Workers Solidarity Movement

The election of Barrack Obama created a buzz all over the world. Some commentators even lost the run of themselves and tried to convince us that the one of the most important events in human history had just happened.

November saw WSM public meetings about anarchism in Cork and Dublin, with 40 people at one and about 60 at the other. With the crisis and a growing employers’ offensive on wages there is a greater openness to radical ideas, and we will be holding more meetings around the country over the next couple of months.

A recent report produced by ‘Belfast Healthy Cities’ into the direct link between wealth and class confirms what most of us already know - class pervades every aspect of our lives from the cradle to grave. According to the report, if you live in the Shankill or Ardoyne, for example, you can expect to live several years less than someone from affluent areas just a few miles away. So much for the new era!

The Education Cuts announced in October’s Budget have unleashed a wave of protest across the country. During the months of November and December approximately 120,000 people took to the streets of Dublin, Galway, Tullamore, Cork and Donegal to register their anger at the government’s attempts to make schoolchildren pay for the financial crisis. Cowen, Lenihan and O’Keefe have been left in no doubt about the level of popular opposition to these cutbacks. In addition thousands of 3rd level students have also taken to the streets and participated in marches, pickets and blockades to protest at the proposed re-introduction of fees.

The Grassroots Gathering is a twice-yearly coming together of anarchists and libertarian socialists who are active in political groups and campaigns up and down the island of Ireland. The second of 2008's Gatherings was held in Cork on 14th-16th November. The 90 or so attending, combined with the quality of the discussions, left its organisers very pleased with the weekend. It showed that there's a lot of life left in the Grassroots Gathering as a show-case for trends and thinking among Ireland's libertarian left.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett commented on the US financial crisis that “it’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked, and Wall Street now looks like a nudist beach.” Well when it comes to Ireland, the receding tide of the global economy has revealed that not only were our business and political elites swimming naked, they were engaged in a great big orgy as well.

Anarchists want to change the world. Instead of the present order – capitalism – with its focus on inequality and profits for a few, we want to build a new society based around the principles of participatory democracy, freedom and production for need not profit. For anarchists the type of society we want to build is best summed up by the slogan: ‘To each according to their needs, from each according to their ability’.

The unveiling of Alasdair Darling’s budget, representing as it does as the strategy on the government’s part to deal with the developing recession which the global economic crisis has caused, has unsurprisingly been surrounded by hysterical commentary from the mainstream media.

The insurrection in Greece is a violent manifestation of the flame of class war that is sweeping across the world.
The flame of rage against injustice is burning from sweatshops in China to the streets and campuses of Dublin; to the inner city areas of Belfast. From the thousands of pensioners, education workers who took to the streets recently, to the workers who occupied a factory in Derry, we all share a common desire for change.

Big Business doesn’t like what’s happening in South America. The election of reforming governments in Peru and Ecuador might have been a bearable irritant but that Chavez guy in Venezuela has really got up their noses. In Bolivia sections of the local ruling class got so riled up that they tried to overthrow President Morales in September. The US ruling class, in collusion with local bosses, is trying to destabilise political and economic reforms. As they see it, too much is going to workers and peasants, and not enough into their own coffers.