Workers Solidarity Movement

Recent fury over our local ruling class giving away £1.7 million of the Social Investment Fund to Charter NI in East Belfast, headed by a suspected leading member of the UDA, is indicative of a continuing corrupt political settlement where there is one rule for the few and another for the rest of us.

It was reported 27th October that yet another woman has been arrested and charged for having an illegal abortion through use of pills obtained online in northern Ireland. It is believed that the woman sought medical help after taking the pills and so we can only assume that she was reported to the police by staff at the hospital.

Last year the bakery Ashers was found guilty of discrimination when they refused to bake a cake that had an image of Bert and Ernie on it with the words “Support Gay Marriage”.

23rd October they lost their appeal against that verdict, with the judge ruling that the bakers were not allowed to provide a service only to people who agreed with their religious beliefs.

When did you first become active or interested in politics?
Politics is something that it’s hard not to have, especially living in Derry. Politics would always come up in conversation no matter where I went or what I was doing. I always voiced my opinions and had most people agree with what I had to say. When it came to doing something about it like becoming involved and actually joining an organisation that was different.

This is the first of issue of Barricade Bulletin, news sheet of the Derry Anarchists.  It is our intension to issue this free news sheet every two months locally to help generate anarchist info and knowledge of class struggle anarchism to a wider audience beyond the boundaries and limitations of the internet.  

If you would like to get involved with anarchists locally, to take part in anarchist activity, discussions and conversations, prisoner support or contribute to Barricade Bulletin, then drop us a line to our email: derryanarchists@gmail.com

Anarchists in Derry took part in a series of solidarity actions in a show of international support and solidarity with anarchists and antifascists imprisoned in Russia.

Last month the Anarchist Black Cross of Moscow issued an international call for solidarity in support of activists currently facing an extremely intensive political and repressive situation in Russia, especially anarchist and antifa comrades and those fighting for human rights and social justice issues.

Three women have just (23rd May) handed themselves into the Strand Road Police Station in Derry admitting to breaking the anti-choice abortion law. They will either admit to providing the abortion pill or taking it themselves.

We have openly and defiantly broken their law and they have ignored this, these three brave women have decided to force their hand.

If someone were to tell you that in the modern day UK abortion is illegal you’d probably laugh in their face at such a statement. You’d probably write it off as ridiculous and not worth your time debating considering a simple google search will tell you that abortion has been legal in the UK since 1967. It might then be a surprise for you to hear that just yesterday a woman was handed a three month suspended sentence for two years for having an abortion.

A 21-year-old Co. Down woman who was facing life imprisonment for having an abortion through the use of pills obtained on the internet has been given a suspended sentence.  It is understood that after failing to raise the funds to have a legal abortion in England she ordered the drugs, Mifepristone and Misoprostal in order to have the abortion

You can always tell when there’s an election just round the corner. Investment announcements, over grinning politicians in the press looking for another go only this time they REALLY promise things will be better. Others hoping to be elected doing all sorts just to get their photograph in the papers, again promising us the moon and the stars. However the gloves are off in Derry’s Bogside as news filters out that a sizeable section of social housing stock, currently owned by the Northern Ireland Housing Executive (NIHE), now plan to offer them up for sale to private sector housing bodies.

Several hundred residents now fear that private housing associations in the city will totally transform the way in which they have engaged with the Housing Executive over the past four decades. Particularly when it comes to levels of rent and of course allocation of housing which first gave birth to a new generation of street politics and the Civil Rights Association back in the late sixties.

Last November the High Court in Belfast ruled that the near blanket ban on abortion was incompatible with human rights legislation the cases of rape, incest and fatal foetal abnormalities.  While it was a landmark ruling and is reflective of the change in society from the days of religious domination it doesn't change the law. The ruling does nothing other than place pressure on Stormont to change the law.

So why is it that two high profile appeals have been submitted against the ruling? One of them from the Attorney General, John Larkin, a well known anti-choicer, and the other from the Minister of Justice, David Ford.