Workers Solidarity Movement

This Easter marks the ninetieth anniversary of the 1916 rising. There is an unedifying scrabble by every politician in the state to wrap the green flag around themselves and stake their claim to be the inheritors of the tradition.

Writing shortly after the execution of James Connolly for his part in the 1916 rising the Russian/US anarchist Alexander Berkman published 'The only hope of Ireland' in his paper 'The Blast'. He argues that British policy towards the leaders of the rising was typical of British policy elsewhere and in particular in India. He also attacks the timidity of Irish American who only organised protest meetings against the executions suggesting that instead "A British Consul ornamenting a lamppost in San Francisco or New York would quickly secure the respectful attention of the British lion".

The Makhnovists were a libertarian movement, deeply rooted in the traditions of anarchist-communism, that developed an experience of revolutionary changes in the economic and political structures of the backwarded Ukrainian society.

This is the text of the 'Ulster’s Solemn League and Covenant' launched by Carson, Craig and the northern Unionist elite on 28 Sept 1912. Some 218,206 men were to sign it. Women were not able to sign it but 228,990 women did sign a declaration in solidarity with the men. The sermon delivered bu Dr William McKean included “We are plain, blunt men who love peace and industry. The Irish question is at bottom a war against Protestantism; it is an attempt to establish a Roman Catholic ascendancy in Ireland to begin the disintegration of the Empire by securing a second parliament in Dublin”.

This is the text of the proclamation issued at the start of the second United Irishmen rebellion of 1803. led by Robert Emmet. Its noteworthy that the first act was to declare "church lands are the property of the nation." and point 13 declares "the people elect their officers up to the colonels" even if the introduction reassures "we do not make war on property"

For many people the 'civil war' within the Civil War that occurred in Spain between 1936-39 is a difficult business to understand. Not only were many different organisations involved, but it was set against the background of an even larger conflict that in itself was rife with brutality and betrayal. Although it appears at times to be an impossible quagmire to make sense of, Mick Parkin has succeeded admirably in his short novel To Live.

The 1803 rebellion came to be associated with one man, Robert Emmet because that suited both the government of that time and later day nationalists in search of a romantic nationalist interpretation of the rebellion. As with the great rebellion of 1798, the process of burying the radical ideas of the rebellion was bound up in creating mystical notions of blood sacrifice and individual heroism.

The bi-centennary of the 1798 rebellion saw the radical ideas that lay at the roots of it being recovered. Instead of a romantic nationalist rising for the four green fields and the faith of our fathers it was put in the context of the wave of European / Atlantic radicalism that demanded equality for all. The United Irishmen were revealed not as narrow nationalists but as part of an international democratic upsurge against monarchy and colonialism that transformed the world we live in.

Facing the Enemy kicks into gear with a look at Bakunin's ideas on the necessity of anarchist organisation and thereafter studies individualist anarchism, syndicalism, the Organisational Platform of Russian exiles, a quick chapter on the Spanish movement and a somewhat bizarrely detailed account of post war French anarchism. Also, included are almost one hundred pages of original documentation mostly relating to the Organisational Platform.

Republished to mark the 10th anniversary of the Genoa G8 summit protest these are the recollections of a WSM member about the days running up to the protest and the main event itself.  Ho took part in one of the Genoa Black Bloc's.  It includes about 50 photos taken in Genoa.

Peadar O'Donnell (1893-1986), the novelist and political activist, is a major figure in the history of the Irish left. Born in Donegal, he left teaching (and a prominent role in the Donegal branch of the Irish National Teachers' Organisation) to become a full-time organiser with the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union in 1918.