Workers Solidarity Movement

IN THE FRONTLINE:The Minister for Health, Brian Cowen is refusing to appoint the senior consultant paediatrician Mary Mackey. If there is no senior consultant there will be no paediatricians. Bring your sick and injured children elsewhere.

BELMONDO WANTETE, an electrical engineer from the Congo, has lived in Ireland with his wife and young children for the last four years, and is a legal resident. He had to flee from his own country because of political persecution. Ireland was supposed to be a safe refuge.Last year, on May 1st, gardaí raided his home at 3am. They had a warrant ...but with someone else's name on it. They shouted threats and racist abuse, and pushed a gun through his letter box. Then they broke in and beat Mr Wantete. His children were dragged from their beds

The Dublin Docklands, from Ringsend to Sheriff Street, are starting a very major re-development which will take place over the next fifteen years. A Master Plan has been produced and a Dublin Docks Development Authority (DDDA) set up. Already the property developers are in the area buying up the land, a lot of which is owned by state and semi-state companies.

ON SATURDAY 18th October, a number of Anti-Racism Campaign members were distributing leaflets, advertising an anti-racist public meeting, at the junction of O'Connell St. and Henry St. in Dublin's city centre. The leafletters were approached by a Dublin Corporation Litter Warden, who was accompanied by a garda.

Workers Solidarity reporter Joe King spent a couple of hours each month up to last Christmas tracking down the bosses who pay a pittance. Giving himself a good Leaving Certificate, some shop and restaurant experience and a false name he set about answering advertisements, phoning personnel officers and going to interviews. He did his job hunting in Dublin. The story in other cities and towns is, if anything, even worse.

The anti-heroin movement has brought thousands of people to meetings and onto the streets in Dublin's working class communities. Pushers have been sent packing, communities have organised their own treatment programmes for addicts who want to combat their addiction, a sense of power has been given to many who used to feel powerless. In the article below inner city community development worker Patricia McCarthy gives her personal view of why the campaign has been so popular and energetic. In the next issue of this paper we will be printing more viewpoints, letters from readers are welcome.

Everyone knows by now that Dublin is experiencing a very serious heroin epidemic with an estimated 8,000-9,000 heroin addicts in the capital alone. This situation did not arise overnight but has been growing for the past fifteen years. Heroin addiction and the accompanying H.I.V. and Aids related deaths has become a fact of life for devastated inner city communities, and more recently working class suburbs from Tallaght to Blanchardstown.

Campaign must fight on for complete abolition of service charges.

With the re-introduction of service charges in the three new Dublin Councils a year ago, the anti-service charge campaign spread to Dublin. Throughout the summer public meetings at which people pledged their opposition to these charges were held in a large number of areas, culminating in a conference in late September attended by approximately 130 people representing local campaigns and residents' associations.

• The average PAYE worker pays £3,565 in income tax each year, compared to £2,642 by the self-employed and just £575 by farmers.
• Last year PAYE workers paid £3,030 million - up £243.8 million on 1992 - due directly to the one per cent levy imposed by the same government which promised "tax reform".
• The tax inspectors trade union says that last year £2,500 million was outstanding in taxes, and that with increased staffing much of this could be collected.
• Instead the government gave the rich their second tax amnesty inside five years. While we have to pay 48% they were let off with 15% and no questions asked. Hundreds of millions of pounds were simply written off, over ten times the total service charges levied throughout the 26 counties.
• The government refuses to raise the Rate Support Grant by £35 million, which could see all local charges abolished throughout the country. Yet they had no problem finding£35 million for the beef tribunal, much of which ended up in the pockets of their barrister pals.

Considerable progress has already been made in laying the foundations for a campaign against the service charges. Throughout all three Dublin County Council areas, residents' associations and local action groups have been taking surveys and petitions, collecting bills for return to the Councils, and organising public meetings and protests. All the indications are that these efforts are meeting with a good deal of success. In the Fingal area, for example, figures are showing 77% non-payment up to mid-July. Results of surveys carried out in a number of areas in South Dublin show similar levels of non-cooperation.

In recent months, over 1,500 workers at TEAM have been made redundant, a mass laying-off that dwarfs those at Digital and Irish Steel. We find out why...