Workers Solidarity Movement

The Workers Solidarity Movement(WSM) has called for a No vote in the Lisbon referendum, referring to it as “a treaty for the rich”, and claiming that “people in Ireland can do a lot better than a choice between the clowns in the Dáil or those in Brussels”.

It’s the time of year where we plebs get a chance to rectify our impertinence in rejecting the Lisbon Treaty. In itself, rerunning the referendum is hardly an affront to democracy. After all, people are simply being asked to confirm the decision made.

One of the great problems that people encounter in making up their minds about the Lisbon treaty is that, depending on who you talk to, the treaty can appear to be an altogether different thing. According to those who are campaigning for a Yes vote, it merely serves to tidy up the existing European treaties, with a few changes to allow the EU to function more efficiently.

The WSM is calling for a No vote in the 2nd Lisbon referendum on the grounds that people in Ireland can do a lot better than a choice between the clowns in the Dáil or those in Brussels. We oppose the EU's policies of privatisation, militarisation and attacks on workers' conditions but don’t insult people’s intelligence by saying that our current society in Ireland with its severe recession, diabolical public services and corruption is anything better. The major lack of democracy in our lives is not between us and the EU but between the Irish government and us.

Unlike most literature on the ‘conflict’ in the North, this book assesses the impact and effectiveness of the armed struggle. It devotes significant attention towards the motivations of men and women who joined the IRA and the rigid hierarchal structures which underpinned the organisation to explaining the eventual outcome and ineffectiveness of the armed struggle.

Date: 23 April 2009
Venue: Teachers Club, Parnell Square, Dublin
Time: 8pm

This audio is of the session at the 2009 Dublin anarchist bookfair organised by the Irish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign. The speaker is Nidal Saadeh, a leftist Palestinian activist from Bethlehem in the West Bank.

Palestine & womens rights - a Bethlehem women speaks at DABF 2009 by Workers Solidarity on Mixcloud

There was the whiff of something in the Derry air. The constantly rising civilian death toll in Gaza had already produced the same outpourings of rage on the streets of Derry as it had around the world. Thousands of signatures had been gathered calling on Raytheon to be given the boot, while ever larger crowds had gathered for vigils at the cenotaph, marches through the city, rallies at the Guildhall and at a nonviolent blockade of Raytheon itself. Now more and more of us were becoming determined that we do not have to resign to feelings of helplessness in the face of Israel’s war atrocities. Our burning rage was igniting something positive.

A member of the Belfast branch of the WSM gives his opinion of the March 2009 attack on Massereene British Army barracks by armed republicans.

Media coverage of events in Israel and Palestine often depends on well-worn clichés that depict a bitter struggle between two homogenous and mutually exclusive cultures. The truth of course is far more complex and there is a small, but very vocal, opposition within Israel to the military Occupation of Palestine. One of the most visible and courageous forms of this opposition has been the refusal to serve in the Israeli army.