Workers Solidarity Movement

Students from Free Education for Everyone (FEE), who organised todays occupation of the Department of Finance, have released the following statement detailing why they organised the occupation, who took part and the giving some details of the brutal Gardai attack on the occupiers.  A WSM member who was present and whose arm was injured in the Gardai assault revealed that as soon as the Gardai entered the occupation they started punching people in the face despite the face that the students were telling them it was a peaceful protest and they were not resisting them.

Riot police attacked students in Dublin today with dogs, armoured vehicles and horses after the students protesting against government cuts occupied the Department of Finance and threw eggs at the Dail.

Upwards of thirty students occupied the Department of Finance in the center of Dublin with a couple of hundred supporting them in the streets outside.

Another larger group of students was reported outside the Dail throwing cans & bottles at it. Several students were injured in the suppression of the protest.

Tens of thousands of students were demonstrating as part of the USI protests against plans to introduce fees. The students carrying out the occupation appear to have broken away from the main demonstration which took place around the corner in Merrion Square. Student members of the WSM, eirigi and the SWP were at the scene. The WSM members published the reports below to this site.

Health minister Mary "the hatchet" Harney, was red faced today after a protester splattered her with paint.  Harney  has presided over huge cutbacks in the public Health service and advancing privatisation through co-location (giving public land to private health operators).  Eirigi Councillor Louise Minihan poured the paint over Harney at an event in Dublin.  The incident comes on the same day that the HSE annouced plans to make 5,000 workers redundant.

Saturday 30th October saw the WSM take part in the latest 1% Network event, an after dark Halloween Treasure Hunt around Dublin's exclusive Shewsbury and Ailesbury roads taking in the mansions of multi millionare bankers, developers and financers as well as the HQ of Allied Irish Bank and the 32 million in tax avoidance of the luxury Four Seasons hotel. The tour was led off by a vampire capitalist accompanied by a contingent of Zombie bankers and developers and ghost estates with the vampire showing how much wealth was present at each stop and explaining the contacts between the 1%, the media and the government that enabled them to make hundreds of millions during the tiger.  The tour was accompanied by uniformed Gardai and a car of special branch political police.  The 1% network is a coalition of socialist groups including the WSM, eirigi, ISN and Semora Spraoi formed to highlight the fact that the richest 1% own 34% of the wealth.

“Brian Lenihan might claim that there is no pot of gold to be had from the wealthy.  We intend to show him otherwise” - Gregor Kerr, 1% Network spokesperson

The 1% Network has announced details of the route of its Halloween Treasure Hunt, due to take place on Saturday evening, 30^th October.  Among the venues which the event will visit are the homes of well-known developer Bernard McNamara and former AIB chairman Dermot Gleeson.

Announcing their support for Saturday’s 1% Network ‘Halloween Treasure Hunt’, anarchist organisation Workers Solidarity Movement (WSM) has said that the government’s proposed €15 billion of cuts would not be necessary if the wealthy were “made to pay their share.”

Through a 'Freedom of information' request the pro-choice campaigning group Choice Ireland have revealed that over a thousand desperate women were denied an abortion last year because customs seized the medicine that they had ordered over the internet. In many cases these women were unable to travel to Britain because of poverty or because they were immigrants who felt unable to risk leaving Ireland lest they be refused readmission.

The first in a series of ‘Winter Talks’ organised by Solidarity Books in Cork took place last Tuesday night and was a big success.  Donal O’Drisceoil, the historian from UCC, introduced the ‘forgotten’ figure of Tadhg Barry who, as he pointed out in his introduction, had the largest funeral ever in Cork when his body was returned to the city following his death in 1921; Barry had died in suspicious circumstances at the Ballykindlar internment camp in Co. Down shortly before the Treaty was signed.

A CSO report from 2009 revealed that Irish residents own 1251 billion euro worth of foreign stocks and bonds. Over 300 billion of this is invested in the US and 240 billion on Britain. These figures are for stocks and bonds only, they don't include other wealth that Irish residents hold abroad, for instance in the form of property. (Image: from the CSO report).

Videos from last Saturday's 1% Network walking tour though the Dublin of the 'Golden Circle' have begun to be released.  The first video, by Dublin based videographer Dave Donnellan, shows highlights of the tour including snippets of the descriptions delivered at different points of the tour.  We will be adding more video here as it becomes available.

1% Walk Through Dublin from Dave Donnellan on Vimeo.