Workers Solidarity Movement

The experience of May Day brings up us back to some of the perennial questions thrown up by counter-summits protests: how do we broaden our movement and what role do direct action and confrontational tactics have in that process. These are, of course, the issues that have been mainstay of Red and Black Revolution debates over the past few years but have been usually viewed through the prism of events outside of Ireland. The following article is a personal account of the Dublin Grassroots Network's approach to such issues in relation to May Day and goes on to argue for increased tactical flexibility from anarchists within the anti-capitalist movement.

I joined Sinn Féin in the mid eighties with many others on the back of what we saw as a radical shift to the left and a commitment to build a 32 county Democratic Socialist Republic. I find myself outside that movement now, thoroughly disillusioned with it and its shift to a left nationalist and social democratic electoralist future.

Chainworkers means the 'workers in malls, shopping centres, hypermarkets, and in the myriad of jobs of logistics and selling in the metropolis'. Brainworkers means the knowledge workers, the programmers, the creatives and the freelancers. How do these categories pan out in the Irish labour market? Originally a box in the article The nomad, the displaced and the settler: Work in the 21st Century

For anarchists the starting point about any discussion on organisation is our end-goal; a free egalitarian and self-managed society. Because we see means and ends as intrinsically linked, we try to foster as much of that end-goal in the here and now as possible. That means creating organisations that are run directly by those participating and that everyone has an equal say in how things are done.

ICTU general secretary David Begg condemned the anti-bin tax campaign. He did this at the same time that the state was jailing protesters and refusing to collect rubbish from thousands of households in Dublin.

The 'anti-globalisation' movement has sometimes been characterised as 'One No, many Yesses', meaning that while everyone disagrees with the way things are now they all have different ideas on what they would like to see replace the present state of affairs as well as on the tactics needed to get there. The World Social Forum, and the spread of social forums around the world, in some respects is a reaction to this. One of the ideas of this concept is to allow a space for dialogue for the different actors (trades unions, Non Government Organisation's, social movements etc) to try to hammer out some common ideas on how to reach the future society. However, the process has not been unproblematic and has led to controversies and to accusations that the structure and functioning of these bodies are undemocratic and unrepresentative of 'the new movement'.

In Workers Solidarity, No 76 August 2003, we published an article under the title "Iraq war aftermath: slaughtering democracy" by Chekov Feeney. We received a reply to this from R. Knife, an (Iraqi) Kurd living in Ireland. Unfortunately it is to long too print in full in the printed version of the paper but you can read the full text below. We also print a response from Chekov. [WSM material on the Iraq War]

During the year a spate of reports have 'discovered' what a lot of workers already know - that equal pay for equal work just doesn't exist. Although legal victories and a raft of employment equality legislation have made some dents, the fact remains that discrimination on the grounds of gender, ethnicity and age (to name just a few) persists and is widespread. It seems obvious to ask: why?

The second intifada began in September 2000 and since then over 2,500* Palestinians have been killed and 41,000 have been wounded. These stark figures alone do not tell the full story of the subjugation and the brutal oppression of the people of Palestine. The Israeli occupation forces have engaged in the systematic destruction of the infrastructure of the Occupied Territories. They regularly carry out punitive raids using explosives and bulldozers that result in residential areas being reduced to a lunar landscape of rubble.

Mutual Aid is the fuel an anarchist society will run on. It is also what keeps capitalist society going in spite of all the hardship, greed, and exploitation that exists. Like all good ideas it's simple to understand. In order to get by in a tough world, it's necessary to get a bit of help from others. And as well as receiving help you also give it, not simply because it's nice to be nice, but because you know that sometime in the future you'll need a bit of it yourself.