Workers Solidarity Movement

Workers Solidarity Movement and Free Education for Everyone member Donal Ó Fallúin on the need for students to protest this upcoming, savage budget.

With the European Central Bank in partnership with the IMF taking over the running of Ireland's economic policy and hence social policy for the next few years we thought it timely to revisit the weekend of Mayday 2004 when Dublin saw major protests against the EU summit and the neo-liberal policies that were being adopted. This is not an article about how “right” anarchist were about the EU, but we thought it timely to remind people of the biggest, openly organised weekend of protest against hierarchy, power and capitalism Ireland has so far seen.  It includes a 30 minute documentary that shows the highlights of the weekend that we think has not yet been put online.

You have a gathering of nearly a 100,000 people, many of them active trade union members, and we are supposed to phone up one delusional Green party leader and try to get him to do our bidding. We, as workers and trade Union members are supposed to have that power to change things. We can do so by withdrawing our Labour! We do not do it by putting through phone calls like we are voting in the X-Factor and praying that our voice prevails.

UNITE issues strike threat - "We have begun planning for a campaign of civil disobedience and industrial action that will make clear the level of anger and fortitude that exists among the people who political leaders have failed utterly.”

A Taiwanese news channel has produced this amusing (were it not so serious) animation that tells the story of the rise of the Celtic Tiger and the bank bail now in process.  It gets some of the historical context right - the famine and mass migration - but sometimes it has an odd view of Ireland. They reckon we we will be back to driving ox-drawn carriages - someone should tell them about the donkeys.  It shows bankers holding a gun to the state's head and a beer-drinking Cowen is later depicted as a leprechaun who is knocked to the ground and kicked by angry protesters, as is a Fianna Fáiler giving out cheese (but it's Edam rather than Cheddar).

It has been revealed that the changes in tax credits contained in the IMF/ECB four year austerity plan will hit low paid and average paid workers far harder than the those who earn hundreds of thousands.  A worker on 36,000 a year will pay around ten times as much extra tax as a percentage of their income than a banker earning 300,000 will.  In real terms both pay exactly the same, 1860 euro.  The independent think tank TASC has produced a short report which graphically illustrates the deepening of inequality that is contained in that aspect of the four year plan.

Having announced their decision to sack 1,200 teachers and an untold number of Special Needs Assistants last week, the government has swiftly followed it up with a plan to make unemployed teachers and other school staff work for free.

Dublin Saturday 27th November 100,000 on ICTU march. I was there and I heard the booing.

Got back to Cork late Saturday, after an icy drive down the motorway. Visiting a friends house after coming back , relating the story from the day. "Did you boo Jack O'Connor then?" says one.

Despite freezing temperatures, an estimated one hundred thousand people were on the streets of Dublin today to take part in the ICTU demonstration against the draconian four year plan, which is raising taxes on low paid workers, slashing wages, social services and cutting social welfare.  The WSM took part in the demonstration with the 1% Network, highlighting the wealthy 1% of the population who own 34% of the wealth, and pointing out that only a general strike can force them to back down from making us pay the full costs of the crisis.

The WSM welcomes the statement by Chief Superintendent Michael O'Sullivan about the groups and individuals who wish to exploit the fact that thousands will be on the street tomorrow, and use that for their own ends.