Workers Solidarity Movement

WSM reporters took part in the student march against Garda Brutality in Dublin called by Free Educations for Everyone and the Students in Solidarity networks. Over 600 people took part in the demonstration which marched from the Wolfe Tone statue to Pearse street police station.  It followed on from the previous Wednesdays Garda attacks on students protesting the planned increase in fees. We had provided live coverage from that protest as the Garda attacked the students with horses, dogs, vans and batons and we again provide live coverage from this protest which is archived here.

Six days after last weeks Garda riot in Dublin the state TV channel was finally forced to broadcast the footage of cops beating students that has been circulating on the internet from the time of the assaults. The RTE 1 TV report referenced the fact that thousands of people were viewing this footage at a couple of points in the report including at one point admitting that 86,000 had viewed one clip.

The WSM has called for support for the Student Protest Against Garda Brutality called by students from the Free Education for Everyone and Students in Solidarity networks. Next month’s budget will see savage attacks on public services and people’s living standards in order to protect the wealthy. A very clear message is now being delivered to the people of this state. The gardaí and their political masters want to frighten people off the streets, they do not want us to exercise our democratic right to protest

Countless walking tours make their way around Dublin daily; generally educating the masses of tourists on the lives lived on these streets before us. It was a different kind of walking tour, comprising around 200 people, that hit the streets around Stephen’s Green on October 9th last.

Students call on other students, workers and all opposed to Garda violence and intimidation of protestors to join us next Wednesday in marching to Pearse Street Garda Station.

Meet up point: Wolfe Tone statue, Stephens Green. (6p.m.)

The WSM has released a press statement condemning the Garda attacks on student protesters in Dublin today during which many students were injured by Garda batons.  We say that we need to stand together in this period of attack on our quality of life and futures. What is clear today that like elsewhere around Europe and the rest of the world, police repression will be used by the state to try an make our movements for social justice and equality fearful and less open and effective.

For an account of the protests as they happened with videos see Riot police attack students after they storm Department of Finance in Dublin

Riot police attacked students in Dublin today with dogs, armoured vehicles and horses after the students protesting against government cuts occupied the Department of Finance and threw eggs at the Dail.

Upwards of thirty students occupied the Department of Finance in the center of Dublin with a couple of hundred supporting them in the streets outside.

Another larger group of students was reported outside the Dail throwing cans & bottles at it. Several students were injured in the suppression of the protest.

Tens of thousands of students were demonstrating as part of the USI protests against plans to introduce fees. The students carrying out the occupation appear to have broken away from the main demonstration which took place around the corner in Merrion Square. Student members of the WSM, eirigi and the SWP were at the scene. The WSM members published the reports below to this site.

Ireland has an indigenous revolutionary tradition that successfully mobilized tens if not hundreds of thousands in the struggle for more freedom over the 200 years since 1798. Irish republicanism has always included a radical democratic and leveling element and which continues to provide part of the culture of resistance of the most down trodden sections of the working class. Many believe this makes it the best base to build from, Andrew Flood asks if they are right?

Health minister Mary "the hatchet" Harney, was red faced today after a protester splattered her with paint.  Harney  has presided over huge cutbacks in the public Health service and advancing privatisation through co-location (giving public land to private health operators).  Eirigi Councillor Louise Minihan poured the paint over Harney at an event in Dublin.  The incident comes on the same day that the HSE annouced plans to make 5,000 workers redundant.

Saturday 30th October saw the WSM take part in the latest 1% Network event, an after dark Halloween Treasure Hunt around Dublin's exclusive Shewsbury and Ailesbury roads taking in the mansions of multi millionare bankers, developers and financers as well as the HQ of Allied Irish Bank and the 32 million in tax avoidance of the luxury Four Seasons hotel. The tour was led off by a vampire capitalist accompanied by a contingent of Zombie bankers and developers and ghost estates with the vampire showing how much wealth was present at each stop and explaining the contacts between the 1%, the media and the government that enabled them to make hundreds of millions during the tiger.  The tour was accompanied by uniformed Gardai and a car of special branch political police.  The 1% network is a coalition of socialist groups including the WSM, eirigi, ISN and Semora Spraoi formed to highlight the fact that the richest 1% own 34% of the wealth.