Workers Solidarity Movement

For the last twelve hours Shell and the Gardai have been attempting to move some sections of a 500 ton tunnel boring machine to the remote site of Aghoos in Erris. Despite this, the effort has proven to be farcical, with protestors pulling off three road blockades under the noses of hundreds of Gardai. In the latest twist, the lorry, which has been on the road for twelve hours so far, failed to make a crucial turn on the last leg of its journey at the Aghoos / Bellinaboy Road due to its size, despite being in a specialist vehicle.

A huge secretive Garda security operation last night swung into operation in Dublin Port as Shell's Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) left the port as part of a huge convoy of Garda vehicles.  News of the operation had leaked at the last minute meaning that with only an hours notice a handful of Shell to Sea campaigners managed to get down to the port entrance despite the pouring rain.  Most of us were pulled over and questioned by Garda at least once and the Garda helicopter stayed overhead as various Garda vehicles including a van load of riot cops with the door open drove past us repeatedly.

Something is changing in Spain. On Thursday 19th July, hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people took to the streets against the greatest attack on Spain's welfare state in its history, in the form of cutbacks announced by the Partido Popular government. Public servants, trade unions, left wing political parties, worker organisations and unemployed people marched in 83 cities across Spain. A WSM member who returned on a visit to Toledo during Friday's protests reports on the struggle.

About 700 people from all over Ireland took part in a evening march to the Dail last night to highlight the ongoing resistance to the attempt to impose the Household tax.  Although smaller than recent CAHWT protests because the march was at 5 o'clock on a working day in July it was still of significant size.  The timing was because this was the last day the Dail sits.  Below is a slideshow of photos our photographer took on the demonstration, many more photos will be found in our Facebook album of the march which you are encouraged to share.  There is a video of the march in the body of the article, click through to view it.

Saturday's Youth Defense march in Belfast saw a WSM member arrested for protesting the presence of Michael Quinn, the fascist who told the Sunday World that he would "he would have "no problem" with an Anders Breivik style-massacre" in Ireland. When Quinn was pointed out to stewards on the so called 'Rally for Life' they protected him and allowed him to continue on the march. On Sunday Youth Defence deleted posts of the picture of Quinn on the demonstration from their Facebook page and banned people who posted the picture or demanded to know why they had allowed Quinn to march. 

The Ireland segments of a European speaking tour with an Anarchist from Moscow who will talk about the anarchist movement in Russia, its successes and failures. Antti Rautiainen lived in Moscow for 13 years, participating in anarchist activities. His residence permit was revoked in March of this year, allegedly because he "called for a violent overthrow of constitutional order, or otherwise endangered the safety of Russian Federation or its citizens". He is member of Autonomous Action and the Anarchist Black Cross of Moscow.

• Cork on Sat July 7th, 5pm at Solidarity Books, Douglas St.
• Dublin on Sun, July 8th, 4pm at Seomra Spraoi, 10 Bevedere court D1
• Belfast on Tue, July 10th, 7pm at Na Croisbhealai Workers Co-op cafe
• Derry on Wed, July 11th, 7pm Castlebar Waterloo street 

The handshake that lasted 3.7 seconds kept the broadcast media on knife-edge as the crowning moment of the so-called peace process. However, beneath the carefully choreographed piece of political theatre is a settlement built on sand, on managing sectarianism and regulating division, rather than confronting and removing the causes of conflict in our society.

The WSM took part in Pride in Dublin over the weekend as part of the PINC! bloc. Below are a selection of images of the day captured by our photographers.

We've made a much larger collection available via the Pride 2012 album on the WSM Facebook page.  The slideshow above is a smaller selection of these images pulled from our photographers Flickr account. Images made available under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Creative Commons license.

David Cameron plans to end housing benefit for claimants aged 16-24. The ‘proposal’ forms part of wider recommendations to begin being implemented next year as part of the new Welfare Act. Further plans being rolled out including linking regional play with regional benefits, breaking the link between benefits and inflation, and considering linking benefits to average earnings and cost of living amounting to a further attack on worker’s rights and conditions.

The PSNI’s Deputy Chief Constable Judith Gillespie may have achieved a silver fainne in Irish language speaking (better Irish than Gerry Adams), but just one in four people in Northern Ireland would encourage a close relative to join the PSNI according to a poll conducted by Belfast Telegraph/Lucid Talk. That figure among Catholics drops to just one in ten.