Workers Solidarity Movement

Today, Wednesday the second of December, almost 300 NUI Maynooth students showed up to deliver a petition against the appointment of Bertie Ahern T.D as an Honorary Professor by the University. Campaigners decided to call on those who had signed the 1,000+ petition to help deliver it, and the turnout surpassed all expectations.

The cancellation of the December 3rd strike is a blow to the developing movement against the cuts on the scale of the cancellation of the March 30th strike at the start of the year. The so called compromise ICTU have been negotiating for is a further blow, it seems designed to drive a wedge between workers and fails to answer the main problem public sector workers have, the inability to take further cuts. But the strike that did happen on 24th November has brought 250,000 workers into their first experience of the power we collectively hold and points towards an alternative

From before 8a.m. this morning, members of the Irish National Teachers Organisation were on the picket line outside the Department of Education and Science in Dublin’s Marlborough Street, alongside Special Needs Assistant colleagues, members of IMPACT, and workers based in the DES building itself, members of SIPTU, CPSU and PSEU.

The Irish Congress of Trade Unions’ ‘Get Up Stand Up’ protest on Friday 6th November is of huge importance. The government have made it clear that they intend to make ordinary workers pay for the financial crisis. Friday can be the start of us finally standing up and saying that we are not going to accept this.

October 26th the Cork branch of the Worker’s Solidarity Movement hosted a talk by South African anarchist and ZABALAZA Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF) member, Jonathan. The ZACF is an organisation of anarchist individuals from South Africa who identify with the communist tradition within Anarchism. The front is organised around the principles of theoretical and tactical unity, collective responsibility and federalism. Their activities include study and theoretical development, anarchist agitation and propaganda, and participation within the class struggle.

STRIKING workers at Coca-Cola HBC Ireland let bosses know they are not giving up this week. Around 700 protestors marched from Liberty Hall to the company’s HQ on Baggot St. on Wednesday, 14 October. The march was organised by SIPTU and supported by trade unionists, left groups, and the Workers Solidarity Movement (WSM).

Early this year, members of Belfast WSM and ex Black Panther Ashanti Alston met representatives from Concerned Families against Drugs (CFAD)

In order to break the resistance of the inhabitants of Erris to the Shell experimental gas pipeline dozens of people are now being prosecuted. Belmullet District Court is in the second day of a special 3 day session to carry out Shell's prosecutions. But things are not going Shell's way, of the 16 people being prosecuted in yesterdays session only one prosecution resulted in a fine.

An interview with Andrew Flood about the impressions of the North American anarchist movement he formed during his 2007/2008 44 city tour of the US and Canada. The interviews ends with questions about the comparison of the movement in Ireland with that in Britian and the promotion of anarchism via the internet. This was submitted and published in Black Flag.

Sunday, August 9 saw over 5,000 demonstrators take part in a march support of an equal marriage status for gay couples. The ‘March for Marriage’ was organised by lobby group LGBT Noise, and was supported by the LGBT community, heterosexuals, and political groups, including the Worker’s Solidarity Movement (WSM).