (from 'The Paris Commune and the Idea of the State').

West Lothian Council in Scotland has given a grant of £350.00 to enable the loyalist Broxburn Flute Band to travel to Ireland for the 12th. This band paraded through Portadown during last year's Drumcree stand-off on the very night that the three young Quinn children were burnt to death by a loyalist gang in Ballymoney.1*****

The NATO bombing of Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo sees another force brought into play against the people of the Balkans. The bombs do not damage the rotten Serbian regime (nor any of the other rotten Balkan warlords). They are targeted at the Balkan people, of whatever ethnicity. Throughout the bombing anarchists from ex- Yugoslavia have been posting reports to the internet. One from Belgrade observed: "When the smoke from the bombs clears away, the social differences will be even bigger, the poverty even worse, the authorities even more harsh. And the matter of Kosovo WON'T be solved!". We call for Irish people to demand the immediate end to the NATO attacks.

The extent of the democracy in Spain during the revolution was far more thorough going than anything ever achieved anywhere else in the world at any time in know history. This might seem like a grand claim but I challenge anyone to disprove it. As many of you will know there is a great deal written on the Spanish Civil War. Not just standard history and accounts of the war and its wider political impact, but personal memoirs, poems, journalistic diaries and novels. In Homage To Catalonia, George Orwell has written one of the better accounts of what it was like to be in Spain at the time. In terms of atmosphere and drama he goes a considerable way towards giving the reader some idea of the mood in Spain in 36. Orwell hints at the revolution that was taking place, and at the atmosphere of comradeship and solidarity that abounded in revolutionary Barcelona.