Workers Solidarity Movement

Twenty years ago (in 1983) the Government put an extra 1% on workers' PRSI. This was to pay for local services, after they abolished domestic rates. Under the agreement reached in 1983, the councils were to be allocated money from this extra 1% contribution. But you just can't trust our rulers. Last year, for example, Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown County Council only got 48% of the money owed to them under this agreement.  According to the latest figures less than 8% of waste comes from our homes. Most waste dumped in landfills is not domestic rubbish, but rather commercial, construction and agricultural waste.

There is nothing wrong or "inefficient" in subsiding public transport. It's a lot cheaper to provide regular, dependable and affordable (or free!) buses and trains than to have even more car usage. More cars on the road means more road building, more road repairs, more traffic jams and more air pollution.

= more profits for the bosses
= traffic jams, pollution and crap service for travellers
= worse pay and conditions for workers

One of the most interesting arguments from within and, interestingly from without, the growing anti-war movement is on the use of violence. Typically, the argument takes this form: anti-war protests are peace protests, therefor they must be peaceful. Further, these self-appointed arbitrators within and without the movement have extremely tight definitions of what is and what isn't peaceful.

As we go to press, at least 19 people are currently facing prosecution out of the October and March direct actions at Shannon airport. In addition 5 people are in the courts arising from the Catholic Worker/Ploughshares 'decommissioning' of a US military transport plane. Mary Kelly is facing charges for taking a hammer to the same plane on an earlier occasion, and Eoin Dubsky for spraypainting a warplane.

Around Christmas once every three years of so we enter into a special mating season in the industrial relations jungle. The mating of three unlikley species, the goverment, the bosses and the trade unions takes place. This spectacle is so spectacularly ugly to witness that it's never covered by TV cameras. Each mating season is given it's individual name and this time in 2002/03 attempts were under way to sire a son to the 'Programme for Prosperity and fairness'.

Just in case you had any illusions about the fairness or impartiality of the Irish 'justice' system:- On the same day as 'celebrity chef' Tim Allen was allowed to buy himself off a prison sentence for the possession of child pornography, five Romanian men were jailed after a court found that "it was reasonable to infer that they intended to commit an offence in a shop in Co. Wicklow last November". Allen's sentence of a nine-month prison sentence was reduced to one of 240 hours community service on the payment of EUR40,000 to a child welfare charity - proof, if proof is needed, of the fact that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor.

Despite the fact that the Dublin City Council effectively has it's hands tied (not being able to take anyone to court until the case outstanding from September is heard in the High Court) they could not let the Christmas pass without trying to frighten people into paying their precious double-tax.

'Liberty without socialism is poverty and injustice. Socialism without liberty is tyranny and brutality'
(Bakunin)
Bakunin had a vision of an alternative way to run society and it is a vision that we share today. I want the replacement of the current economic system, a system based on profit and hierarchy, with a system based on need and freedom. I don't believe the current system can be reformed to make it more human. In different ways, and on various levels, the political work I do is aimed at creating the possibility of revolution. Revolutionary change is not as unusual as is often thought; in 1974 we had the Portuguese revolution, in 1979 Iranian Revolution, in 1979 Nicaragua, in the eighties we saw the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Red & Black Revolution number 6 published in the winter of 2002.

PDF file at http://struggle.ws/pdfs/RBR6.pdf