Workers Solidarity Movement

The threat of strike action at Domino’s Pizzas in Naas saw SIPTU members secure substantial pay increases. A ban on overtime showed management that the workers were serious, when they voted to strike the bosses caved in and conceded a pay increase of 15% over 27 months. The union also won improved holiday and service leave arrangements.

For almost a year Turkish workers at the multi-national construction company Gama waged a struggle to secure trade union rates of pay, improved working conditions and to reclaim wages which had been siphoned from their pay packets and placed in foreign bank accounts opened in their names but without their knowledge. A co-production by the Socialist Party and Frameworks Films, “The Gama Strike: A victory for all workers” is an attempt to document and highlight the exploitation and subsequent struggle faced by the Turkish workers.

Five peace activists have been acquitted of all charges in relation to their disarming of a US navy plane at Shannon airport in February 2003. The five, calling themselves the Pitstop Ploughshares, used axes and lump hammers to inflict over $2.5m worth of damage in what they described as a “non-violent ploughshares action”. In June they received a unanimous acquittal by using Section 6 of the Criminal Damage Act 1991 which allows for a “lawful excuse” where the damage is caused “in order to protect another or property belonging to another.” They say they were acting in defence of civilian life in Iraq, the local infrastructure, the lives of US soldiers and of Irish people who may become targets of a terrorist attack as a result of Irish complicity in the war.

We answer the myths about Asylum Seekers in Ireland

Over the past fifteen years those in power made a lot of promises. They promised a country in which everybody would benefit from the economy, one in which poverty and other problems would be left behind. As usual they lied.

Over 60 anarchists and environmentalists gathered in Rossport over the August bank holiday weekend for two days of planning construction and fun. A contingent of WSM members from Dublin and cork along with our American Comrade Wayne Price (NEFAC) and his wife Anne traveled down to participate.

Scenes of great joy and relief at the Dublin Four Courts as the Catholic Workers/Pitshops ploughshare five were acquitted of all charges.

Image - Karen and supporter after the acquittal

Three and a half years ago, 5 members of Catholic Worker/Pitstop ploughshares damaged a US warplane stationed at Shannon Airport in Ireland.

Image - Procession to the court on the last day of the trial 

I'm just after returning from watching Ken Loach's Palm D'or reaping drama 'The Wind That Shakes The Barley' and like most feel slightly compelled to add one or two words to the flurry of type and hype that has accompanied the movies release on these shores. The Wind That Shakes The Barley is a typical Loach movie portraying many of the core techniques of his previous outtings. Again he relies on plunging a shallowly crafted personal relationship, this time between two brothers, into a set of tragic circumstances. These circumstances provide an emotional cover for his overly didactic political approach to popularising alternative historical mythologies that challenge the authors of a victors' history. This time the contested historicity is the rabid nationalism of the Irish text book, that sweeps aside socialist and labour based movements in the process of consolidation of the free state.

Various shorts on life under capitalism