This article was written at the time of the second Nice referendum in Ireland as part of ‘Libertarians Against Nice’, a WSM initiated campaign that distributed 15,000 leaflets as well as carrying our other activity. Because of right nationalist opposition to the treaty we were keen to publish material that put forward a distinct perspective, one that argues against the treaty from a class rather than nationalist perspective.
An alien spacecraft surveying the earth would surely be astounded by the ‘civilisation’ that inhabits it. On the one hand it has sent men to the moon and sequenced the human genome. On the other tens of millions die every year because they lack access to basic medicine and clean water. 2.6 billion people have no access to sanitation, 2 billion have no electricity and 100 million are homeless. How can this be?
Restructuring and Resistance is an inspired book that succeeds in explaining why many people in western Europe are opposing capitalist globalisation. It does this by doing what the mainstream media will not, giving them a voice.
The EU is continuing the exploitation of the people of North Africa through creating a special trade zone of some of the North African countries similar to the free trades zones North America has created in Mexico. In Ireland this has been most visible with ‘Fruit of the Loom’ closing plants in the north west of Ireland and opening new plants in Morocco where workers are paid one seventh of what the (low paid) Irish workers were paid.
You may remember back in early December (2000) the news being dominated for several nights by coverage of the European Summit in Nice. An endless stream of politicians and political experts offered us their opinions on what new voting arrangements might be introduced. You might even be aware that there was some opposition on the streets of Nice to the summit, on December 7th most TV news items started with brief footage of a bank being set on fire
IT HAS BECOME increasingly fashionable to use the term globalisation as a description of the international economy and international political relations. Globalisation is meant to have taken over from imperialism, when a handful of large states openly and directly ran most or the world.
The arrival of the Euro in its ‘real’ form of notes and coins is a key step along the path towards European unification. In Ireland, at least, it was virtually unopposed save for a few nostalgic articles about missing the artistry of the old notes and coins.
Our government has become more and more open about their plans for us. Cowan wants to drive down our living standards 12% and has already cut all our wages through the tax levy and slashed the wages of workers in the public sector further through the so called ‘pensions levy’. He openly talks of “four more years of even steeper cuts”. He is so confident of us taking this lying down that he had the cheek to announce his intention to drive down our living standards at what even RTE referred to as the “Dublin Chamber of Commerce’s lavish AGM dinner which cost €160” a head.
Article from July 2001 calling for the creation of what was to become the Grassroots Gathering. Beyond this though we see the need for those of us who have a common anti-authoritarian vision of a future society to work together to promote this view. There are many within the general movement whom we are close to, who we feel in a greater or lesser way are fighting for the sort of society we are fighting for. Often we use quite different language to describe it but in the most general terms we are talking of a society where workplaces and communities are run by those who live and work there.
Has it ever struck you as a little odd that the same governments that claim to stand for globalisation are busy erecting expensive fences along their borders to keep people out? Or that the collapse of the Berlin wall has been followed a decade later by new and longer walls being erected a few hundred miles to the East running down the Polish and Czech frontiers?