Workers Solidarity Movement

Despite the bad weather and the protest being organised at short notice (within a day) as well as a passing interest from the PSNI, the Belfast branch of the WSM, Anarchist Black Cross joined others outside Belfast City Hall this evening as part of the growing national and international campaign. In solidarity with Amadeu Casellas who is now entering his 73rd day on hunger strike; and the opposition to his continued political incarceration and persecution by the Spanish state because of his anarchist beliefs

The Belfast Branch of the Workers Solidarity Movement and Anarchist Black Cross will be holding an emergency picket outside Belfast City Hall at 5.30 tomorrow (2nd September) in support of Spanish anarchist prisoner Amadeu who has been on hungerstrike for more than 70 days

Former Airport worker Gordon McNeill has resumed hunger/thirst strike on Thursday to lift a gagging order clause preventing him speaking out against the role of trade union officials during the dispute.
Gordon commented: “Tony Woodley and Jimmy Kelly are offering me a bribe to keep me silent about the role of officials of my union. I will never accept these terms.

While the rest of us are coming to terms with a deepening recession, growing house repossessions, stagnation in rises and steep rise in the cost of living. In the face of a so-called downturn in the housing market and credit crunch, the wealthy in the form of parasitic property developers and speculators expect to be bailed out by the Government for their calculated error in borrowing too much from Banks and leanding to first time buyers

Responding to last week's controversial decision by Belfast City Council to hold a 'civic reception' and military parade in November for returning troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Michael McGovern, spokesperson for the Belfast branch of the anarchist Workers Solidarity Movement states,

Recently, Belfast WSM held our 2nd public meeting in the Culturlann on Saturday 16th August. Award winning documentary “Our Oil and other Tales” was shown and WSM guest speaker Pepe gave an overview of the current anarchist movement in Latin America. Members and guests listened intently. Issues that arose included the importance of social movements and its contradictions on the continent and the lessons that can be learned at home from the campaign against water charges and privatization of water in Cochabamba(Bolivia).

The Belfast branch of the Workers Solidarity Movement will be having a stall in Belfast City Centre at 12pm outside Tescos on Royal Avenue (please note: provisional depending on the weather on the day)

The progress of the Irish Peace process has been both a long and turbulent one. It had seen the development in recent times of the once unimaginable, with Ian Paisley the leader of the DUP and Sinn Fein's Martin McGuiness sharing Power within the local administration. Since then, Paisley has stood down and Peter Robinson has taken over such leadership roles. No doubt in the years ahead many will attempt to pull the threads together of how such in it’s entirety had been moved to happen. Yet with now seeing such an administration up and running, has it delivered beneficial change for working class communities, and more importantly what change, if any, has there been for working class communities since the ending of the ‘war’.

Meeting The WSM believes that the world can be made a much better place, and that millions of ordinary people like ourselves can take on that job. And that puts us into conflict with the bosses.

We are anti-capitalists because capitalism can never satisfy the needs of the majority. It is locked into a cycle of boom and slump. It is based on a division of society into bosses and workers, order-givers and order-takers. Its unwritten motto is ‘greed is good’.The world we live in is capable of feeding, housing, clothing and providing for the leisure and scientific needs of the world's population yet capitalism means that there can be a shortage of good public housing while building workers are unemployed. It means tax reliefs for the super-rich while public services like hospitals and schools suffer spending cuts.

When it comes to ‘spin’, ‘bling’ and ‘mantra’ Sinn Fein are masters in disguise and a mouthpiece of New Labour......
During this year’s West Belfast Feile Talk Back we were once again greeted with the sight of Deputy First Minister Martin McGuiness in a dazzling, articulate performance that left the unionist opposition in a limbo and would make former Labour spin doctor Alistair Darling proud. Beneath the hollow words from the platform on the need to ‘work together’, ‘building an Ireland of equals’ or ‘we face many challenges’ lies a much more sinister side based on cut-throat Thatcherite capitalism that Sinn Fein and all the other political rulers seek to promote and impose.