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Elsewhere in this magazine (see ‘Anarchism, Elections and all that’), the anarchist case against participation in elections is outlined. The alternative political strategy put forward by anarchists is the use of direct action. This article sets out to examine what is meant by the concept of direct action and also to argue that it is impossible to combine electoralism and direct action, that by its nature electoralism is disempowering, and that real direct action and participation in elections are mutually exclusive. Politics in Ireland and elsewhere is dominated by clientelism. People see themselves as needing politicians to “do stuff” for them. The politicians who are most successful are those who play the clientelist game most effectively. And left wing or socialist parties and candidates who decide to play the electoral game find themselves drawn into this clientelist game as well. This has huge implications in terms of how they approach campaigning work.
Today the WSM joined a demo in solidarity with those arrested in Copenhagen since the eviction of Ungdomshuset, an autonomous social centre, on Thursday 1st of March. Around 20-30 people from Anarchist Prisoner Support, Polish Anarchist Federation and the WSM gathered outside the Danish embassy on St. Stephen's Green.
Solidarity Demo for Ungdomshuset this Friday, meet 2pm at St. Stephen's Green
To people living in the North Inner City, the recent revelations at the Dublin City coroner’s court at the inquest into the death of young Terence Wheelock will not come as a surprise. Terence went into a coma from which he never recovered, after sustaining injuries in Store Street Garda station. One witness to his arrest said the Gardai ‘whacked Terence’s head off the side of the van and twisted his broken arm behind his back’.
At the second Anarchist bookfair, Saturday 3rd March 2007, speakers from Workers Solidarity Movement, Irish Socialist Network and Eirigi discussed the question 'What Sort of Ireland Do We Want?'. These are the audio files of this debate.
Dublin anarşist kitapfuarından ses dosyaları --- 3 Mart Cumartesi günü, ikinci Anarşist kitapfuarında, İşçilerin Dayanışma Hareketi, İrlanda Sosyalist Ağı ve Eirigi'den konuşmacılar, 'Nasıl bir İrlanda İstiyoruz?' sorusunu tartıştılar. Bu tartışmanın ses dosyaları bulunuyor.
In times past Dominick Street - developed in the 1750s by the Dominick family - was the “first settlement” of fashionable Dublin and much favoured by “the quality”. It housed such notables as William Hamilton; the mathematician who was elected the first foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA was born in No.36, horror writer Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu in No.45, and Sinn Fein founder Arthur Griffith in No.4.
Saturday March 3rd saw Dublin's Second Anarchist Bookfair was extremely well attended and proved to be a huge success.
In 1984, 11 workers in Dunnes Stores, Henry Street, went on strike as they refused to handle goods produced by the racist South African Apartheid Regime. The ten women and ond man stayed out for over 2 and a half years, and their courage inspired many people around the world.
The piece is the crucial fifth chapter of the Inquiry. This is the turning point of the book where Thompson accepts that his original project of creating a liberatory economics on the basis of classical liberalism, albeit taken far further than any previous exponent had dared, had been overtaken by an acceptance of the limits of even the most perfected system of "free" exchange. This chapter starts with an admission that he has dumped the previous written version for this new departure. In passing he gives the section headings for the original text, covering the demands necessary for the achievement of his original goal of "free exchange". The crucial section of this chapter is his dissection of the faults of even the most perfected system of exchange. His seminal framework of 5 points is still capable of enriching contemporary critique of exchange, despite the datedness of some of the problems which have to some extent been mitigated in the intervening 180 or so years by the gains of workers' and women's struggles and the subsequent development of consumer capitalism and the welfare state.