Workers Solidarity Movement

Budget day 2011 saw vicious cuts being imposed on ordinary working people across Ireland to pay the massive costs of the bailout of Ireland’s banking system. A deeply unpopular government, in the service of the richest 1% of the population imposed cuts and tax hikes totalling 6 billion euro, cuts which will be supervised by the ECB and IMF. Around two thousands peopled gathered at at the Dáil that evening with the first protest taking place early that morning, when Gardai hastily tore the slogans off a cherry picker that had been placed outside the Dáil.

Cork city Smash the Budget protest. Meet 5pm Patricks bridge Wednesday December 8th

When: (This) Wednesday at 5 pmWhere: Assemble at Patrick's Bridge, Cork
What To Do: Spread the word. Bring your friends, work mates and neighbours. Bring placards, noise and banners. All welcome.

As part of the budget protests at the Dáil Dec 7th 2011 Andrew Flood gave the following speech for the 1% Network at the left bloc rally. "If we wish to build a new society based on equality and real democracy, we need to find a way to take political power as well as economic wealth away from that 1%"

As part of the budget protests at the Dail Dec 7 2010 Gregor Kerr gave the following speech for the WSM.  In it he argues that, while we must fight the budget, we need to look beyond that and clearly say that capitalism as a way of organising society is morally and politically bankrupt. If we want to ensure that this financial crisis and the economic misery it has visited on millions of working class people across the world is the last, then we need to begin to organise not to change the administrators of capitalism, but to tear down that capitalist system and replace it with a system which places the needs of the many above the greed of the few.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, Up pop Inda Kinny and Baldy Noonan with their version of how they intend to screw the workers (or their “budgetary proposals” as they put it).

Having accepted fully the same €15 billion cuts target as the current FF/Green coalition, the only issue at stake for Fine Gael is how they intend to implement their version of the ‘slash and burn’.

The government recently published a draft memorandum that will give legal effect to the negotiations between the EU/IMF and Ireland (see here). Essentially the draft details, by quarter of each year, how the government intends to implement an incredibly far-reaching austerity program to help get us back on our feet.

Anarchist organisation Workers Solidarity Movement (WSM) has confirmed its intention to join the protests against Tuesday’s budget at Dáil Éireann.

Speaking today, Gregor Kerr, WSM P.R.O. said that members of the organisation would be joining the 1% Network protest meeting at Wolfe Tone statue St Stephen’s Green at 5:30p.m. and marching with them to participate in the protest at the Dáil at 6p.m.

This article was first published in the Monday edition of the Andersonstown News a few weeks ago.

The dreaded IMF have now landed on our shores, thanks to the bankers, property developers and their lackeys in power.

Once again, ordinary people will bear the brunt of a new round of vicious cutbacks in jobs, wages and conditions and social services, all, we are told, in the name of the ‘national interest’ . 

The former chairman of the Special Group on Public Service Numbers and Expenditure (otherwise known as ‘An Bord Snip Nua’), UCD economist Colm McCarthy, is currently heading another cutting group, the Review Group on State Assets, which is looking into the fire-sale of state firms.

State enterprises such as the ESB, An Post, Irish Rail, Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports, (all owned by Dublin Airport Authority) 10 port companies, the VHI, TG4, RTE, Eirgrid, CIE, Bord na Móna, Bus éireann Expressway, Bord Gáis, HRI, RTÉ, utilities (like water and refuse collection, where provided through local authorities), and Coillte are being looked at.

“Ordinary people are being sacrificed on the altar of international capitalism.  We absolutely must step up the protests against what’s being done to us.” – Gregor Kerr, 1% Network spokesperson

The 1% Network has called on “workers, the unemployed and all who care about any form of democracy or equality” to protest outside the Dáil on Budget night, Tuesday 7^th December.