Workers Solidarity Movement

The latest in a series of meetings in the Dublin 1/3/7 area took place in the Mount Carmel Centre on Nelson St on Wednesday evening, covering the Dominic St, Dorset St and Blessington Basin areas. Despite the competing attractions of the “boys in green” and Olly Murs, about 25 people were in attendance.

As part of the National Day of Action activists from various towns and villages across Co.Mayo gathered in Castlebar on Saturday to host an information stall in the county town center. The mood from passers by was one of defiance and fear. The vast majority of people stated the had not registered and do not wish to do so.

An email which has been circulating widely and has appeared on facebook and on many other social media sites, claiming to be from McCann Fitzgerald solicitors has been exposed as being fake.  The email claims that people won’t get a bill for the household tax because “the charge is a statute”.  It goes on to claim that because the tax is a statute it “only carries the force of law upon you if you consent to it” and that “If you do not consent [it] cannot affect you in any way whatsoever.”  

"The UNITE trade union has formally pledged its support to the Campaign against the Household Charge. It will urge its members not to register and support national and local protest movements where it has a density of members around the country. - "The following comes from the UNITE circular today 24/2/12

A lively and energetic meeting took place in the local community hall in the Dunard estate in Dublin 7 on Wednesday night.  The meeting was addressed by Councillor Cieran Perry and local resident and campaigner Dermot Sreenan about the upcoming Household Tax and the campaign against it.

Following his announcement that many of his proposed cuts to teacher numbers in schools serving areas of social disadvantage are to be reversed, Minister for Education and Skills, Ruairi Quinn, has admitted that protests work and that he reversed his decisions because of the huge protests faced by himself and his colleagues on the government backbenches.

“…in relation to the area where all the pressure was coming from and all the protests was [sic] coming from …. I reflected on the impact on those schools….and I reversed that decision,” he said. 

In Belmullet district court on Monday 20th February, 6 campaigners were convicted of a total of 13 charges between them with fines totaling 3,035  euros. While this went on, local residents blocked Shell's haulage route  between Bellanaboy refinery and the compound in Glengad.

On Monday February 20th the Belmullet courthouse in Co. Mayo will be full of campaigners opposing the Corrib Gas Project. Nineteen people are facing 80 charges between them for civil disobedience, and this week has been set aside as a special sitting for the campaigners.

The idea of direct action is sometimes simply understood as meaning anything violent, anything from a brick through a window to a full-scale guerrilla war. Our political opponents and enemies go out of their way to spread confusion because they know that in a “battle of ideas” they would lose. Firstly the fact that we are sitting in this room now having this teach in is a result of direct action being taken, doing it for ourselves and not relying on any politicians or anyone else to sort out homelessness or the building social centres.

Several hundred people from both sides of the community gathered today despite arctic conditions outside Annie’s Bar, in Derry’s Waterside.  They came together united in their outrage at last weeks brutal murder of local man Andrew Allen.