Workers Solidarity Movement

The announcement that there will be a referendum to Repeal the hated 8th amendment is the product of decades of active campaigning.  Pro-choice campaigners built for repeal ever since the referendum was passed in 1983. If at first this seemed like a distant demand now repeal looks by far the most likely outcome in May.  The story of how this happened illustrates how change comes in general.  That is not through elections but through people getting organised to demand that change, regardless of which politicians happen to be running the show in any particular year. 

Strike4Repeal launched in January 2017, it exists currently as an ad hoc group of pro-choice activists, academics, trade unionists, artists and students. We directed a single demand towards the government: a national strike would take place on the 8th March unless a referendum on the 8th Amendment of the Constitution was called.

In December, we in Strike4Repeal came together once more to announce that a second strike action will take place if it becomes clear during Dáil debate that full abortion access will not be legislated for or if there is no straight repeal question on the ballot in the upcoming referendum. [ Video ] [Audio]

Irish pro-choice campaigners are celebrating - this is why... Abortion is highly restricted Ireland, thanks to an amendment inserted into our constitution in 1983. The government has said there will be a referendum on abortion next summer.

A new intention to #Strike4Repeal has been announced as we still wait for a referendum and as importantly to see what it is we will get to vote on.

Pledge to Strike 4 Repeal here: https://goo.gl/forms/DTDfA9tQ0kZ0HQ6F3

This audio history of the WSM was presented at a meeting in Cork in 2010 as part of a day of critical internal discussions. As it was originally recorded for internal use it's been edited so it is just the presenter and then his responses to questions and discussion points. For more on the history of the Workers Solidarity Movement see https://www.wsm.ie/wsm-history

Irish Rail workers were out on strike recently. What’s going on? 

The WSM recently caught up with J, an activist and worker at Irish Rail, to find out.

For background details, see our analysis, "Why Irish Rail workers are right to strike", published here.

There are an estimated 20 to 26,000 undocumented people living in Ireland, as many of 5000 of them being children and young people. People in Ireland are generally horrified by the Trump's administrations war on the undocumented in the US but perhaps not so aware that exactly the same situation has been created by government policy here.

The Dublin launch of the book, The Worms that Saved the World takes place on the on the 2nd of December, in the Teachers Club, 36 Parnell Square, Dublin 1 at 4.00pm.

In The Worms That Saved The World a group of earthworms living on an imaginary headland begin to suffer when a golf course takes up residence around their home. The worms attempt to tell the new owners about their concerns but they are dismissed. In response they organise and join with the other birds and animals on the headland. Eventually they reclaim the headland for everyone.

Anti-choice advocates like Youth Defence / Precious Life and the Iona Institute claim to be driven by an indiscriminate empathy and a genuine concern for human beings' universal right to life, hence invocations to 'Love Both' and the 'pro-life' label.

Are these claims to be taken seriously? Not for a second, as clearly illustrated in this pro-choice comic (PDF).

It's not uncommon for someone arguing in favour of criminalising abortion to draw a comparison between pro-choice advocates and the Nazis, often on the basis that supposedly the Nazis had the same liberal views on abortion, or that pro-choice campaigners are of a similarly genocidal bent.

Comparing the Nazis to the Irish feminist movement is bizarre. In summary, Nazi abortion policy was driven by sexism, ‘pronatalism’, and eugenics, while pro-choice campaigners in Ireland are driven by personal freedom.