Anarchist Writers

This September will be six years on from the start of the intense period of the bin tax struggle in Dublin, a struggle that was to see 25+ people jailed as the state tried to crush the campaign.  I've just uploaded the news articles I wrote at the time on the struggle to my archive on this site, this blog summarises these and links to each of the news posts as it is summarised.  I also explain the internal context of what is argued to a greater level then could be done at that time.

The mouthpiece of millionaire Tony O'Reilly, the Sunday Independent, got terribly excited when it 'discovered' there were anarchists involved in the bin tax campaign. Or, as it oddly put it, anarchists of the Workers Solidarity Movement had "infiltrated the campaign in significant numbers"

In 2003 in Dublin over 20 people were jailed for resisting the imposition of the bin tax in Dublin. There were some who saw the bin tax struggle as being an example where the 'environmental agenda' is counterpoised to the 'working class' agenda. I don't and I think the few environmentalists who have supported the ruling class line in this have done great damage to the environmental cause. The bin tax pure and simple was about imposing the neo-liberal agenda, what some people call 'globalisation'. A core part of this agenda is to transfer the costs of running society from the rich and corporations to workers and the poor.

Cover story for WSM paper. Contracts the jailing of anti-war and bin tax protesters with what happened to tax evaders and corrupt politicans.

Cover story for WSM paper. The service charges that are being brought in north and south of the border are part of a process of further increasing the proportion of tax paid by workers. The trend in global capitalism is to replace 'progressive' taxes (like income tax) with flat-rate taxes (like VAT, service charges, etc) to further shift the taxation burden from rich to poor.

Monday night (September 16th 2001) saw the first real activists meeting of the Dublin Corporation area anti Bin Tax campaign. The council is sending out second demands for payment but the figures indicate that the non-payment rate is very strong, currently around 80%.

On Thursday the 27th (Sept 2001) all the local county councillors were invited to a meeting in the Liberties to explain their position on the bin tax. About 60 residents turned up to hear what they had to say for themselves.

Monday night (Sept 2nd 2002) saw another picket of the Dublin corporation council meeting to protest the continuing attempt to impose bin charges on the cities population. According to the corporations own figures less then 50% of people paid any of their bill last year. With the success of non-payment to date only around 20% have paid something so far this year.

Pic: the picket around 19:00

Yesterday (Sept 10 2003) Fingal council attempted to start refusing to collect the bins of those who not paying the bin tax. This morning the campaign in the Dublin city area swung into action. Non-payers bins are still being collected in this area so our first move was a lobby of the depots that the trucks leave from each morning.

The Cabra/Dunard/Navan campaign activists had lobbied the Grangegorman depot Thursday morning and in solidarity with activists in Fingal decided to blockade one of the Cabra routes for one hour this morning (Sept 12 2003).