Workers Solidarity Movement

Marriage as an institution has no great appeal for anarchists. Its primary role in capitalist society is to regulate property ‘rights’ and to promote social norms. But we also know that in our current society marriage has a social standing to which many people aspire. To tell a significant section of the population that they should be denied access to marriage is to ask them to accept a second­class position vis a vis their straight family members, workmates and friends.

Once it became clear that the Children's referendum was going to be passed Twitter came alive with outraged Yes campaigners complaining about the low turnout. It demonstrated that no one, it appears, was willing to 'think of the children.' Pop singer Sinead O'Connor went so far as to suggest that it should be made a criminal offence not to vote. 

Image by infomatique License CC by-sa

With votes still being counted it has become clear that the largest block of potential voters refused to take part in the fiscal compact referendum, rejecting the arguments that they could either vote for 'stability' or against 'austerity'. Quite possibly more people chose to boycott the referendum then the combined Yes and No voters. On top of this some 17% of the population who live and pay tax in Ireland were excluded from voting at all in the referendum. This means as many as 2/3 of the adult population did not vote in the referendum.

Mark Hoskins of the WSM debates MEP Paul Murphy on what positions the left should take on the Fiscal Compact to be voted on in Ireland May 31st.  The SP is arguing for a No vote, the WSM argues that the vote doesn't matter, what matters is resistance to austerity. This debate took place at the 2012 Dublin Anarchist Bookfair in Liberty Hall.

Ireland is to have a referendum after all on the EU austerity treaty and a lot of the left is getting unreasonably excited about this. I say unreasonably because my opinion is that the referendum will not really, as the likes of the ULA claim, be a meaningful ballot on austerity. Austerity is not something simply being imposed on us by Europe through this referendum but something our domestic ruling class are already imposing and have been for a few years. Of course they have used the ECB/IMF as the 'bad cop' to scare us with and when passed will use the EU austerity treaty in the same way. But we need to recognize and organize around the fact that our local politicians and capitalist class are not really a 'good cop' eager to help us avoid the attentions of the 'bad cop' making threatening gestures at us across the room.

The NO victory in Ireland is a clear demonstration of the lack of support among the people for the European project being promoted by the Brussels technocrats and the transnational corporations grouped together in the capitalist cartel, the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT). This rejection by the country with the highest levels of approval and popularity for the EU shows that a different form of European unity is needed, a real unity of all the people. And the gap between public opinion and their "representatives" is a clear sign of the crisis in representative democracy and the need for direct democracy.

It is hard to analyse the most important result from the Referendum, namely the 'substantive issue' or the Abortion Referendum. It would only be possible to give an accurate reading of this Referendum if a further poll was taken. People need to be asked why they voted 'No' on the day.

IRELAND IS a conservative country. Since the founding of the southern state 70 years ago, church has been intertwined with state. The majority of its citizens belong to the Catholic Church. Catholic ethos is enshrined in the constitution, in the laws, in the education system. Catholic tentacles make there way into most areas of public policy.