Workers Solidarity Movement

*1 In February 1992, Emmet Stagg - a self-proclaimed "socialist" closely identified with the left wing of the Labour Party - resigned from Labour's Parliamentary Party, claiming that Dick Spring was preparing to lead the party into coalition and proclaiming that he would "never vote for a right wing Taoiseach from Fianna Fail or Fine Gael."

The coming into effect last June of legislation which decriminalised certain male homosexual acts was the subject of much celebration in the gay community. The Minister who introduced the legislation, Maire Geoghan Quinn was awarded the Magnus Hirschfield award for her contribution to the gay community by the National Lesbian and Gay Federation. For many it was felt the battle for equality had been won. This was certainly the outlook in the national and international press. Champagne flowed freely in the capital's gay pubs and clubs.

We are living in a time of great change for the left. For this century the left has been identified with social-democracy (Labour, WP etc.) who saw socialism as being introduced through a few good men taking getting elected through parliament. Or by Leninists who saw socialism as a few good men being put into power by a revolution. Essentially both were variations on the Marxist conception of socialism. Anarchists who argued that socialism could not be brought about by a few good men but only by the self activity of the working class were dismissed as everything from dreamers to bomb throwers.

THERE ARE 30,000 families on the housing waiting lists of the local authorities throughout the country at the moment. 3,500 households are waiting for housing in Dublin. The average wait for a local authority house in Dublin is now two years and rising. For single people ,there is virtually no chance of housing unless they are seriously ill and even then they will only be offered hard to let flats in the inner city.

TOP TRADE union leaders like Phil Flynn, Billy Attley and Peter Cassells have been working flat out to get the employers and government to agree another national deal for pay restraint. The talks were on, then they were off, then they were on again. It was all a game to make it look like the unions leaders were fighting hard for their members. And maybe they felt they had to put on more of an act this time. The Programme for Competitiveness and Work doesn't even pretend to offer much more than pay restraint and cheap labour schemes.

HICKSON PHARMACHEM, the company at the centre of last year's explosion and fire in Ringaskiddy, Co. Cork, pleaded guilty in July to three charges of negligence and improper handling of hazardous chemical substances. The result of this negligence was a major industrial accident in the harbour area of Cork, which very nearly caused a major contamination and deaths.

The explosion and fire at the Hickson chemical plant in Ringaskiddy, Cork, last August, has gone down as one of the most serious industrial accidents in Ireland to date. Though no fatalities resulted, it is now clear that this outcome was only a matter of luck. One worker, the first to notice that something was wrong, left the site of the explosion minutes before it blew up. And the explosion itself, occured shortly before shifts were due to change on that morning of August 6th.

ON THE FIRST day of 1994 a group calling itself the Zapatista National Liberation Army [EZLN] launched an uprising in the Chiapas State of Mexico. They are fighting the dictatorship of Carlos Salinas de Gortari and are calling for "free democratic government". The first of January was the date upon which the North American Free Trade Agreement was to come into operation and their is a widespread belief amongst the mainly Indian EZLN that this will only lead to further poverty.

ONE OF THE best known catch phrases of Anarchism has got to be "Smash the State". It's also one that's easily open to misunderstanding. Particularly in Ireland, where the 26 counties once had the rather humorous title of "Free State", many see state as meaning the geographical area of a country. This slogan has also been misrepresented by anarchism's opponents as meaning opposition to all forms of organisation and decision making. Obviously neither of these is what anarchists mean, but what exactly is the state and how do we smash it?

IN THE PAST MONTH or so an alien landing in Dublin would have been amazed at the total rehabilitation of Sinn Féin and the IRA. Up until then the English language had been ransacked for terms of abuse. Dictionaries of medicine and zoology were scoured in the search for more descriptive insults. Terms ranged from the mild sounding "men of violence" (no women in the IRA according to the media) to cynical/callous/brutal/cowardly Godfathers of crime, murderous/senseless/bloodthirsty killers.