Workers Solidarity Movement

This is more than a little odd. It appears that someone prominently associated with Youth Defence was on the March for Choice in September complete with a (fake) Repeal jumper and an obnoxiously phrased placard. Another activist on the way to the march saw the same women with one of the Youth Defence leaders.

Dave Gorman spotted her and tweeted about it from the march, that tweet was subsequently shared by 100s of people, all no doubt curious as to what was up. Our video reporter at the march had noticed the woman pass and while initially thinking the placard made her look like a Youth Defence infiltrator but also thought it was possible it was someone who had English as a second language. She was recorded in the video though, the segment is attached proceeded by Dave's tweet alerting people which we only saw later.

After we posted the video to Twitter other people looked into this further and pointed out that the two men with a camera walking just ahead of the women in the video were with her. You'll see one of them give our camera a well dodge look as he spots it. One of those two is a known anti-choice activist from Tennessee in the USA.

So what were the 3 of them doing on the March for Choice with a video camera, a fake Repeal jumper and a fake placard?

It wasn't the only odd anti-choice intervention of the day. At Tara street they tried to drive a van with a big billboard ad reading 'Abortion is violence against mother & daughter' into the march. Eyewitnesses who blocked the truck reported it contained three men who were videoing them. Perhaps strangest of all was the two men at the assembly point who followed marchers and shouted at them. One was carrying a Virgin Mary picture while the other waved a Papal flag, in fact some people who saw them thought they were some sort of art pranksters doing a Father Ted style stunt. They weren't.

Any of our readers see more of these incidents and have any idea what they were up to? All three have a strong whiff of desperation to them, perhaps a reflection of the inability of the anti-choice movement to mobilise numbers any more as their once strong support base has become very old and the various clerical scandals have demoralised them. No one under 50 got to vote on the 8th Amendment back in 1983 and the feet on the street clearly demonstrate it would be repealed if there was a vote today.

Amazingly they actually did try and use a photo of this fake placard in a tweet afterwards and we belive it may also have been used in a fundraising video