Early in the morning the crew arrive from the Occupy Cork camp to do their dish washing in the back kitchen of Solidarity Books. At 12 o'clock the days first volunteer arrives to open the bookshop and by lunch time the campers are back for the lunchtime wash up.  By evening the bookshop is closed but will invariably re open by 8 for a meeting or organising group, maybe a movie showing or a talk, the Climate Campers doing their vegan cafe or it could be the Couchsurfers for their meet up, maybe the Campaign Against the HouseHold Tax for an organising meeting or just a crew to paste posters onto corriboard.

The last few years have seen a significant growth in the Freeman of the Land movement. Increasingly, its voice is being heard at environmental and other anarchist based protests and events, from the various UK climate camps to Rossport Solidarity Camp. 

If Captain Jack White DSO, CNT, was the first of the great individual characters of northern anarchism, those that followed soon after into the later twentieth century were every bit as unique. ‘Slumdom’ Jack McMullen and John McGuffin were not merely products of their time and social circumstances, but transcended the context into which they were born and the politics of their generation. They were in every sense truly dynamic libertarians whose politics speak to us of a far greater and more diverse political culture in Belfast than we have hitherto been led to believe. They also have in common a type of writing whose style approximates to a combination of Emile Zola and Spike Milligan. This makes both individuals fascinating to read though at times perplexing, and it is their writing which marks them out as much as their activism.

The government has inflicted growing hardship upon workers and communities across the country, spreading the ethos that we should all commit to sharing the pain. This has been perpetuated by mainstream media, as “sharing the pain” has been portrayed, as the only way out of this crisis.

Mark Malone spoke to Workers Solidarity about Dublin’s social centre. He is a member of the WSM and also of the Seomra Spraoi Collective.

The Grassroots Gathering is a twice-yearly coming together of anarchists and libertarian socialists who are active in political groups and campaigns up and down the island of Ireland. The second of 2008's Gatherings was held in Cork on 14th-16th November. The 90 or so attending, combined with the quality of the discussions, left its organisers very pleased with the weekend. It showed that there's a lot of life left in the Grassroots Gathering as a show-case for trends and thinking among Ireland's libertarian left.

On October 22^nd, in the biggest show of student strength in many years, over 15,000 third level students marched through the streets of Dublin. They were united in their opposition to the Budget’s 67% College Registration Fee increase and Minister for Education, Batt O’Keefe’s threat to bring back full college fees by September 2009. Last month, he announced that the return of fees would raise €530 million in revenue at a family income threshold of €120,000. To his embarrassment, he later had to admit that these figures were wrong and that in fact the maximum revenue would be only €130 million.

WSM member Gregor Kerr took part in the Grassroots Mobilisation in Ireland: Opportunities and Challenges panel at Bloom’s First Activist Forum Saturday 8th November in the Teachers Club in Dublin. This is a recording of the session.

Abortion is a criminal offence in Ireland, even in cases in which a woman is carrying a non-viable foetus, is pregnant as a result of rape or incest or where pregnancy threatens her health. The state has not clarified the circumstances in which abortion to save the life of the women is permissible. The following is an interview with a member of the Cork Women's Right to Choose (CWRTC), an activist group campaigning for abortion rights in Cork (first published in Rebel Worker).