Workers Solidarity Movement

What a farce! As the economy officially goes into recession, as electricity bills go up by 17.5%, as food bills are officially 6.4% higher than this time last year, the leaders of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions negotiate through the night and emerge bleary-eyed from the ‘social partnership’ talks with 1) a pay pause and 2) pay increases, when we eventually get them, lower than the rate of inflation. And then they have the cheek to tell us that this is “the best deal available in the current economic climate” (1). Lucky for them they’re not on performance-related pay if that’s the best they can do for their members.

On October 22^nd, in the biggest show of student strength in many years, over 15,000 third level students marched through the streets of Dublin. They were united in their opposition to the Budget’s 67% College Registration Fee increase and Minister for Education, Batt O’Keefe’s threat to bring back full college fees by September 2009. Last month, he announced that the return of fees would raise €530 million in revenue at a family income threshold of €120,000. To his embarrassment, he later had to admit that these figures were wrong and that in fact the maximum revenue would be only €130 million.

What we were witnessing was a clear demonstration of people power in action. The government was in a panic and was drastically hurtling to reverse the medical card decision. And when this meeting was followed up 24 hours later with a demonstration of 15,000 organised by the Senior Citizens Parliament and another 15,000-strong student demonstration against the re-introduction of 3^rd level fees it was obvious that politics in Ireland had changed drastically.

As part of the growing struggle against education cuts WSM branches have produced a leaflet that is being distributed by anarchists who study or work across the education sector. We’re working together to build a democratic and open campaign that can fight education cuts, challenge the imposition of fees and push to improve access to, and quality of, education. You can help by downloading the leaflet and distributing it at education protests or at local schools and colleges.

Report of the National Secretary for the Fall 2008 Conference held at the Teachers Club in Dublin on the 25th and 26 of October.

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Subject: DRAGNET RETURNS!! Dragnet Two Fri. 7th Nov. 8pm @ The Sugar Club

Hey Noisy People!

DRAGNET is returning to the Sugar Club on Leeson Street this Friday 7th November with a new exposition of the GLORIOUS ART of CABARET! See our up-coming event page for photos from the previous Dragnet and a snazzy trailor for this Dragnet!

All your favourites from Dragnet One will be back - Miss Bunny, Sid Viscous, Julian Mandrews and more; plus a host of Dragnet newbies such as Bertha Defect and Juicy Dangler will be taking to the stage for your entertainment - and for a good cause.

The world seems about to end. The markets are convulsing, the banks are tumbling, the entire island is about to become some sort of black hole off the coast of Europe.

Never fear though, we’ve got a brilliant political establishment to shepherd us through the economic wilderness, and in the Budget on Tuesday 14th they revealed their master-plan, carefully crafted, as Mary Hanafin said, to ‘protect the vulnerable’. Unfortunately, it seems like they’ve got a different understanding of who exactly ‘the vulnerable’ in Irish society are.

The pensioners and the students have shown the way. Now teachers and parents are set to take on the government in response to education cuts announced in the Budget. The two Brians should get ready for another climbdown.

On Wednesday 22 October, something over 10,000 students marched in the centre of Dublin to protest the proposed introduction of fees. The student members and supporters of the WSM were in attendance and distributed thousands of leaflets which discussed the origins of the attack and argued that students will need to build a mass movement across the education sector to defend and improve equality of access to education.