Workers Solidarity Movement

A few thousand took part in the annual mayday parade in Sydney this year with organisers claiming it was the largest in years.  This years event theme was a 'a proud past, a fighting future' which certainly matched the range of trade union banners on display and political groups of all shades including the James Connolly Society involving recent Irish migrants.

In Sydney's Sun Herald there's a graph of unemployment in Europe with the title "Painful Recovery" it has percentages from Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and the overall EU.It says "Monthly unemployment. Ireland's unemployment is no longer surging but that is largely because 1600 people emigrate every week to find work". So apparently all that guff about how generous social welfare is in Ireland is a lie, as thousands seek work elsewhere and quite a few in Australia. (Sunday March 10th page 29).

The Liverpool dockers were forced to end their dispute after 28 months in January of this year. But they were unbowed, the letter explaining to their supporters why they had ended the dispute ended with a quote from Jim Larkin "Who is it to speak of defeat? I tell you a cause like ours is greater than defeat can know. It is the power of powers".