Workers Solidarity Movement

On Saturday, more than 15,000 people marched through Dublin to demand an end to austerity and to oppose the State’s transferring of the financial crisis on to the shoulders of the working class.  Organised by the Dublin Council of Trade Unions and the Campaign against the Household and Water Taxes, the march offered people an opportunity to pressure the government prior to the budget and to raise the profile of the CAHWT, already the most popular act of civil disobedience since the foundation of the state.

Members of the WSM met prior to the march at the Ambassador to distribute the new edition of Workers Solidarity and subsequently joined their union or local campaign branches - red and black flags flying - as the demonstration filed past.

The Spectacle of Hope and Defiance led the march, using street theatre, notably a Grim Reaper on horseback, to dramatise the effect that successive austerity budgets have had on local communities’ welfare and employment infrastructure.

Campaigners against the home charge also travelled in large numbers from around the country to voice their opposition to the government’s attempted robbery. Spirited chants from this section of the march included ‘Can’t Pay! Won’t Pay!’, ‘Enda Kenny – not a penny!’ and ‘Axe, axe, the household tax!’.

The banners of the Dublin Council of Trade Unions and associated unions followed the route down O’Connell and D’Olier Streets and returned via Westmoreland Street to the GPO. Speakers from the platform echoed calls from the march for a 24hr General Strike and urged the crowd to attend protests at Leinster House on budget day. 

One march, of course, is not enough to defeat austerity or the capitalist system that imposes it. We must take the combative spirit of today’s demonstration back to our communities, workplaces and colleges and continue to organize, organize, organize. 

There is a large collection of photographs from the march in our Anti-Austerity Dublin march Nov 24 2012 Facebook album

WSM video from the march

Trade Union TV video