Workers Solidarity Movement

Firefighters and ambulance crews are abandoning SIPTU and signing up with the Psychiatric Nurses Association to form a new union.  Des Kavanagh , general secretary of the PNA, says he expects about 2,500 new members to sign up in the next month or so.

Anarchist organisation Workers Solidarity Movement (WSM) has confirmed its intention to join the protests against Tuesday’s budget at Dáil Éireann.

Speaking today, Gregor Kerr, WSM P.R.O. said that members of the organisation would be joining the 1% Network protest meeting at Wolfe Tone statue St Stephen’s Green at 5:30p.m. and marching with them to participate in the protest at the Dáil at 6p.m.

The former chairman of the Special Group on Public Service Numbers and Expenditure (otherwise known as ‘An Bord Snip Nua’), UCD economist Colm McCarthy, is currently heading another cutting group, the Review Group on State Assets, which is looking into the fire-sale of state firms.

State enterprises such as the ESB, An Post, Irish Rail, Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports, (all owned by Dublin Airport Authority) 10 port companies, the VHI, TG4, RTE, Eirgrid, CIE, Bord na Móna, Bus éireann Expressway, Bord Gáis, HRI, RTÉ, utilities (like water and refuse collection, where provided through local authorities), and Coillte are being looked at.

JAMES CONNOLLY (1868-1916) born in Edinburgh of a Co. Monaghan father, was Commandant-General of the Dublin Division. He was a member of the Military Council and Provisional Government. He founded the Irish Socialist Republican Party in Dublin in 1896. In 1903 he emigrated to the U.S.A., but returned after seven years. With Padraic Pearse he led the main Insurgent force from Liberty Hall to the G.P.O. Severely wounded during the fighting, he was taken after the surrender to Dublin Castle. Despite his condition he was executed - sitting on a chair - on May 12th, in Kilmainham Jail.

“Ordinary people are being sacrificed on the altar of international capitalism.  We absolutely must step up the protests against what’s being done to us.” – Gregor Kerr, 1% Network spokesperson

The 1% Network has called on “workers, the unemployed and all who care about any form of democracy or equality” to protest outside the Dáil on Budget night, Tuesday 7^th December.

Workers Solidarity Movement and Free Education for Everyone member Donal Ó Fallúin on the need for students to protest this upcoming, savage budget.

With the European Central Bank in partnership with the IMF taking over the running of Ireland's economic policy and hence social policy for the next few years we thought it timely to revisit the weekend of Mayday 2004 when Dublin saw major protests against the EU summit and the neo-liberal policies that were being adopted. This is not an article about how “right” anarchist were about the EU, but we thought it timely to remind people of the biggest, openly organised weekend of protest against hierarchy, power and capitalism Ireland has so far seen.  It includes a 30 minute documentary that shows the highlights of the weekend that we think has not yet been put online.

You have a gathering of nearly a 100,000 people, many of them active trade union members, and we are supposed to phone up one delusional Green party leader and try to get him to do our bidding. We, as workers and trade Union members are supposed to have that power to change things. We can do so by withdrawing our Labour! We do not do it by putting through phone calls like we are voting in the X-Factor and praying that our voice prevails.

UNITE issues strike threat - "We have begun planning for a campaign of civil disobedience and industrial action that will make clear the level of anger and fortitude that exists among the people who political leaders have failed utterly.”

A Taiwanese news channel has produced this amusing (were it not so serious) animation that tells the story of the rise of the Celtic Tiger and the bank bail now in process.  It gets some of the historical context right - the famine and mass migration - but sometimes it has an odd view of Ireland. They reckon we we will be back to driving ox-drawn carriages - someone should tell them about the donkeys.  It shows bankers holding a gun to the state's head and a beer-drinking Cowen is later depicted as a leprechaun who is knocked to the ground and kicked by angry protesters, as is a Fianna Fáiler giving out cheese (but it's Edam rather than Cheddar).