Workers Solidarity Movement

Figures published in September by the Revenue Commissioners in the 26 Counties show that the top 50 earners in the state each paid less than 5% tax.

In Ireland we like to think that we’ve long ago abolished the death penalty; that we’ve progressed beyond such primitive practices, that we’re too civilized for that. But Irish people are still being sentenced to death, and not even for crimes they have committed but for the crimes of our murderous health system. Long waiting lists, unhygienic hospitals, downgrading of regional hospitals, are all symptoms of a rotten institution that refuses to reform.

A report by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture has found that conditions in several Irish prisons are extremely unsafe.

This is the 100th issue of Workers Solidarity. Why do we bother? After all, nobody gets paid for writing, or doing layout, or stuffing envelopes, or putting copies through neighbours’ letterboxes, or giving them out at union meetings or in city centres. 

Well, we are sick and tired of a system that won’t provide us with decent health care, or economic security, or affordable housing. We are sick and tired of a system that pays farmers in one country not to grow food while people in another country starve to death, a system that spends billions on weapons of mass destruction but won’t cough up to keep people alive.

Wage increases were handed to the top-brass while ordinary health workers and the public were faced with cut-backs, lay-offs and recruitment freezes. It's clear that the politicians, the powerful HSE bureaucracy and the hospital consultants will continue to look out for each other while ordinary people suffer.

The September/October 2007 issue of Workers Solidarity is now online and can be downloaded as a PDF file.

Contents

Something Rotten in Store Street
Postman Pat Says 'Stuff Your Pay Cut'
Why Ireland Never Got Nuclear Power
Workers Occupation Pays Off
The Great Gas Robbery
That's Capitalism
Is Equal Pay Possible?
Climate Change; Delusion and Hypocrisy
Anarchism and the WSM
Anarchists Against the Wall

From June to mid-August, postal workers in the North and in Britain were taking industrial action. Management are on the offensive, and the action was to protect existing conditions.

In a display of cross-border common purpose An Post bosses are also having a go, with conditions under attack as a prelude to selling off parts of the service to private companies. So, An Post workers have a special interest in how the Communications Workers Union dispute progresses

In 1907 Belfast saw the first big battle between the working and employing classes in Ireland. The dockers' and carters' strike was the spark which lit a fire of working class militancy. Workers were flexing their muscle, Catholic and Protestant were uniting, 'Larkinism' was giving the bosses nightmares. Even the police got caught up in the new mood and mutinied.

“Anarchists Against the Wall (AATW) is a direct action group that was established in 2003 in response to the construction of the wall Israel is building on Palestinian land in the Occupied West Bank. The group works in cooperation with Palestinians in a joint non-violent struggle against the occupation.”

Operating under the principle that “It is the duty of Israeli citizens to resist immoral policies and actions carried out in out name”, the AATW is actively resisting the construction of the wall with more than protesting in the streets, governed by the belief that the Israeli segregation of the Palestinian people will not end by itself. Instead, they believe that the only way to end the occupation is by creating a social climate that is “ungovernable and unmanageable” for the Israeli state.

There no longer remains any doubt that climate change has been caused by the activities of humans. The resulting problems of flash flood, more severe droughts, hurricanes etc alongside increased resource and water wars will have drastic economic, social and political consequences right across the globe. For many people both in the richer developed north and the global south, the ensuing climate chaos will only further exasperate their already precarious lives and livelihoods.Whilst governments like our own make almost daily pronouncements about ‘tackling’ climate change, and the media have weekly reports of increasing chaotic and unpredictable weather conditions, both have carefully avoided talking about its main cause. The one thing that historically has caused and continues to perpetuate the effects of climate change is putting private profit before public welfare.