Workers Solidarity Movement

 A 19 year old who died by suicide at Hydebank Wood young offenders centre in south Belfast last year had been locked in his cell for around 22 hours a day because of short-staffing. Allyn Baxter took his own life after disgracefully spending three days on remand for not paying his TV license.

Just 12 weeks after the Moriarty Tribunal found that he made corrupt payments to Michael Lowry TD in order to influence the granting of a mobile phone licence, Denis O’Brien has shown that for Ireland’s elite the good times still roll.  Digicel, the mobile phone company wholly owned by O’Brien, has announced that its net profit for the year ending March 2011 increased by €120million.  In keeping with the true lack of transparency so beloved by our super-wealthy however, Digicel refused to divulge the actual net profit figure.  What was announced was that O’Brien’s own personal income from Digicel last year was €28million, plus of course whatever income he has from his various other companies and investments.

Since the demonstrations called last Sunday, the central squares of cities all across Spain have been occupied by camps of protestors, furious at austerity and the uselessness of all the existing politicians and the pointlessness of this coming Sunday's local elections.

The movement consists mainly of young people, both students and unemployed or precarious young workers calling themselves by names such as Juventud Sin Futuro (Youth Without Future) and #DemocraciaRealYa (Real Democracy Now!). Bypassing existing organisations, whether political parties or trade unions, the participants have organised themselves via Facebook and Twitter, in the manner of the Tunisian and Egyptian activists of the Arab Spring.

Former Taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald's death was announced this morning. As is usual in such circumstances we are being subject to a load of old guff, very rarely in such instances are we treated to an honest assessment of a mans life instead we are expected to believe in the individauls perfection.  The great phrases you will hear for the next week will be that he was "a patriot who always put the national interest first", "an honest man, a fair man", "he did the state some service" etc. At least the last is true, Garret Fitzgerald was a thouroughly pro-state, pro-capitalist, pro-EU, pro-imperialist politician.  He never wavered in his support for the capitalist order.

About 250 people took part in the éirígí organised march on the banquet for the British Queen staged in Dublin castle last night. WSM members joined the demonstration but Garda had intercepted the person transporting our flags and banner to the protest leaving us somewhat invisible. This was part of a pattern of suppression of visible protest that occurred throughout the visit of the British Queen despite Garda claims that they would "facilitate protest" in advance of the visit.

At the moment, the predominant view in the Government , the media and in business circles is that the two large, high-profile state visits by the British Queen and the US President will give a massive boost to Ireland, both in terms of increasing tourism and in terms of improving Ireland's current image of a bankrupt and disfunctional isle in the eye's of the world's media.

However, is this viewpoint accurate? It seems to me to be a naive and ill-thought out endeavour, without thinking seriously about the facts and implications.

Next week the latest in a long line of parasitic chancers who have ruled Britain and (up to 90 years ago) all of Ireland for centuries will descend on the city of Dublin. As a result some one million people are going to have their lives seriously disrupted and tens of thousands have already had to suffer intrusive Garda calls at their homes. Streets all over the city will be closed, Garda will be harassing pedestrians and motorists, even the zoo will shut. And all for what? That is a question that seems impossible to answer.

Patrick Galvin, the renowned Cork writer and socialist, has died.  Born in Margaret Street in Cork in 1927, Paddy was a prodigious and accomplished writer producing many works in poetry and drama, as well as writing the memoir The Raggy Boy Trilogy.  He was also a most accomplished balladeer and many of his early works were in this form.

(Image: Patrick Galvin at his birthday party last summer).

The following is an interview recorded with PM Press's Gabriel Kuhn about the subject of his recently published book of the same title, that he will be talking about at the Dublin Anarchist Bookfair on Saturday 14th May, at Liberty Hall at 14:00. The interview was conducted by WSM member and avid Bohs fan, Ciaran M.

“The revolution will inevitably awaken in the British working class the deepest passions which have been diverted along artificial channels with the aid of football." Leon Trotsky.

1) Football comes in for much negative criticism from the left, mainly criticisms similar to Trotsky’s above, deriding it as cathartic and a distraction. Yet in recent years, we’ve seen iconic events like the “Football Revolution” in Iran, the Greek riots following the death of Alexandros Grigoropoulos, where Panathanaikos fans fought against the police side by side with Anarchists and the Al-Ahly Ultras in Egypt and their apparent hand in revolution there. How influential has football been in Rebellions and amongst the rebellious throughout history?

Football has been attracting the masses around the world for over a century. Where masses gather, the powerful lose control – unless we're talking about orchestrated mass gatherings, which are characteristic of fascist and authoritarian regimes. But this doesn't really work with football, since it is hard to orchestrate a football game. Football is too unpredictable.

The May bank holiday saw the annual Rossport Solidarity Camp gathering, this year across the road from the new Shell compound at Arghoos in Erris. As has become traditional the gathering combined a direct action with workshops and socializing. On the Sunday most of those present went to the launch of fisherman's Pat O'Donnell's new boat. There was a constant Garda presence around the camp throughout the weekend but despite the destruction of some 60m of Shell's bog road no arrests were made.