Saturday (Oct 11 2003) saw the second major march on Mountjoy jail of the bin tax protests. As many as 3,000 took part in this one, most marching out from Parnell square with a couple of hundred marching down from Cabra to meet them at the jail.
Saturday (Oct 11 2003) saw the second major march on Mountjoy jail of the bin tax protests. As many as 3,000 took part in this one, most marching out from Parnell square with a couple of hundred marching down from Cabra to meet them at the jail.
Saturday saw the second major march on Mountjoy jail of the bin tax protests. As many as 3,000 took part in this one, most marching out from Parnell square with a couple of hundred marching down from Cabra to meet them at the jail.
Pic: The demonstration at Mountjoy
This march was called not by the campaign but by the Dublin Council of Trade Unions. There were as many as a dozen union banners on the march but the bulk of the numbers was made up of those resisting the imposition of the bin tax. Many would of course also be union members but there was no real evidence of any attempt by the unions to get people along apart from small ads in some of the papers the day before.
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At the time of the march twelve protesters were in jail and another three have been sent to jail this morning. Overcrowding in Mountjoy means that some have been sent to other jails including Cloverhill.
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With only one notable exception the union bureaucracy is not sympathetic to the campaign. Many unions have had anti-bin tax motions passed at branch and even conference level but the bureaucrats are sitting on their hands or coming up with excuses for why they can’t do anything. And the president of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, David Begg, actually found time to attack the campaign on the media.
At the rally at the end of the march there was a certain amount of tension because of this. In particular during Jack O’Connor the president of SIPTUs speech. SIPTU organises many of the bin workers and because it is a general union and the largest in Ireland, many SIPTU members are active in the campaign. His speech was interrupted by shouts of ‘get your finger out’ and chants of ‘strike, strike’ from sections of the crowd. Several people held their SIPTU membership cards up as they did this and it appears at least a couple of membership cards were thrown onto the stage.
First published on the WSM site, Oct 2003
WORDS Andrew Flood (Follow Andrew on Twitter )