Workers Solidarity Movement

Argos workers throughout the 26 counties are holding another one-day strike on the 18th December.

The self congratulatory waffle of business men, the press and politicians continues even though we are hearing a lot less about the “Celtic Tiger”. After almost fifteen years of economic boom we are able to look around and think about what we are left with. Access to decent and affordable housing, one of the most fundamental issues effecting working class people, is an impossibility for many of us. For most young people growing up in Ireland today the possibility of owning a house is outside our reach and keeps us at the mercy of rack renting landlords.

The 100th issue of the Irish anarchist paper Workers Solidarity for Nov / Dec 2007 

PDF of Workers Solidarity 100

Pity poor Bertie and his cabinet. They worked very hard designing a budget which gives an extra €12 a week to pensioners (though only from next July). What thanks did they get from an ungrateful nation?

On a day when we all desperately needed a change in the weather, people gathered beside the bunker on wood quay which is the Council offices. A man in a Santa clause hat spoke at us like he was hosting a children’s television program and told us we would await the bells to chime at two o’clock from Christchurch before we would move off for the march.

What should happen to the €51bn gasfield off Rossport? Let Shell keep it and let the fat cats get fatter? Try to make Bertie’s government nationalise it and use the wealth for our benefit?

In Ireland we like to think that we’ve long ago abolished the death penalty; that we’ve progressed beyond such primitive practices, that we’re too civilized for that. But Irish people are still being sentenced to death, and not even for crimes they have committed but for the crimes of our murderous health system. Long waiting lists, unhygienic hospitals, downgrading of regional hospitals, are all symptoms of a rotten institution that refuses to reform.

A report by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture has found that conditions in several Irish prisons are extremely unsafe.

How accountable are the gardaí to the Irish people

The Workers Solidarity Movement held its Autumn 2007 National Conference in Dublin on the 3rd/4th November. National conferences take place every six months and are the prime decision making body on positions and priorities for the organisation. All WSM members can attend, vote and submit motions and amendments either as individuals or as groups.