Workers Solidarity Movement

The Irish Times has yet again made an entirely cynical intervention in its bid to force its agenda on the campaign to get rid of the hated 8th Amendment.  This time in the form of an opinion poll constructed to reinforce the idea that abortion is a constitutional issue rather than a medical one.

Opinion polls using complex questions have become a common method of political manipulation in our time.  The method is simple, the questions are used to frame the way the subject considers the issue and so direct the answer they give.  That directed answer is then presented as some ‘objective truth’ discovered by the person or group who framed the question.  A poll that simply asks ‘Should women control their own bodies’ is liable to get one response, today’s poll that instead gives a long set of options around the degree women should be judged under law was designed to give another.

Tesco stores across Ireland will strike from today against 'race to the bottom' wage and conditions changes the company is trying to impose on long term workers.

The Tesco’s scheme would impose up to a 20% pay cut on long-term staff. These workers, who have worked for the company for 20 years or more, are currently paid 14 euro an hour, and Tesco want to slash that. That this wage is seen as too high, in particular after 20 years' service, shows why it's important for all of us that the Tesco workers win their strike.

Bus Eireann staff are set to exert their collective rights and strike from the 20th February in an indefinite industrial action in order to secure their pay and conditions. The strike action follows Bus Éireann’s acting chief executive officer Ray Hernan saying the company wanted to reduce its cost base by €30 million per year, with payroll costs accounting for 40 per cent of that reduction.

On Wednesday the 1st of February there was a solidarity vigil for Umut Firat in Dublin, Ireland. Umut is a writer for the recently jailed in Turkey and on the 53rd day of a hunger strike. Anarchist Meydan Newspaper Anarchists and supporters of Umut’s hunger strike gather outside the Turkish Embassy. Turkish embassy staff came out to mock the protesters. Embassy staff called the police to have get the protesters to remove a banner that was tied to the fence of the embassy. The banner said FREE UMUT FIRAT! SOLIDARITY FROM IRELAND. The police stayed on till the vigil was over.

Irish anarchist living in Sydney reports from recent march against ‘Australia Day’- On the 26 January tens of thousands of people took to the streets across Australia to protest against ‘Australia Day’ representing 227 years of resistance against the British crown colonial invasion, dispossession and genocide.

In Sydney, thousands also marched representing the biggest Invasion day march since the 1988 bicentennial. The march organized by FIRE Fighting in Resistance Equally represented an amalgamation of groups across the political spectrum. Irish migrants living the in Sydney took part in the march including people from the James Connolly Society.

Derry's first ever Radical Bookfair was held over the Bloody Sunday week of events on Saturday 28th January 2017 in Pilots Row Community Centre.  It's estimated that several hundred people passed through the doors of Rossville Street venue to explore what the days events had to offer as well as to rummage through the different book stalls to catch a bargin or two.

Several thousand people took part in todays annual Bloody Sunday March for Justice in Derry marking the 45th anniversary which made its way from the Creggan to Bogside along the original route of the initial Civil Rights demonstration in 1972 at which 14 unarmed innocent civilians were murdered by British Paratroopers.

Meanwhile on Twitter Trump is losing it again. It's really not surprising he'd hate whistle blowers, is it?

Feminists in Ireland are upping their game against the 8th amendment and indeed against the Irish state. The newly formed group, Strike for Repeal, are preparing to ‘strike’ if a date is not set for a referendum to repeal he 8th Amendment by International Women’s day on March 8th.

In a press release the group has said “The strike will not be an industrial strike in the traditional sense but could include taking an annual leave day off work, refraining from domestic work for the day, wearing black in solidarity or staging a walkout during your lunch break. We also encourage any business owners in a position to close their services at no cost to workers, to do so for all or part of the day as a solidarity action.”

With Martin McGuinness resigning as Deputy First Minister and Sinn Fein declining to nominate a deputy first miniter an election is almost certainly going to be called and the electoral circus will once again come to town.  

Please excuse this writer's election fatigue - with this being the third election in 12 months on this island - as I begin this short post off with a well used phrase: "Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth".

The Green and Orange politics of the north almost guarantees us that we will be returned with a Sinn Féin - DUP government, meaning that, yep you guessed it(!), if voting changed anything here it would be illegal.