Anarchist Writers

Over the June Bank Holiday weekend dozens of people traveled from all over Ireland to Erris to join locals in ongoing resistance to Shell's project of imposing an experimental gas pipeline on the local community. I travelled down on the Dublin bus, an early 8.15 start complete with monitoring secret police car, for the 5+ hour journey right across the island to Erris at the western tip.

I resumed transferring articles from my old web site to this one today and have just moved over five articles I wrote on different aspects of imperialism from 1992 to 2001.  As usual its a little scary to be reading stuff from that far back, in particular when it carries a title like The return of the "white man's civilising mission"!

Anyone following the blog will be aware of the way I've been reporting on resistance in Ireland to the capitalist crisis.

Anyone who attended one of my North American talks or who has followed my articles will have heard me mention the 'Grassroots Gathering' on more than one occasion.  This is/was a network of conferences held in Ireland from 2001 which served to bring everyone with libertarian politics together for the weekend and out of which a number of initiatives flowed.

Three speakers talk about the pro-choice struggles in Ireland they were involved in over the last three decades. These include the 1983 anti-referendum campaign, the Womens' Information Network, the SPUC v students case, Dublin Abortion Information Campaign, X-Case, Repeal 8th Amendment, 1992 Referendum, Dublin Abortion Rights Group, Alliance for a No Vote, 1998 referendum, Choice Ireland and the D-Case.

Last night I caught the end of a meeting on the 'Iranian Revolution – the hidden history' organised by Hands off the People of Iran (HOPI).  The speaker was Torab Saleh who took part in the movement of 1979 and whose talk concentrates on the anti-capitalist mass movement that overthrew the Shah's regime.  He also talks about how it was that the religious opposition came to dominate the movement.

Last night I gave a talk as part of a panel on pro-choice struggles in Ireland in NUI Maynooth.  The venue was a good measure of the huge changes around that issue over the last 20 years, it would have been impossible to imagine a pro-choice meeting in what is the catholic priest training college back in the 1980's never mind one without even an anti-choice picket in sight. Later on someone told me that the Sociology building itself had once been used to house nuns.

We had the Workers Solidarity Movement national conference over the weekend in Dublin which meant hours spent inside while the sun was out debating and voting on motions and then hours spent outside when it was dark downing pint after pint of the black stuff.  Which makes for the sort of weekend that come Monday you need a weekend to recover.

I already briefly blogged the 2009 Dublin anarchist bookfair but here is the complete set of audio files I recorded and that I've edited and uploaded to indymedia over the last couple of weeks.  There is about seven hours worth in total. Also the video of Ashanti Alston speaking at the bookfair.

Saturday before last Stanley Aronowitz was in Dublin and we grabbed him to do a talk at Seomra Spraoi on 'Popular Education in a time of Struggle'.  This was part of an ongoing effort to get a Education Workers Network off the ground and the meeting did attract 30+ people which is pretty good for a Sunday afternoon.