Workers Solidarity Movement

There were angry scenes at Belfast city hall recently as the Sinn Fein Lord Mayor Niall Ó Donnghaile refused to present a Duke of Edinburgh award to an army cadet. The heated debate inside coincided with an angry loyalist mob outside who attacked cars outside claiming this was an attack on their community. It brought back memories of the sectarian cockpit of city hall politics of the 1980s.

Station’s crime correspondent Paul Reynolds falsely reported that recording of Garda rape conversation was ‘tampered with’

Shell to Sea has revealed that RTÉ is being compelled to broadcast an apology ahead of Wednesday's Six-One and Nine O’Clock TV news programmes, as a result of RTÉ's biased coverage of Shell's attempt to build an experimental gas pipeline and refinery in Erris. In this specific case, RTÉ chose to ignore the facts as explained to them by Shell to Sea around technical issues concerning the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (GSOC) investigation into the conversation Garda had about threatening to rape two women Shell to Sea campaigners they had arrested in April this year. RTÉ instead reported as fact the false suggestions of Justice Minister Alan Shatter, that part of the recording of the arrest had been deleted. 

Saturday saw the 2nd Spectacle of Defiance & Hope take place in Dublin, just ahead of the budget cuts that are expected to further devastate community organisations & services. The Spectacle describes itself as a "broadly based alliance of community organisations from Dublin and beyond" and also represents an attempt to break from the standard pattern of demonstrations in Dublin to create something more fun, participatory & engaging.

Friday 25th November saw over 5 hours of Shell’s peat and stone haulage completely blocked by campaigners in the ongoing struggle against Shell's experimental gas pipeline & refinery. No arrests were made.   Solidarity camp member Grainne Clancy said of the ongoing disruption of Shell's construction, “We are doing all we can with the numbers we have at the moment, but we really need more people up here right now. Sometimes there’s only a couple of us blocking, if we had even a few more people we could be doing a lot more to disrupt Shell’s peat removal.”

The struggle against Shell's experiemental gas pipeline at Rossport has stepped up a gear as Shell have reached the most vunerable state of the tunnelling section of their project.  They have started to remove peat from the site where the tunnel is to start, to suceed in this they will have to have as many as 427 truck movements per day along the narrow rural roads.  There is obviously great potential to disrupt, slow down and halt this work so Dublin Shell to Sea are appealing for anyone who can travel to Mayo to go to the camp now.  Note you don't have to be willing to actually block trucks to be useful as people willing to help prepare meals or do washing up will be helping by freeing up other to carry out other tasks.  The camp understands that not everyone is in a position to risk arrest.

A meeting in St.Joesphs' Community Centre in Mayfield, Cork, on Monday night, pledged determined opposition to the coming household tax.  The meeting was addressed by campaign members Dave Keating and James McBarron who outlined the reasons for opposition and the plan to organise in every community in a mass non payment campaign.

About 40 Shell to Sea campaigners blocked the Aughoose compound this morning (Nov 11) - all Shell employees were prevented from entering compound between 7.30 and 9.30. The road was kept open to local traffic by the campaign. There was no Garda presence. Just after 10 Shell to Sea activists started setting up an Occupy Shell Corrib Camp at the gates of the refinery in a show of solidarity with the global Occupy movements!

Across the country, communities have begun to organise to resist the new household tax.  The government have introduced this tax, due to be levied from 1st January, at €100 per year in a bid to sneak in what will within a couple of years amount to a bill of up to €1,300 for every household, combining a property and water tax. 

Reports from the first anti-Household tax meetings in Cork, Dublin & Galway.

The struggle against the Shell experimental raw gas pipeline being imposed on the people of Erris continued this week with Shell to Sea campaigners continuing to blockade peat removal lorries while a court case resuled in the state admitting it failed to correctly bring into law required EU Environmental Directives.  However despite thus the State is still maintaining that the consents given to Shell, including one given by interim Fianna Fáil minister Pat Carey on the day of the last general election, are still valid.