Workers Solidarity Movement

Saturday March 10th saw an anti-choice march pass through Dublin, part of their campaign to try to maintain the status quo where pregnant people and doctors can be jailed for 14 years for taking abortion pills in this country while others are denied control of their own maternity care. Polls show that few people support this position and its ‘let women die’ implications so the anti-choice campaign is trying to create the fiction of mass support in the hope that people will be more inclined to vote No.

Aware of this, WSM decided to put together a team to go out and document the march for ourselves including physically counting everyone who marched and using other techniques that give a good estimate of the numbers marching. Below we will bring you through the results of each of these counts and estimates but the headline item is that when the organisers claimed 100k had marched this was a blatant lie that we will show is even physically impossible.  We counted 8930 marchers. All of the other methods we used also limited the maximum size of the march to less than 15,000.

A large anti-choice march will pass through Dublin today and the organisers will attempt to massively exagerate the number taking part as part of their campaign to keep the hated anti-women 8th amendment.  WSM will be there providing a count of the real numbers of people marching and we would strongly encourage our supporters to retweet and share the results as well as challenging any false exaggerated reporting of the numbers you may see.  Along with the rest of the pro-choice movement we are not mounting a counter-protest this year, we will simply be there to observe and to count.  From 14.00 track @wsmireland on twitter and keep an eye on our Facebook pages, in particular Solidarity Times which will carry a livestream from around 2.15.

Graphic - how many people can be crammed in at rock concert density on Merrion square.

The announcement that there will be a referendum to Repeal the hated 8th amendment is the product of decades of active campaigning.  Pro-choice campaigners built for repeal ever since the referendum was passed in 1983. If at first this seemed like a distant demand now repeal looks by far the most likely outcome in May.  The story of how this happened illustrates how change comes in general.  That is not through elections but through people getting organised to demand that change, regardless of which politicians happen to be running the show in any particular year. 

Strike4Repeal launched in January 2017, it exists currently as an ad hoc group of pro-choice activists, academics, trade unionists, artists and students. We directed a single demand towards the government: a national strike would take place on the 8th March unless a referendum on the 8th Amendment of the Constitution was called.

In December, we in Strike4Repeal came together once more to announce that a second strike action will take place if it becomes clear during Dáil debate that full abortion access will not be legislated for or if there is no straight repeal question on the ballot in the upcoming referendum. [ Video ] [Audio]

Irish pro-choice campaigners are celebrating - this is why... Abortion is highly restricted Ireland, thanks to an amendment inserted into our constitution in 1983. The government has said there will be a referendum on abortion next summer.

A new intention to #Strike4Repeal has been announced as we still wait for a referendum and as importantly to see what it is we will get to vote on.

Pledge to Strike 4 Repeal here: https://goo.gl/forms/DTDfA9tQ0kZ0HQ6F3

This audio history of the WSM was presented at a meeting in Cork in 2010 as part of a day of critical internal discussions. As it was originally recorded for internal use it's been edited so it is just the presenter and then his responses to questions and discussion points. For more on the history of the Workers Solidarity Movement see https://www.wsm.ie/wsm-history

Irish Rail workers were out on strike recently. What’s going on? 

The WSM recently caught up with J, an activist and worker at Irish Rail, to find out.

For background details, see our analysis, "Why Irish Rail workers are right to strike", published here.

There are an estimated 20 to 26,000 undocumented people living in Ireland, as many of 5000 of them being children and young people. People in Ireland are generally horrified by the Trump's administrations war on the undocumented in the US but perhaps not so aware that exactly the same situation has been created by government policy here.

The Dublin launch of the book, The Worms that Saved the World takes place on the on the 2nd of December, in the Teachers Club, 36 Parnell Square, Dublin 1 at 4.00pm.

In The Worms That Saved The World a group of earthworms living on an imaginary headland begin to suffer when a golf course takes up residence around their home. The worms attempt to tell the new owners about their concerns but they are dismissed. In response they organise and join with the other birds and animals on the headland. Eventually they reclaim the headland for everyone.