We are excited by the news that a new radical social centre opened 6th June in Squat City, Grangegorman named the Violet Autonomous Space (after Violet Gibson, the Irish woman who once shot at Mussolini!).

Presentation given by Davide Turcato about the ideas and contributions of Italian Anarchist Errico Malatesta

“Communal Luxury” takes as its subject matter the Paris Commune of 1871, one of the single greatest advances toward a free society ever attempted in human history. The Commune arose in the course of a devastating war between France and Prussia (Germany), with the French army’s defeat prompting the collapse of the imperialist, authoritarian French regime. The people of Paris organised their own defence, bought their own cannons, and refused to hand said cannons over to the new French Republic. Instead, staging a worker-led insurrection, they declared Paris to be liberated from both the French and Prussian forces and set about constructing a free society, one in which all comers participated in decision-making and all wealth was shared in common. The Commune lasted some 72 days in the spring of 1871 before being brutally crushed by the reactionary forces of Nation, Church, State and Capital. Some 25,000 men, women, and children were executed.

A wave of deadly attacks took place last night in Paris and Saint-Denis. The French government has been conducting wars in several countries (Libya, Mali, Syria ...) for years. These wars today have an impact on the French territory.

We are confronted to attacks aiming to spread terror and to stir up divisions within the population. Alternative Libertaire condemns these attacks: killing people at random in the street in the sole purpose of frightening is abject. These attacks are the work of a political movement - the Salafist jihadism - whose first victims are the civilian populations of the Middle East and which has already hit Beirut in recent days. This same political movement that continues to wage war against Kurdish progressive forces in Syria.

The 8th Belfast Anarchist Bookfair takes place Saturday and WSM will be there. Call by our stall for a chat during the day.

BABF is at a new venue this year, Oh Yeah Music Centre, 15-21 Gordon Street, from Midday

Stalls by Solidarity Federation, Alliance for Choice, Abortion Rights Campaign, AK Press, Art n Anarchy, Anarchist Federation, Anti-Racism Network Ireland, Bundschuh Conspiracy (T-shirts), Die Rex, IWW, Just Books, Sex Workers Alliance Ireland, Workers Solidarity Movement, Queer Action, Rebel County Books.

In order to become more familiar with what anarchism stands for the following are recommended by the WSM. Where possible we are also creating an audio file of the text being read, click on the Listen link to be taken to the audio.

Book length introductions

Eighty years have passed since the publication in the pages of the Russian anarchist monthly Delo Truda of the Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (Draft), but the question of anarchist organization remains an open one even today, a question which sparks off ferocious debates with frightening ease.

Right in the centre of Dublin city a new squatted anarchist social centre is up and running and open to all. It's in a reclaimed building at 77 Parnell St that was formerly Nearys hotel, which had been left unused for many years, abandoned and left to slowly fall to ruin.

The eleventh issue of the Irish Anarchist Review goes to press in the middle of the biggest battle in the war against austerity in Ireland to date. Tens of thousands of people have taken part in mass demonstrations against the water charges, up and down the country thousands have taken part in acts of physical resistance against water meter installation and hundreds of thousands, at the very least, are getting ready to participate in a mass boycott of the charge. Furthermore, the level of political consciousness of the population has risen considerably over the last year, with a distinct anti-establishment atmosphere, and in some cases an anti-state atmosphere, developing.

[Download the PDF]