Workers Solidarity Movement

On a day when we all desperately needed a change in the weather, people gathered beside the bunker on wood quay which is the Council offices. A man in a Santa clause hat spoke at us like he was hosting a children’s television program and told us we would await the bells to chime at two o’clock from Christchurch before we would move off for the march.

The RAG - Issue 2

Red and Black Revolution 13

While Martin McGuinness was flying off to ‘sell’ the North to American investors with promises of low corporation tax, we are in the midst of wee bit of class war with classroom assistants and posties taking action to defend their interests against ‘the new era’ of the bosses. In the meantime, water charges are still coming through the backdoor by being added to our council rates despite the politicians’ promises made at the last election.

Anarchism has been growing in support over recent years. Old organisations have grown, new ones have been formed in countries as far apart as South Africa and Argentina, Turkey and Mexico.

Figures published in September by the Revenue Commissioners in the 26 Counties show that the top 50 earners in the state each paid less than 5% tax.

In Ireland we like to think that we’ve long ago abolished the death penalty; that we’ve progressed beyond such primitive practices, that we’re too civilized for that. But Irish people are still being sentenced to death, and not even for crimes they have committed but for the crimes of our murderous health system. Long waiting lists, unhygienic hospitals, downgrading of regional hospitals, are all symptoms of a rotten institution that refuses to reform.

A report by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture has found that conditions in several Irish prisons are extremely unsafe.

Organising for Anarchism: Public meeting and discussion in Limerick
this Saturday, Nov 24th.

The Workers Solidarity Movement held its Autumn 2007 National Conference in Dublin on the 3rd/4th November. National conferences take place every six months and are the prime decision making body on positions and priorities for the organisation. All WSM members can attend, vote and submit motions and amendments either as individuals or as groups.

This is the 100th issue of Workers Solidarity. Why do we bother? After all, nobody gets paid for writing, or doing layout, or stuffing envelopes, or putting copies through neighbours’ letterboxes, or giving them out at union meetings or in city centres. 

Well, we are sick and tired of a system that won’t provide us with decent health care, or economic security, or affordable housing. We are sick and tired of a system that pays farmers in one country not to grow food while people in another country starve to death, a system that spends billions on weapons of mass destruction but won’t cough up to keep people alive.