Workers Solidarity Movement

Saturday the 29th of May saw the return of the Dublin Anarchist Bookfair to Liberty Hall. It is the 5th Bookfair to be held in the city and what started out as a small event in a community hall in the Liberties is now one of the landmark events in the calendar of the Irish left, organised by the Workers Solidarity Movement.

Dear Sir,

In the … brazenly condescending column ‘That’s Capitalism’ (WS114) I read a very short but very puzzling piece on Aidan Heavey (Founder and CEO of Tullow Oil). You feel it newsworthy to mention that his total remuneration for the year amounted to €25,962,983. By the general theme of your paper and this column in particular I can derive a clear negative slant on any business issues you report on.

If you’ve been following the news or listening to Liveline over the last few weeks, you’ll have seen a few references to protesters trying to “storm” the Dáil or to the Guards’ attempt to prevent an anti-capitalist march from, well, marching.

In mid-June the Irish Congress of Trade Unions Public Services Committee voted to accept the ‘Croke Park deal’. ‘Social partnership’, presumed dead and buried when the government unilaterally imposed pay cuts on public sector workers in the December ’09 budget, was revived and given a new lease of life. But this is ‘social partnership’ with a difference. Instead of the union leadership believing that ‘partnership’ gives them some input into government policy (as they have wrongly thought for the past 20 years), all they can now offer in its defence is that this is the “least worst deal” and that “it’s better to be inside the tent than outside.”

The unions have warned that any attempt to introduce mandatory IBEC (Irish Business and Employers Confederation) recognition would endanger working conditions, pay rates and general government policy.

Recorded at the Dublin anarchist bookfair, three speakers look at the economy, what the real situation of the resistance is and what needs to be built and examples of what has been achieved in the unions to date. This is followed by contributions from the floor from a wide range of perspectives.

Connor Kostick author of Revolution in Ireland: Popular militancy 1917 to 1923 spoke at the 2010 Dublin anarchist bookfair about the wave of workplace occupations and 'soviets' as well as the general strikes that are forgotten by conventional nationalist histories of this period.

The audio is about one hour in length and was first published on indymedia.ie. 

Progressive taxation is a taxation system which seeks a higher tax rate for higher incomes.  It is a relatively common feature in the western democracies.  In Ireland however, its implementation is almost entirely nominal.