Workers Solidarity Movement

The Catholic church in Ireland has always been massively supported by the State and allowed a huge say in the running of the country. This article will attempt to cover the facts of church power in Ireland and the long history of State support beginning hundreds of years be fore the establishment of the 26 county state.

I want to start off by thanking the organisers for providing the Workers Solidarity Movement with this opportunity to put forward our assessment of the tasks facing anarchists in Ireland.

The Workers Solidarity Movement say that a mass anarchist movement capable of getting rid of the division of society into bosses & workers, order-givers & order takers and building a new society must be based on the working class and its struggles. This is not some abstract dogma but follows on from our understanding of how change can be brought about.

Issues of the Irish anarchist paper Workers Solidarity published in 1991

OVER 350 SHOP stewards and trade union activists sponsored the unofficial 'Trade Unionists and Unemployed Against the Programme' (TUUAP) grouping which campaigned for a 'NO' vote on the PESP. Over 100 regularly attended TUUAP meetings in the main cities and towns. Many of these had long records as militants fighting against centralised bargaining, for more democracy in the unions and for solidarity with workers in struggle.

A statement issued in 1988 after internal disagreements within the WSM had led to its partial collapse.  Those whom remained and rebuilt the organisation in the following years offered this analysis of what had been acheived and what had gone wrong.

Is Sinn Féin swinging to the left? It is as clear as day that there have been huge changes in the Republican Movement since the 1981 Hunger strike. What do these changes add up to, what sort of party is Sinn Féin today, what are its politics, what is its goal?

THE "DEFEND THE CLINICS Campaign" is running out of steam. The recent Information Picket on Dublin's O'Connell Bridge attracted only 20 people. It is unable to mobilise large numbers. Even those political parties with a pro-abortion policy are running scared of even raising the issue. It is not too surprising. It is only five years since the "pro-life" amendment to the constitution was voted through 2:1, and it is debatable how many of those who voted against were actually voting in favour of abortion rights. Since then there has been a further shift to the right in Ireland. Even the promotion of condoms as a means of preventing the spread of AIDS was a matter of great controversy.

WE ARE BACK. It is almost a year since the last issue of Workers Solidarity and you want to know what happened. Ireland has little or no anarchist tradition so rather than just learning from those who went before us we had to make a fair few mistakes while we were developing our politics and building the Workers Solidarity Movement. The biggest mistake we made was putting too much emphasis on day-to-day activities at the expense of achieving a deeper and clearer understanding of the anarchist idea; it's libertarian values as well as its socialist goal.

Articles from the three issues of Workers Solidarity published from the Summer of 1988 to the Spring of 1989.  In this period it was a 20A4 page magazine in format.  This is a selection of the articles, once we scan the remaining ones we will add them to the site.