Workers Solidarity Movement

Dale Farm is a halting site  which is also the largest concentration of Irish Travellers in Britain, being home to over 1000 people (about 100 families), many of whom are said to have their cultural roots in Rathkeale in Limerick.  It was started in the 1960s when a number of families bought the former scrapyard site and Basildon council granted planning permission for 40 houses. This happened in the context of broad progress in race relations and a brief breeze of relative official tolerance for Travellers, epitomised in  the liberal-sponsored 1968 Caravan Sites Act.  Basildon Council have put aside an £18 million budget to bulldoze the site and forcefully evict the families (a staggering figure when you consider that in 2010 the total UK budget for providing Travellers with halting facilities was less than 30 million).

Christmas Island off the Western Australian is still reeling from last weeks insurrection from ‘asylum seekers’ at the islands detention centre. The breakouts were followed by three overnight riots at the centre in which accommodation tents and small buildings were burnt down as police fired tear gas and "bean-bag" bullets to quell rock-throwing rioters.

Yesterday (Wednesday 9th March) the hunger strike of 300 migrants in Greece ended in victory after key concessions were made by the Greek government. The 300 undocumented migrants, who lived and worked in Greece for years, usually at a fraction of the minimum wage, had been on hunger strike for 44 days, after being told that, due to the economic crisis, they were no longer wanted and must either leave voluntarily or be deported.

EVENT CANCELLED DUE TO END OF HUNGER STRIKE: SEE BELOW

300 immigrants are on their 45th day of hunger strike in Greece. Thursday 10th of March Workers Solidarity Movement organising a protest at the end of the pedestrianised part of Grafton Street Dublin 2, in front of the Molly Malone statue at 17.00 SHARP in solidarity with their struggle for legalisation.. Please show us your support by attending and/or spreading the word around.

Limerick County Council has revived an old bylaw to enable it to seize caravans and cars belonging to Travellers.   The move comes as hundreds of members of the families of Travellers who call Rathkeale home arrive for the Christmas break.  This is an annual event that has been going on for years. Due to the lack of facilities families often end up camping on the roadside. This unavoibably causes tension with other local residents and road users. The county council has never made any serious effort to address the shortage of short term halting facilities in Rathkeale over the Christmas despite having fore knowledge of the problem.

The tragic deaths of at least 30 ‘asylum seekers’ at Christmas island of the coast in Western Australian is an indictment on an entire criminal system that condemns humanity to misery and enslavement in the interests of capital and statism.

Police in Darwin in Australia have ended a seven hour protest by refugees being incarcerated in a detention centre. Over ninety refugees from Afghanistan escaped the detention centre in the northern territory in over a 30 degree- temperatures to the nearby Stuart Highway holding placards demanding to be processed and treated like human beings. 

A group of 50 protestors, mainly asylum seekers, has gathered outside the Mosney Centre in Co.Meath to protest at the planned movement of some of the internees to other facilities in the country.

Hundreds of Roma have been deported today by the French government as part of their attacks on Roma camps. To date, over 8,000 Roma have been deported from France since the start of the year, out of a population of 15,000 in the county. There are between 10-12 million Roma in Europe.

Immigration is an inevitable effect of the economic and military policies conducted by European states; the concerted efforts to prevent it are the result of racism and an unwillingness to face domestic consequences.