Workers Solidarity Movement

Britain, France, Germany, the US, and a host of other countries the last 25 years have seen very large movements seeking to close down nuclear power stations. Ireland hasn't. We didn't need to. A big victory was won here when we stopped the then Fianna Fail government going ahead with their plans to build not one, but four, nuclear power stations at Carnsore Point in Co. Wexford in the late 1970s.

Issue 103 of Workers Solidarity -May-June 2008

Articles in this issue include:

• No to Lisbon
• Water tax is a double tax
• Celebrating May Day
• Nine Derry people face jail for decommissioning weapons
• Thinking about anarchism: why managers mess up
• American Soldiers Speak Out Against The War
• Health March: Enough is Enough
• Review: Flat Earth News
• Housing Executive to cut 400 jobs
• Belfast: Direction action gets the goods!

This is an extraordinarily detailed exposition of how the modern media functions. The author, veteran Guardian journalist Nick Davies, along with a team of researchers from Cardiff University, spent several years monitoring the British media and tracing the sources of the stories that they carried. The results were pretty shocking, even for somebody who already has a very low opinion of the corporate and state media.

Imagine that, leaving the pub on Saturday night, you find a fight outside. The Gardai turn up, grab a load of people, including you, and drag you off to the station, and throw in a beating in the back of the van. Next morning you are taken to an interview room and an old garda gives you a cup of tea, apologises for the “mix-up” earlier and says you can go as soon as you’ve signed a 6 page statement he’s prepared for you.

The Paddington Rail crash in London in 1999 led to 31 deaths and well over 400 injuries. At fault was a simple set of rail signal lights which were difficult to see (from the train driver’s point of view). When the crash was investigated it quickly emerged that Network Rail (then called Railtrack), the company responsible for rail line maintenance, had been repeatedly warned about the danger. A number of drivers had been involved in near misses and reported this to management, yet nothing was done. Then two high-speed trains collided.

Thursday 24th April 8pm Lower Deck, Dublin

The Grassroots Gatherings are open get-togethers for people who want to transform Irish society and the world in radical ways – 'grassroots' ways, in their focus on real democracy, and bottom-up methods. Reclaiming the streets, building social centres, resisting war, environmental destruction and EU neoliberalism, since 2001 the network around the Grassroots Gatherings has taken part in the global uprising against an equally global capitalism gone out of control. Check out

http://www.wsm.ie/story/2799

Appoximately 5,000 people turned out for the “March for a Decent Public Health Service” held on Saturday, 29th March in Dublin. Various Trade Unions, patients groups from around the country and political organisations were represented.

The March-April 2008 issue of the Irish anarchist paper Workers Solidarity.  This is Issue 102

26 county edition

The Ulster edition of Workers Solidarity 102
http://www.wsm.ie/attachments/apr2008/ws102.pdf

The southern edition of Workers Solidarity 102
http://www.wsm.ie/attachments/apr2008/ws10226.pdf

Last year, the EU Constitution was defeated in referenda in France and the Netherlands. Europe’s governments quickly got together and rewrote the constitution as an incredibly complicated list of amendments to existing treaties. Together these amendments make up the “Treaty of Lisbon.” Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the president of the Convention on the Future of Europe which did much of the ground work in drafting the constitution, has concluded that “the difference between the original Constitution and the present Lisbon Treaty is one of approach, rather than content”.

The Dublin Anarchist Bookfair – held this year on the weekend of 14th and 15th March – has firmly established itself as the biggest and most exciting event on the political left in Ireland.