Workers Solidarity Movement

In what was described ahead of time as the most "important bond auction of the year" the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) sold 1.5 billion in bonds, a result which may steady the international markets at whose whims workers in Ireland have discovered their employment and living standards are subject to.  There was nervousness ahead of the sale due to the rise in the cost of servicing Irish debt in bond sales last week.  Meanwhile thousands of bank workers are losing their jobs.

It has been revealed that the ESB (the Electricity Supply Board, a State-owned company) has been cutting off an average of 30 people a day from the electricity supply due to their inability to pay the bills.

A still defiant Shell to Sea campaigner, Niall Harnett, has been released after spending 118 days in Castlerea prison. On his release Niall announced that "I am going straight back to the Rossport Solidarity Camp to be with my fellow activists and Shell to Sea friends in the local community. We seem to bring out the best in each other, unlike Shell and the Irish government, who bring out the worst in each other."  Niall's release today means that for the first time in many months no Shell to Sea campaigners are in prison, however resistance to Shell still continues in Erris.

Technical Engineering and Electrical Union (TEEU) members at St James are on strike today against management breaking agreed procedures in out sourcing work that includes the resetting and repair of fire alarms.  The electricians have already held two half day stoppages with todays actions following the failure to reach agreement at the Labour Relations Commission last week.

One of the best known French anarchists, Georges Fontenis, died on August 9th at the age of 90.

Our comrades of Alternative Libertaire described him as “an untiring fighter for libertarian communism, a supporter of the Algerian independence fighters, a trade unionist, one of the leading figures of May 1968 in Tours and a pillar of the Freethought movement”.   Until the very end he was also a member of Alternative Libertaire.

At the urging of our comrades in  the Colombian anarchist organisation Red Libertaria Popular Mateo Kramer the WSM has signed this international statement.  Red Libertaria Popular Mateo Kramer describe the current political reality in Colombia as follows. "As repression assumes fearful proportions in Colombia, sheer violence is the mechanism to impose a terrorist mafia regime, an enclave subservient to US imperialist interests in the region. The current regime represents the political expression of the harshest class violence against workers in the region. This is not shameful for the Colombian people but it represents a menace to all of the Latin American people. Those libertarian organisations who have signed this statement do so in order to show solidarity with the libertarian movement in Colombia which, along with the rest of the people’s movement, knows no quarter in its struggle against State Terrorism and Imperialism."

The WSM has signed an international statement that highlights the ongoing resistance of the Mapuche, an indigenous people in Chile who make up perhaps 5% of the Chilean population but comprise the majority of political prisoners in Chile.  The statement originated with anarchists organisations in Chile who are in solidarity with the Mapuche.

On Tuesday morning forty people from around Sruwaddacon Estuary in Erris brought Shell’s survey work in the area to a complete standstill when they walked out onto the mudflats at low tide to assert their cockle-picking rights and disrupt Shell’s borehole drilling survey.  Shell has two barges drilling over 80 test holes in this Special Areas of Conservation, work that is opposed by the local community as part of their ongoing resistance to Shell's plan to run an experimental high pressure raw gas pipeline near their houses.

At 7pm last night Shell to Sea campaigners used kayaks to approach a Shell drilling platform in Broadhaven bay.  Five Gardai boats intercepted them and overturned the kayaks, dumping the campaigners in the water.  When one campaigner managed to swim underneath the platform he was hauled onto one of the Gardai boats where a Gardai proceeded to choke him for 90 seconds.

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.