Workers Solidarity Movement
For starters (WS42)
THE CHANGE from a magazine to newspaper format reflects the increased readership Workers Solidarity is building up. It will take a few issues before we iron out all problems involved in changing our printing process but we hope you will bear with us. None of us is a professional journalist or designer. This issue was produced by a gardener, a couple of office workers, a teacher, a researcher, three unemployed people and a student.
If you like what we are saying, we would like your help. We need your reports. Tell us what is happening on your job, in your neighbourhood. Write a report, or a letter. This paper will only improve if more of you write for it, sell it, show a copy to your friends.
As we go to press final plans are being made for ‘Revolution’, a day of public meetings and debates in Dublin about libertarian socialism. With the collapse of both the Eastern Bloc and social democracy’s radical pretensions it becomes increasingly important to explain that the ideals of socialism are not dead, that there is a libertarian alternative. The Workers Solidarity Movement is co-operating with Organise! (an anarcho-syndicalist group based in the Belfast/Bangor area), Red Action and the Class War Federation in this venture. We hope that it will be but the first such event where libertarian socialists of various traditions can discuss and debate turning our ideas into reality.
In Cork we have been working with ‘Justice Now’, which is campaigning against the 1,600 worth of fines imposed on members of the Socialist Alliance for putting up Troops Out posters and ones with an abortion information telephone number. We also helped in the campaign to stop big business and hoteliers preventing the building of a new Simon Community hostel for the homeless.
In Dublin the WSM has started a series of anarchist discussion meetings for readers. With the rise of far- right movements throughout Europe, and the disturbingly high vote achieved by the MSI/National Alliance in the Italian general election, it was appropriate that one of these was about fascism and how to beat it. Another marked the 75th anniversary of the Limerick ‘Soviet’, when that city was taken over by the workers as part of their fight against British militarism.
In March we published a pamphlet about the fascist threat in Europe, which was sold in cinema queues where Schlinder’s List was showing. We also participated in the Anti-Nazi League demonstration, which brought about 500 onto the streets to make it clear that while there are few fascists in Ireland we intend to keep it that way.