Anarchist Writers

Canada has a reputation as a liberal/lefty sort of place in the US and Europe chiefly I suspect because of the comparison with its nearest neighboor.  However as the suppression of the G20 protests in Toronto this weekend shows this is far from the case.  In fact outside of Quebec there is little far left opposition to the Canadian state, so apart from the First Nations, who do indeed come under state attack, there is little to suppress.  This blog consists of three pieces, two which I wrote around the FTAA summit while in Ontario and the third which I just finished on the G20 Toronto protests this weekend.

Well, I finally posted the final draft of my reply to an article in Anarchist Studies on “Syndicalism, Anarchism and Marxism.” I’m planning to submit this to Anarchist Studies, mostly because I was somewhat shocked that an anarchist journal would publish such unsubstantiated claims on Marxism being a “core” ideological influence on syndicalism. However, this seems to be a recurring theme and one I’ve commented on before and will do so again, now.

Following Gardai attacks on people protesting the bank bailouts on two seperate occasions we had a discussion in my WSM branch about mobilising for a protest that had been called by the SWP / Right to Work for the following week.  There was a bit of debate about being seeing to support what was yet another SWP front group (an ongoing discussion) but in the end we decided to try and mobilise the Dublin WSM for the following protest.  This involved the activation (and to an extent the invention) of a Dublin version of our national Interim Decisions Committee, basically delegates from each of the branches to make the decisions that needed to be made before the next scheduled branch meetings were to take place.

This collection of articles covers the attack by the Israeli military on the Freedom Flotilla which was attempting to break the siege of Gaza.  The muderous attack resulted in the deaths of at least ten activists and the wounding of dozens.  More of the hundreds kidnapped off the high seas by the Israeli pirate action were injured when they were beaten in jail.  These articles also include coverage of some of the protests that then took place in Dublin.  All were originally written as the stories broke for the WSM site.

In a couple of hours I'm heading in to the second anti-capitalist bloc march on the Dail. Last week the police tried to prevent us marching but after a couple of minutes we managed to push past them.  The text here is my notes in case I needed to give a speech at the form up point.  On the night I ended up using segments of this at the form up point at the Wolfe Tone statue and another portion after we had pushed through police lines outside Anglo Irish Bank.

Last night I was on the 'Right to Work' march that went to the Dail where some scuffles broke out as some of the crowd broke away to try and push through the gates. I'm not going to discuss that much, far too much in the media already about what amounted to very little. The main topic of this blog is the Right to Work Campaign itself and the question of how we should approach these sort of party controlled fronts. it is generated in part by the failure of WSM to come up with a collective approach and as a result being caught somewhat on the hop by last nights events.

The week before last Erris fisherman Pat O'Donnell was jailed for seven months for his part in the communities ongoing resistance to Shell's attempt to impose an experimental gas pipeline on them. Across the country local Shell to Sea groups have been holding solidarity protests and other events for Pat. In Dublin this has included two protests and a public meeting in UCD (an audio recording of the meeting is at the bottom of this article). Meanwhile Shell have been forced to admit a temporary defeat in the face of local opposition and call off the construction they have planned for Glengad this year.

I’ve posted a revised article on the impact of neo-liberalism on economic performance. This was originally written around 1997/8 after New Labour got into office and it was clear that Blair was going to continue the Thatcherite assault on the unions and denouncement of strikes.

I went along to the ICTU protest against the budget (called almost a full week after the budget!) last night.  While we were there we spotted opposition leader Enda Kenny and some of the Dublin Shell to Sea crew chased him up the street in order to ask him a a few questions.  I followed with the iPhone and shot some very dark video of him trying to evade the discussion.  The rally itself was crap, not much more than a thousand people and only two quick speeches from David Begg the general secretary of ICTU and Sheila Nunan the president of the INTO.  Neither said very much. Jack O'Coonor from SIPTU lurked in the corner of the platform looking at his feet but apparently he had lost his voice.

Just a very quick note to say that my article on Kropotkin's mutual aid has been updated. This will be the text if and when AK Press UK publish it. While I had hoped that it would be out for this year's London anarchist bookfair on the 24th of October, I've just been informed that it will be delayed. Hopefully it will appear sometime later this year. And, hopefully, the new Black Flag will be there at the bookfair...