Workers Solidarity Movement

March with the WSM in Cork's May Day march on Tuesday next, May 1st.

It will be leaving Connolly Hall at 7pm and going to Daunt Square, where we are promised music and celebration.

William Thompson was one of the of the first people to critically engage with political economy and attempt to turn it around to defend the improvement of the condition of the working class and rural poor. He was from a Anglo- Irish landowning family from West Cork and was to become a leading figure in the early Co-operative movement. In this talk from the 2007 Dublin anarchist bookfair Paul Bowman talks about the importance of Thompson and the relevance of his ideas today

The extract is from the opening of Thompson's last book before his untimely death, "Practical Directions for the Speedy and Economical Establishment of Communities, on the Principles of Mutual Co-operation, United Possessions and Equality" of 1830. In the main was a practical "build your own community" manual and the bulk of it was taken up with practical matters. However the necessity of squeezing in a summary of the political and economic bases of the projected community, means that this "Explanation of Leading Terms" at the beginning of the work remains the most abbreviated version of his analysis available

"Preliminary Observations" is the introduction to his first, and possibly most important book, the lengthily entitled "An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth most conducive to human happiness; applied to The Newly Proposed System of Voluntary Equality of Wealth" of 1824. It is this work of which the anarchist historian Max Nettlau remarks: "[this] book, however, discloses his own evolution; having started with a demand for the full product of labour as well as the regulation of distribution, he ended up with his own conversion to communism, that is, unlimited distribution". This preface piece shows signs of being originally written before his own conversion to communist distribution with supplemental additions after that change. In it Thompson lays out his approach of applying the critical method of utilitarianism - the re-examination of all social institutions with an atheist skepticism of all received truths, judging outcomes on the basis of "the greatest happiness for the greatest number" - to the theories of Political Economy.

The Cork branch of the Workers’ Solidarity Movement Thuesday 28 Feb held a public meeting in the Quality Hotel, Shandon, Cork, which was attended by about twenty people. There was a high number of familiar faces from the Shell to Sea campaign, and a couple of new (well, not-quite-so-new) faces, all of whom came to hear comrade Fin Dwyer give a loosely-structured talk covering his observations as an anarchist active in the Mayo end of the campaign.

public meeting

Around thirty people attended an Anarchist meeting, in Cork, on war and the ongoing use of Shannon Airport for US military purposes.

Anarchism vs Militarism
Shannon Airport, Iran and Iraq
Wednesday 10th May 8pm Metropole Hotel, MacCurtain Street Cork

Organised by Workers Solidarity Movement Cork

We were assured during the Irish Ferries saga that it could only happen because it was a maritime industry and landbound Irish jobs were safe. Many newspapers editorialised against escalation and for reasoned negotiation etc, the Irish Examiner was no different.

Just three years ago 7 people were jailed in Cork city as part of the campaign against the first attempt at non -collection. HASC members then brought their refuse to the City Hall when it was left uncollection. Fines led to imprisonment. The campaign succeeded with the corporation backing down. A few weeks later the High Court ruled that the council had to collect under the Health Acts, these were subsequently amended by the government to allow for non- collection. The first to suffer from this were in Dublin, but the plan was afoot for the rest of the country. Threatening letters have gone out in Cork city to all households. November 17th is the designated day for the beginning of non-collection in Cork and forces are being gathered for the showdown. The key issue now is to organise as many areas as possible, get people aware of the alternatives to Corporation collection and organise tactics to put the council on the defensive.