Workers Solidarity Movement

Any excuse will do for the University College Cork “Societies Guild” in order to suppress the freedom of speech of pro-choice students. First it was that “a society already exists which caters for debate in the area of abortion and choice”. That society being the clearly anti-choice “Prolife” society – who have no interest in debate on the issue.

I was a student at Trinity College Dublin in the last four years of the 1980's. The following account is based entirely on my recollections of student activism in those years, unfortunately I don't seem to have archived any of the actual leaflets or papers produced back then. At the time we were always disappointed with the level of struggle, it’s only in hindsight that I realize that period was one of relative militancy in terms of student struggles in Ireland.

The hopes of women living in Northern Ireland for the extension of the 1967 Abortion Act were dashed when an amendment to extend the act brought before Westminster on 22^nd October was not debated because of a procedural motion put by Harriet Harman, leader of the House of Commons and the Minister for Women and supported by many New Labour ‘feminist’ MPs.

Despite the collaboration between the British Government and the DUP preventing the extension of the 1967 Abortion Act to the north the struggle for women's right to choose continues…..

Leading up to the Westminster vote, the Alliance for Choice campaign was active across the north organising public meetings, street stalls, a pub quiz and symbolic events such as the '40 women a week' protest outside Belfast city hall with an aim to highlight the fact that politicians here are exporting the 'problem' as over 40 women every week are forced to travel to other parts of the UK to carry out an abortion.

Over 100 people attended the public launch of the Alliance for Choice meeting on Tuesday evening in the Europa. Speakers included community and trade union representatives as well as Dawn Purvis from the PUP. The campaign plans to organise a series of public meetings across the North to support the proposed amendment to the 1967 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill by House of Commons Labour MP Diane Abbott that if successful will allow women in the North to have access to abortion services.

Orange and Green politicians sometimes find it incredibly easy to come together, especially when it’s to stop progress.

With a large number of conflicting interpretations in circulation, many voters’ voting decisions depended on whom they trusted the most. 

When it came down to it, the side that was represented by politicians and IBEC was always going to be in trouble. In the end, the loyalty test split the electorate on class lines. The wealthier constituencies trusted their politicians and business leaders more, the rest of the country sided against them and with the left or the nationalists.

The following is a list of talks given to WSM branches and public meetings on women's issues and feminism up to 2008.

Abortion is a criminal offence in Ireland, even in cases in which a woman is carrying a non-viable foetus, is pregnant as a result of rape or incest or where pregnancy threatens her health. The state has not clarified the circumstances in which abortion to save the life of the women is permissible. The following is an interview with a member of the Cork Women's Right to Choose (CWRTC), an activist group campaigning for abortion rights in Cork (first published in Rebel Worker).

With women’s control over their own fertility still denied in Ireland North and South, Ciaran Murray drags up a story from the not so distant past, where direct action, literally got the goods.