Workers Solidarity Movement

It was as if our streets were paved in gold as the Olympic torch made its way across this bright new shiny Northern Ireland. We listened to  our local business leaders and political class lining up to praise this symbol of hope and reconciliation, but beneath this spectacle of spin and ‘regeneration’ smokescreen is a showcase of corporate class privilege and profiteering.

The sectarian row over the former Girdwood army barracks site in North Belfast is  part  of a larger picture of sectarianism and segregation forming the bedrock of the status-quo, with our local political class depending on it for their very political survival. 

In a recent report, Trademark, the Belfast-based social justice co- operative affiliated to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, "Sectarianism still remains a serious problem in Northern Ireland." The group conducted a major survey with more than 40 interviews in private sector companies and surveyed 2,500 workers in a large retail company as part of its study. It found that "low-level but persistent sectarian harassment is a feature of too many workplaces in Northern Ireland".

The media frenzy may have settled for now over  Cardinal Sean Brady’s failure to pass on information about a notorious clerical sex abuser in his midst but we need to make sure we don’t let this extremely wealthy multi-national chiefdom called the Catholic Church off the hook.

On Tuesday 1^st May, a BBC spotlight programme revealed that cardinal, and then Fr Brady was at interviews in 1975 where two children were asked to sign a vow of silence after they were abused by paedophile priest Brendan Smyth.  One survivor, Brendan Bolan told This World that he had given details of other children to Fr Brady(who was the ‘note taker’ at the time) he suspected were being abused but the problem found that none of their families or the police had ever been warned.

The WSM organised a successful public meeting on Saturday in Na Croisbhealai workers co-op on the topic of anarchists-who we are and what we are up to.  Leading up to the event leaflets and posters were distributed at the annual Mayday march and other meetings in the city. A similar meeting was held recently in Dublin which was attended by 80 plus people and the WSM aims to hold similar meetings across the country so feel free to get in touch.

Thousands of civil service workers in Northern Ireland have been taking part in a 24-hour UK-wide day of strike action today. Members of Nipsa, Unite, the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) and the University and College Union (UCU) are protesting against pension cuts.  Workers have been picketing outside job centres, tax offices, passport offices and other public sector workplaces. Several hundred attended lunchtime rallies in Belfast and Derry.

Tens of thousands of public workers from the North are expected to take part in the UK wide industrial action this Thursday in protest over cuts to pension and attacks on living standards. In the North, civil servants are expected to join immigration officers in the day of action while healthcare workers are taking limited action over lunchtime, involving Nipsa and Unite! members. While this latest strike action is sending out a message that we won’t work longer, pay more into the pension fund and get less, it is significant climb-down from the public sector strike last November which was the largest in decades.

The decision to approve the new Welfare Reform Bill earlier last month signals yet another devastating blow to those living on or below the British government’s very own recommended guidelines on poverty. Prior to the initial bill being passed, attempts were made to water it down in the House of Lords but that too fell on deaf ears, despite the fact that it may violate international conventions on human rights.  However in welcoming the move, one Tory politician jokingly remarked: “desperate times, calls for desperate measures”, but desperate for who? Certainly not those on a politicians salary in Westminster or up in Stormont.

Hundreds of people gathered in Derry’s Bogside today in what was one of the largest demonstrations held yet in support of the imprisoned political prisoner Marian Price to demand her immediate release. Marian, a former IRA hunger striker had been interned following an Easter Commemoration in Derry last year on the order of Secretary of State, Owen Paterson. She was held at Maghaberry, an all-male prison, in isolation for over ten months. Due to serious concerns about her ailing health and continuing street protests she was eventually transferred to Hydebank Woman's Prison back in February ‘on clinical advice’.

Stormont was back to business last weekend as they laid down the red carpet for a top member of the Communist Party’s politburo Liu Yandong as part of the ongoing normalisation drive to showcase investment and job opportunities in in the North. Before it was pandering to US capital but with a stagnating economy our local ruling class are increasingly keen to build relations with the next emerging global power, China, which is increasingly flexing its muscles in the US sphere of influence.

Today’s protest rally in Derry against the vigilante group Republican Action Against Drugs (RAAD) went ahead despite calls for it to be cancelled. Hundreds of people filled Guildhall Square to voice their rage against the recent shooting of two teenage cousins earlier in the week.

Relatives of those recently targeted, attacked and murdered by RAAD also attended the city centre rally calling for an end to the attacks.