Workers Solidarity Movement

Over 60 anarchists and environmentalists gathered in Rossport over the August bank holiday weekend for two days of planning construction and fun. A contingent of WSM members from Dublin and cork along with our American Comrade Wayne Price (NEFAC) and his wife Anne traveled down to participate.

Scenes of great joy and relief at the Dublin Four Courts as the Catholic Workers/Pitshops ploughshare five were acquitted of all charges.

Image - Karen and supporter after the acquittal

Three and a half years ago, 5 members of Catholic Worker/Pitstop ploughshares damaged a US warplane stationed at Shannon Airport in Ireland.

Image - Procession to the court on the last day of the trial 

I'm just after returning from watching Ken Loach's Palm D'or reaping drama 'The Wind That Shakes The Barley' and like most feel slightly compelled to add one or two words to the flurry of type and hype that has accompanied the movies release on these shores. The Wind That Shakes The Barley is a typical Loach movie portraying many of the core techniques of his previous outtings. Again he relies on plunging a shallowly crafted personal relationship, this time between two brothers, into a set of tragic circumstances. These circumstances provide an emotional cover for his overly didactic political approach to popularising alternative historical mythologies that challenge the authors of a victors' history. This time the contested historicity is the rabid nationalism of the Irish text book, that sweeps aside socialist and labour based movements in the process of consolidation of the free state.

Various shorts on life under capitalism

Revolt Video is a video activist collective set up to provide footage of political events happening in Ireland and internationally, covering the whole spectrum of social change. The collective works on the same principle as Indymedia, and alongside it will provide footage and less heard voices on issues which other mainstream media outlets ignore, often due to owners vested interests such as advertising and profit.

The PDF file and articles from Workers Solidarity 92 published for June/July 2006.

Download the PDF of Workers Solidarity 92

At the Dublin May Day rally, the guest speaker from the Belfast & District Council of Trade Unions quoted from an article, Direct Action in Belfast, written by Connolly and published in the Irish Worker, September 16th, 1911.

“We have just had, and taken, the opportunity in Belfast to put into practice a little of what is known on the Continent of Europe as ‘Direct Action’.

“Direct Action consists in ignoring all the legal and parliamentary ways of obtaining redress for the grievances of Labour, and proceeding to rectify these grievances by direct action upon the employer’s most susceptible part – his purse. This is very effective at times, and saves much needless worry, and much needless waste of union funds.

“Direct Action is not liked by lawyers, politicians, or employers. It keeps the two former out of a job, and often leaves the latter out of pocket. But it is useful to Labour, and if not relied upon too exclusively, or used too recklessly, it may yet be made a potent weapon in the armoury of the working class.”

Why are anarchists always dragging class into everything? Isn’t class struggle something more at home in a history book than in Celtic Tiger Ireland? After all you don’t see too many downtrodden workers wandering around in donkey jackets, cloth caps and heavy boots.

The deaths of Terence Wheelock and John Moloney in Garda custody have again focused attention on the brutal nature of policing in this state. Brian Rossiter and John Carty are other names from a long list that have a public resonance.