Workers Solidarity Movement

The erosion of a democratic structure of the Unions has lead to a greater ability by the leadership to exert control over the Union.  Where there were assemblies of workers – arguments can be had and positions taken – but thanks to over 23 years of partnership – you don’t have them in many workplaces.   So where you had functioning branch structures it was possible to explore and debate ideas over the strike process.

The NAMA bailout of the property speculators bank, Ango Irish Bank, is now costing the rest of us 25 billion euro.  Twenty five billion euro is a figure that is almost meaning less to almost all of us.  A worker earning the minimum wage would have to work for 1.4 million years to earn 25 billion (before tax).  The economist Ronan Lyons listed 100 things that 25 billion could have been spent on in, some flippant but others which give a real sense of just what the real cost of the 25 billion that the richest 1% have robbed off the rest of the population through NAMA is.

The 2010 Inequality Survey published by independent thinktank TASC has shown that 87% of respondents believe that wealth in Ireland is unfairly distributed.  This is up from 70% in the equivalent survey carried out in 2008. 91% of respondents believe that active steps should be taken by Government to address this inequality and reduce the income gap between low and high income earners.

The news has emerged over the weekend that 900 homes a month are being disconnected from the electricity grid because they were not able to pay their bills. (1) A further 11,000 bill payers a month are entering into  special re-payment options  because they’ve already contacted the Electricity Supply Board to say that they are having difficulty making the payment.

The newspeak word that was used in the press release by the ESB was ‘de-energizing’ customers. 

Radio, television and newspaper reports of the recent devastating floods in Pakistan are at last beginning to refer to the sheer scale of the problems faced by the victims.  Figures for the number of people affected vary widely.  According to the Irish Minister of State for Overseas Development Peter Power, reported in today’s (Tuesday) Irish Times, “the United Nations estimated that 40 million people had been left homeless; that eight million of those were in urgent need of immediate food and shelter; and that the combination of rising water and humidity had made a cholera epidemic a real danger”.  RTE’s website says “Aid agencies are saying that the world does not fully understand the scale of the flooding disaster ….. One fifth of the country has been hit by severe flooding, with more than 20m people affected…..The UN believes up to 3.5m children are now at risk of contracting water-borne diseases….”.

The ‘Manifesto of Libertarian Communism’ was written in 1953 by Georges Fontenis for the Federation Communiste Libertaire of France. It is one of the key texts of the anarchist-communist current. It was preceded by the best work of Bakunin, Guillaume, Malatesta, Berneri, the Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists written by Makhno, Arshinov and Matt, which sprang from the defeats of the Russian Revolution, and the statements of the Friends of Durruti, also a result of another defeat, that of the Spanish Revolution.

The story of Ivor and his €80,000 in expenses – is just the latest smell arising from our political houses, after the stink that wafted from there last year when John O’Donoghue ran up €126,000 in expenses in two years.    Last year we were listening to stories of €900 a night hotel rooms, airport transfers and hat rentals.

The World Cup is over, the TV crews have departed, and the South African government must be happy. The world’s media portrayed it as the crowning achievement of sixteen years of post-apartheid development. With the African continent’s largest economy and one of the most progressive constitutions in the world, South Africa is considered by most to be a model middle-income developing country. Many in Ireland will look on with pride, happy that they helped play a part in the anti-apartheid boycott movement which helped to bring that terrible racist system to an end.

If you’ve been following the news or listening to Liveline over the last few weeks, you’ll have seen a few references to protesters trying to “storm” the Dáil or to the Guards’ attempt to prevent an anti-capitalist march from, well, marching.

Does the system we live under, capitalism, offer enough scope for achieving lasting solutions to all the problems it causes?  Of course, some improvements are made and some problems are alleviated.  Yet new kinds of problem also arise in a society which is changing rapidly, constantly seeking new ways to make a profit.