Workers Solidarity Movement

ON SATURDAY 18th October, a number of Anti-Racism Campaign members were distributing leaflets, advertising an anti-racist public meeting, at the junction of O'Connell St. and Henry St. in Dublin's city centre. The leafletters were approached by a Dublin Corporation Litter Warden, who was accompanied by a garda.

Liverpool dockers refuse to sell jobs
International solidarity actions continue

The Awareness League in Nigeria is to become the first African section of the IWA. Readers of Workers Solidarity will remember the League from the reports of the jailing of four of its members by the state for opposing the military coup there. The international appeal launched on this occasion raised nearly $2000 dollars, saw pickets and demonstrations in many countries including Ireland and resulted in the publication of over 54 articles in languages including Japanese and Hindi. The four comrades were released.

Over the last few years Workers Solidarity has responded to appeals launched on behalf of two Moldavian [1] anarcho-syndicalists, Igor and Tamara. They had come under severe state repression, first from the Stalinist regime and then from the 'new' nationalist one. This included frequent raids by the secret police, physical assaults, threats and the killing of the family dog. Political activity in such circumstances was impossible and there was a real danger that either or both of them would be killed.

YOU DON'T have to break the law to get hassled by the gardai. The Class War Federation planned a small public meeting, entitled "the politics behind the anger", in a Dublin pub last March. This group, who describe themselves as "communists", have gained lots of media coverage in Britain by organising publicity stunts like their 'Bash the Rich' marches (where no rich people got bashed!) and publishing a poster of a cemetery with the caption "we have found new homes for the rich".

Three socialists in Cork, members of the Socialist Alliance group, have found themselves up against the guardians of 'public order' for the second time in two months. Their crime? Putting up posters.

A CENSORSHIP LAW praised by feminists has been used to ban books by a leading anti-porn feminist. In February of 1992 the Supreme Court of Canada accepted the legal definition of pornography popularised by the US law professor and feminist anti-porn theorist Catherine MacKinnon. This outlaws material deemed degrading to women.

THE WAR in what was Yugoslavia continues to drag on, with an ever increasing toll of people terrorized from their homes, killed or imprisoned. Most ordinary people are disgusted at the failure of the EC to do anything about it. Yet is EC or UN involvement any sort of answer or would it just make the situation worse.

The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) was formed in 1967. Many of its early members were drawn from the Dungannon based Campaign for Social Justice, a middle class grouping who had been collecting data on discrimination since 1964, along with some members of the Republican Movement and the Communist Party of Northern Ireland. Its demands were: one man - one vote; allocation of housing on a points system; redrawing of gerrymandered electoral boundaries; repeal of the Special Powers Act; abolition of the B Specials; and laws against discrimination in local government.

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.