Workers Solidarity Movement

It’s the time of year again that the Workers' Solidarity Movement is busy finalising the last minute details for our annual Anarchist Bookfair. Much has changed since we first began the venture back in 2006, not least the scale of the event, but also the implosion of the Celtic Tiger and its catastrophic effect on Irish society.

The Bookfair has grown in size each year, starting out with numbers in the hundreds at the first event in the St. Nicholas of Myra Hall in the Liberties, the moving on to the Teachers Club for a couple of years, where numbers attending swelled so much we were forced to switch to Liberty Hall. In our first year there (2009), we brought you ex- Black Panther turned Anarchist Ashanti Alson and author of "Free Women of Spain" Martha Ecklesberg. The following year we heard from the authors of “The Lost Revolution”, Scott Millar and Brian Hanley, along with an exclusive screening of “Meeting Room,” a documentary about the Concerned Parents Against Drugs movement of the 1980's in Dublin, introduced by one of its producers, Brian Gray.

This year, for the most part, the meetings reflect the current state of world affairs. In a meeting entitled “Peripheral Visions,” a range of speakers from the countries of the EU that are being targeted for IMF/ECB intervention speak out on direct rule from the those institutions and the struggle against austerity. Confirmed at the time of writing are anarchists from Portugal (Manuel Baptista) and Spain (Manu Garcia) as well as anarchist speakers from Greece and Ireland.

Wayne Price (of the North Eastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists) from New York will speak on “Anarchism & Socialism: Reformism or Revolution?” and Gariel Kuhn (author of Soccer versus The State) speaks on the subversive side of sport, while Conor McCabe of Dublin Opinion and Irish Left Review looks at matters closer to home, with a session based around his new book (out in June) called “Sins of the Father: Tracing the Decisions That Shaped the Irish Economy.” There will also be a meeting on the current events unfolding across North Africa and the Middle East entitled “Arab Spring,” with speakers to be announced, other sessions by Irish based Revolutionary Anarcha-Feminist Group (RAG), Choice Ireland and Shell to Sea.

Alongside all of the above will be the Bookfair itself, with a host of stalls from home and abroad; AK Press, Rebel County Books, the Irish Labour History Society, the Anarchist Federation, Shell to Sea, RAG, the IPSC, the WSM book service stall and many more.

A WSM leaflet for the Bookfair a couple of years ago stated that it “is really a day out of the ordinary; a day away from the mundane, where the best thing to leave with is not the book, or pamphlet, or badge you’ve just spent your hard earned money on, but the experience of the day itself.” The Anarchist Bookfair is a great opportunity to mingle, meet, and talk to not only anarchists, but activists from all walks of life, as well as the large contingent of passers-by and interested onlookers that it always attracts. Come along, drop by the WSM stall and say hello!

If your on Facebook RSVP and tell your friends about the Bookfair with the Dublin Anarchist Bookfair Facebook event

This article is from Workers Solidarity No 121 published May 2011