Workers Solidarity Movement

We missed this last week.

 

-Quote- 

Claire Byrne: [Take Back the City] "have pledged to train up volunteers on how to occupy vacant buildings across the country. We have them here tonight, we're going to talk to them in a minute but first of all I want to come to you, councillor Paddy Smyth because you believe this group are anarchists, is that right?"

Cllr Paddy Smyth (FG): "Well, they're disobeying court orders, they're taking possession of property that isn't theirs, and effectively if we don't have property rights, we don't have ownership rights in this country, we do have anarchy, so, yes." [1] 

-End quote-

 

Yet another reference to 'anarchists' by state and corporate media. Why are they going out of their way to try to associate the housing movement in general, and the 'Take Back the City - Dublin' grouping in particular, with us scary anarchists?

 

Well, the right wing, who engineered the housing crisis and are profiting from it, are trying to spread the idea that it's not Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil you should be afraid of, it's those 'anarchists' you should really worry about. Note that there isn't any discussion about what anarchists are or what we want or believe. Instead, they mention anarchists often enough to get the word itself into the viewers head but they don't talk about us in detail.

 

The media are hoping to prepare the ground for the next time a group of Gardaí assault housing protesters so that they can say something along the lines of "Oh, but those people are those anarchists we've been hearing about for weeks. Of course the police will have to maintain order if there are anarchists involved in the protest/occupation/march.". This level of hostile media attention directed towards anarchists pales in comparison to the faeces flinging hysteria that gripped the Irish media around the May Day 2004 but it should still be noted and examined.

 

Obviously, anyone who has worked with anarchists during the water charges campaign or the repeal campaign will know that we're grand to work with, we just argue against using elections to local or national state bodies as a method of winning improvements to our society and standard of living.

 

Anarchists argue that direct action like blocking water meter installation, non-payment of water charges and all the pro-choice campaign work that prepared the way for the repeal of the 8th amendment are far more effective methods of achieving our goals than lobbying politicians. And this argument is absolutely true. Direct action got the goods in both of those recent campaigns and many more besides.

 

So the next time you hear Claire Byrne or Ivan Yates mention 'anarchists', just know that they're trying to frighten people away from the kind of effective direct action that anarchists do indeed promote. Don't allow the mouthpieces of the capitalist class and their state to get you worried about anarchists. Remember, we'll be campaigning alongside you, our communities, our trade unions and our class on everything from housing, to pro-choice work and workers rights, so that we can have a decent society to live in, in spite of the best efforts of the right wing.

 

Source of quote:

[1]
RTE - Claire Byrne Live
Monday 17th September 2018. 
Video timestamp: 01:00
Link: https://www.rte.ie/…/s…/claire-byrne-live-30003252/10937824/