Riot police attacked students in Dublin today (Weds Nov 3rd) with dogs, armoured vehicles and horses after the students protesting against government cuts occupied the Department of Finance and threw eggs at the Dail.
Upwards of thirty students occupied the Department of Finance in the center of Dublin with a couple of hundred supporting them in the streets outside.
Another larger group of students was reported outside the Dail throwing cans & bottles at it. Several students were injured in the suppression of the protest.
Tens of thousands of students were demonstrating as part of the USI protests against plans to introduce fees. The students carrying out the occupation appear to have broken away from the main demonstration which took place around the corner in Merrion Square. Student members of the WSM, eirigi and the SWP were at the scene. The WSM members published the reports below.
Saturday 30th October saw the WSM take part in the latest 1% Network event, an after dark Halloween Treasure Hunt around Dublin’s exclusive Shewsbury and Ailesbury roads taking in the mansions of multi millionare bankers, developers and financers as well as the HQ of Allied Irish Bank and the 32 million in tax avoidance of the luxury Four Seasons hotel. The tour was led off by a vampire capitalist accompanied by a contingent of Zombie bankers and developers and ghost estates with the vampire showing how much wealth was present at each stop and explaining the contacts between the 1%, the media and the government that enabled them to make hundreds of millions during the tiger. The tour was accompanied by uniformed Gardai and a car of special branch political police. The 1% network is a coalition of socialist groups including the WSM, eirigi, ISN and Semora Spraoi formed to highlight the fact that the richest 1% own 34% of the wealth.
At 9:30 Saturday 4th August people gathered on O’Connell Street In Dublin to protest against the presence of war criminal and ex British prime-minister Tony Blair. Blair arrived at Easons at around 10am for the book-signing of his recent autobiography, escorted and protected by a sizable gardai presence. Despite the heavy rain, hundreds of protestors took part. At least one protester managed to get past the heavy security to try to make a citizens arrest of Blair for his war crimes.
Within hours of announcing that the real cost of the Anglo bailout was going to be 30 billion plus rather than the 1.5 billion first estimated the government was revealing its plan for further cuts in our pay welfare, and public services to pay for this. The bank bailouts, not totalling 45 billion, will push the budget deficit to 32% of GDP, the government has the intention of continuing to attack the living standards of workers in Ireland until this is reduced to the 3% required by the EU.
30 September in Dublin former US president Bill Clinton told an invited gathering of 575 of the richest 1% of Ireland’s population that they were the greatest problem facing the world. They paid over 2500 a head to hear this as they chomped down on "Atlantic salmon, Connemara lamb and lemon posset, washed down with Chablis Domaine de la Mandeliere 2007 and Chateau Les Roches Gaby 2001."
On the morning of Wednesday 29th September we awoke to the news that a cement triuck covered in anti-government slogans relating to the bank bailout had been rammed into the gates of the Dail (Irish parliament) almost running over the police guarding the entrance. It turned out that some of this was true, some of it lies and that the alleged driver of the truck was the strangest of anti-bank campaigners, an outraged developer. This piece written for the WSM site takes apart some of the spin.