Workers Solidarity Movement

Austerity IS working – it’s working for those at the very top of society. During the last 4 years, while the rest of us have suffered pay cuts, job losses, increased taxes and decimation of our social services, the very wealthy in Irish society have thrived.

Guest writer Liam O’Rourke casts his eye over the neo-liberal project of regeneration in the six counties. He notes that the elite sections of both communities have no problem uniting around what he describes as the “shared non-sectarian identity of the consumer” which reduces shared space to “commercial shared space”. Yet the fact that working class people have seen little of the promised “peace dividend” has not lead to heightened class consciousness so much as it has to increased sectarian division.

Kevin Higgins is a poet from Galway and a long-standing contributor to the independent left publication Red Banner Magazine. A former member of the Militant Tendency (now the Socialist Party), he has played no small part in making the world of writing a more accessible and pleasant place to be in this country – not least for those who don’t normally find themselves welcome in the hallowed, middle class halls of Literativille.

A successful and productive meeting of pro-choice campaigners took place in Dublin city centre Saturday, 8th December 2012. Over 200 people came together in the Gresham Hotel to start building a new campaign for abortion rights in Ireland.

Roughly 1,000 people protested at the Dail last night as yet another austerity budget was debated. As with previous budgets the new flat rate taxes, PRSI & excise hikes will mean workers & those on low income will be hit hard while the richest 1% will hardly notice any difference.

Fintan O'Toole has an article in the Irish Times answering what he describes as the 5 errors of the 'Crusade against Abortion.' I want to go one further and look at what these errors tell us about the methods of those who want to control women's bodies. And more importantly how it is an error for pro-choice activists to allow the debate to be framed through responses to those errors. 

Let us begin by recognising Fintan is not bringing any new facts to the table, simple assembling the refutations to these claim that everyone who has been following the discussions around abortion in any detail is aware of. This is important because the core point I want to make is that when the various aspects of the so called pro-life movement throw out these claims in interview after interview they already know them to be false. They also know they are relatively easy to contradict, as Fintan has done. So why do they consider asserting them over and over to be effective?

In what has to be one of its odder decisions Morning Ireland this morning decided that the best voice of opposition to the Property Tax was obviously someone from Finna Fail the political party who began the process of bringing the tax in.  The property tax was part of the package of cuts Finna Fail agreed with the Trokia while in government. To most people the more obvious voice of opposition would certainly be the mass campaign of some 50% of households that has refused to pay the Household Charge, the fore runner of the property tax.  That campaign also brought thousands of people to protest outside the Fine Gael ard fheis.

On Saturday last (24^th November), approximately 15,000 people marched through Dublin to demand an end to austerity.  It was a lively and vociferous march that seemed to herald a renewed sense of militancy among those attending. This militancy was most evident when Eugene McGlone, president of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, was roundly booed when he rose to speak.  Despite attempts to claim that this booing was orchestrated by Sinn Fein and the ULA, it was clear that a great many of those booing were doing so spontaneously and were expressing their frustration at the lack of action by the trade union leadership in terms of organising a real fightback over the past few years.

The numbers at Saturday’s anti-austerity march were impressive given the relatively low key build up, but what was more impressive was the militant mood of the protesters. This was exemplified by the booing and heckling of ICTU president Eugene Mc Glone with chants calling for a General Strike. Mc Glone, in the style of a seasoned professional union official managed to pick himself up and give a speech which though cynical in delivery, bore more than a grain of truth that the radical left should not dismiss out of hand.

On Saturday, more than 15,000 people marched through Dublin to demand an end to austerity and to oppose the State’s transferring of the financial crisis on to the shoulders of the working class.  Organised by the Dublin Council of Trade Unions and the Campaign against the Household and Water Taxes, the march offered people an opportunity to pressure the government prior to the budget and to raise the profile of the CAHWT, already the most popular act of civil disobedience since the foundation of the state.