Workers Solidarity Movement

An anarchist from the Belfast branch of Workers Solidarity Movement, Ireland, will be speaking on the history of anarchism in Ireland, the growth of the Workers Solidarity Movement and how the WSM works in Ireland in 2010.

Members of WSM and Organise gathered on a bright afternoon light of a cold Janaury day, in the leafy surburbs of Booterstown, Dublin, outside the German Embassy to protest recent Berlin District Court Decision to stop the Free Workers Union (FAU - Freie Arbeiterinnen- und Arbeiter-Union) from being able to call itself a Union.

Approximately 40 people packed in Solidarity Books in Cork to hear Elsie Haas (a Haitian film-maker and journalist, based in Paris) and Jose Antonio Gutierrez (of the Latin American Solidarity Centre in Dublin) talk about the political and economic history of Haiti and how the recent US intervention in the country, following the earthquake, is just a continuation of the UN-led occupation since 2004, following on from 200 years of occupations and imperialism.

As this is being written we are currently in one of the coldest snaps of winter weather the country has seen in a long time. Temperatures reaching -15 and below have been recorded and stocks of grit & salt for ensuring safe travel are at an all time low. The government has ordered that schools remain closed for almost a week. This is replicated right across the UK and continental Europe.

“Human nature being what it is, you could never have an anarchist society – not one in which both individual freedom and co-operation exist anyway”. How often have you heard something like that?

Workers Solidarity reporters met America’s most famous dissident for breakfast during his recent visit, here is a transcript of some of what we talked about.

Howard Zinn is an American historian best known for his book ‘A Peoples History Of The United States’, however he was written much more on the subject of American working class history. He is also a World War II veteran, a playwright and, to this day, remains a political activist.

The new Financial Regulator at the Central Bank, Matthew Elderfield, will be paid more than €400,000 a year - almost €150,000 more than his predecessor. He starts work this month.

As predictions for the death toll from the Haitian earthquakes rise over 200,000, ABC News have reported that planes carrying medical equipment and relief supplies are having to compete with soldiers for the valuable slots at Port-au-Prince airport which was taken over by the US military after the quake. Since the start of the great anti-slavery republican insurrection nearly 220 years ago, Haiti has been presented as a dangerous place incapable of running its own affairs and requiring foreign intervention. Yet the reality is its people were the first enslaved population to deliver themselves from slavery and also carried out what was only the third successful republican insurrection on the planet. The threat of this good example was rewarded with centuries of invasion, blackmail, the robbery of Haiti's natural resources and the impoverishment of its people. This articles summarizes that history of intervention and the resistance to it in order to put into context what is happening in Haiti after the quake.

This audio interview, conducted by mobile phone on Monday evening, covers the protests at the COP15 summit in Copenhagen.
Ronan who was a member of WSM in Ireland has been living in Denmark for a year and a half and is involved in a new Libertarian Socialist group and the local infoshop in the autonomous Youth House.