Workers Solidarity Movement

TASC have released a detailed report called 'Mapping the Golden Circle' that reveals the "network of 39 individuals [who] held powerful positions in 33 of 40 top public organisations and private Irish businesses." Their analysis shows that within this 11 of these people were "very well connected" and that the most tightly interwoven institutions were all banks. This are the gang who now order us to 'share the pain' yet in 2005-7 they awarded themselves 40% pay increases while most workers were getting one quarter of this.

The purpose of the TASC report is to argue for a kinder, more regulated capitalism but ignoring this it contains a wealth of details that reveal just how few people make the decisions that have destroyed the standard of livings of millions. Each of this same gang of 39 individuals was also, on average, on the board of at least 10 companies outside of the top 40. On average the pay for CEO's was 136 times that of the poverty income threshold at or under which almost 20% of households in Ireland live.

This is the same gang who are trying to force workers to pay for the cries in capitalism and have successfully undermined resistance by tricking workers into fighting each other rather than the parasites at the top of this rotten system. Chiefly they have created divisions between private and public sector workers, very often by suggesting there is nothing in common between these two areas. Yet the report found that the golden circle linked seven of the 14 state owned bodies with 12 of the 26 private companies and that half of the golden circle directors had also held positions in the public sector.

What is remarkable is how such a small gang of people can retain control over five million of us even while slashing our wages, cutting our services and making us unemployed. When the British state massacred protesting workers in Manchester in 1819 the poet Shelly advised
'Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number -
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many - they are few.'

You can download the full report

From page 17 of the report "Figure 5 – The director network (with 11 most well-connected directors highlighted)"