Workers Solidarity Movement

Three socialists in Cork, members of the Socialist Alliance group, have found themselves up against the guardians of 'public order' for the second time in two months. Their crime? Putting up posters.

A CENSORSHIP LAW praised by feminists has been used to ban books by a leading anti-porn feminist. In February of 1992 the Supreme Court of Canada accepted the legal definition of pornography popularised by the US law professor and feminist anti-porn theorist Catherine MacKinnon. This outlaws material deemed degrading to women.

THERE ARE 30,000 families on the housing waiting lists of the local authorities throughout the country at the moment. 3,500 households are waiting for housing in Dublin. The average wait for a local authority house in Dublin is now two years and rising. For single people ,there is virtually no chance of housing unless they are seriously ill and even then they will only be offered hard to let flats in the inner city.

Dear Comrades,

In the course of a review of our publication What is Anarchism? edited by Donald Rooum, in your winter 1993 issue (No. 40), your correspondent Andrew B. affects a familiarity with ourselves which he does not in fact possess. No one here has knowingly met him.

THE ATTACK on Travellers in Glenamaddy, Co Galway last October was a shocking exposure of the extent of the racist attitudes that Irish people have towards Travellers. In Glenamaddy, a small town in east Galway, the Four Winds pub has a policy of serving Travellers. This is such an unusual policy, especially in Galway, that large numbers of Travellers regularly travelled long distances to drink there.

TOP TRADE union leaders like Phil Flynn, Billy Attley and Peter Cassells have been working flat out to get the employers and government to agree another national deal for pay restraint. The talks were on, then they were off, then they were on again. It was all a game to make it look like the unions leaders were fighting hard for their members. And maybe they felt they had to put on more of an act this time. The Programme for Competitiveness and Work doesn't even pretend to offer much more than pay restraint and cheap labour schemes.

'Not Your Girl', a women's radio programme was taken off the air at Anna Livia FM by an all-male Board of Directors just before Christmas. Listeners phoned to complain about a programme on "Female Sexuality" after 'Not Your Girl gave away a book (Sue Lee's Sugar and Spice: Sexuality and Adolescent Girls) to the first caller with the correct spelling of "clitoris". The Directors wanted the team to apologize and concede that the quiz question was in "bad taste". The team would not agree upon this wording and the programme was suspended.

HICKSON PHARMACHEM, the company at the centre of last year's explosion and fire in Ringaskiddy, Co. Cork, pleaded guilty in July to three charges of negligence and improper handling of hazardous chemical substances. The result of this negligence was a major industrial accident in the harbour area of Cork, which very nearly caused a major contamination and deaths.

The explosion and fire at the Hickson chemical plant in Ringaskiddy, Cork, last August, has gone down as one of the most serious industrial accidents in Ireland to date. Though no fatalities resulted, it is now clear that this outcome was only a matter of luck. One worker, the first to notice that something was wrong, left the site of the explosion minutes before it blew up. And the explosion itself, occured shortly before shifts were due to change on that morning of August 6th.

IT WAS A DEFEAT! 780 jobs are to go in Aer Lingus. The PESP increases for 1990-93 won't be paid. Increments won't be paid. The SIPTU leaders, at both national and local level, didn't want a fight. They agreed to refer the pay issue to a supposedly "impartial' tribunal ...which ruled that there be a pay freeze until 1995.