Workers Solidarity Movement

Workers Solidarity interviewed Hackney local and education worker, Alex Carver, about the roots of the London riots. Alex is a long standing activist in the IWW union, housing struggles in the East End, and the big left events since the start of the recession, most recently the M26 Militant Workers Block and the J30 Strike project. He was a direct witness to the rioting on Monday. Here he tells Workers Solidarity why he thinks that the riots are best understood by loooking at class rather than race.

Workers Solidarity Movement members are currently centrally involved in helping to establish a campaign against the new household tax announced by the government.  For this campaign to be successful it will have to be built at a local level in every area of Dublin and in every town and city around the country. The central plank of the campaign will be non-payment and it will be based on the successful anti-water charges campaign of the 1990s.

A Facebook page scrutinizing PSNI harassment and operations has been forced to close down today due to a media frenzy and scaremongering from the police and politicians. The Facebook page Crown Forces Watch has dominated news headlines and radio shows this morning with the Chairman of the Police Federation Terry Spence claiming the site was ‘an attempt to gather information which is likely to be of use to terrorists which I am in no doubt will be used in attempts to target police officers for murder."

"End Prison Torture" echoed on the streets of West Belfast on Saturday in support of republican prisoners in Maghaberry. Despite a provocative security operation hundreds of people and three bands marched from Dunville Park on the Falls Road to Andersonstown to demand the rights and dignity of prisoners to be respected.

For the WSM's position on the North see our position paper and our topic pages on Republicanism andLoyalism.

During the week the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission released an interim report on the Garda rape threat tape recordings that were revealed last April. The report contains a major error that suggests GSOC are the source of repeated attempts to spin the story in the media as somehow being the fault of the women the Garda were recorded discussing threatening to rape. The timing of the release of the report was also suspect, coming in the week Shell resumed construction and the day before a national day of action in Erris durig which four Shell to Sea campaigners were injured by Garda and/or private security violence. Such was the level of spin applied that some media made the mistake of leading with the news that the Garda had been cleared of something no one had ever accused them of, directly threatening the two women with rape.

The announcement from the government that households are to face a charge of €100 per annum from January 1st with separate water and property taxes to follow by 2014 has met with fierce opposition across the country.  Radio and television shows have been inundated with texts and phonecalls from irate people who see this latest tax as a step too far and who have been pledging to resist the charge.  In a TV3 IrelandAM poll this morning, Wednesday, 87% of people answered ‘Yes’ to the question “Would you consider boycotting the household charge?”

Enda Kenny’s speech in the Dail about the Cloyne report seems to signal that the south- ern Irish ruling class is preparing to break with the Catholic Church. While Kenny’s statement has been the strongest to date it is a pitiful reflection of the state that it has taken it this long to categorically condemn the Roman Catholic Church that, after Cloyne, is tainted beyond what even their most ardent supporters thought possible.

It was with great sadness that the WSM learned of the news of the passing of Bob Miller on June 17. Bob was a member of the Anarchist Federation and a comrade from Manchester, England. Many of us got to know Bob since after he visited Mayo in 2006 spending a week in Rossport supporting the Shell to Sea campaign. Since then Bob and his partner Sally have attended several Anarchist Bookfairs in Dublin and many members of the WSM had the priveldge to get to know Bob as a friend. 

Workers in the North like to skive off work more than anywhere else in Britain according to a survey from business advisors PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). A whopping 65% of employees admitted to skiving off work for at least a day in the past year, with a third taking between two and five days. This compares with 51% in Scotland and 62% in Wales.  Illness remains the most common excuse to pull a sickie while others display fake symptoms around the office with the hope of getting a day off such as sniffing at work, pretending to lose their voice. We also gladly top the table for inclining to skive if we see our workmates doing the same.

One of North Belfast’s top psychiatric doctors Dr Maria O’Kane said at least 70% of patients her staff are treating in the Mater Hospital in Belfast for suicide and self harm issues have a history of alcohol misuse.