Saturday saw a sizeable anti-war demonstration in Dublin, in which over 2,000 people participated, organised by the Irish Anti-War Movement. This makes it slightly larger then the largest of the anti-Gulf marches of a decade ago.
The Liverpool dockers strike ended January 1998 but on April 7th the main docks company in Australia (Patricks) sacked its entire workforce of 1,400. At the same time hundreds of security guards, with dogs, flooded onto 17 different dock locations around Australia, resulting in at least one worker being injured. Some arrived by boat and were described by one witness as behaving like Commandos as they leapt ashore.
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Danish general strike of 1998
Almost half a million workers went on strike, including almost all industrial workers and most workers in transport and building. It was so powerful that the police and other emergency services had to ask the unions whenever they needed petrol.
There was no glorious period of Labour Party socialism, and never will be. It is a bosses’ party which at times of crisis is every bit as willing to attack the working class as the Tories. Some of the left in the Labour Party, unable to avoid it’s rotten record, will put their hope in some future Labour government led by the ‘left’. Their hopes are as futile as those who see a majority Labour government led by socialists bringing in socialism in Ireland.
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French Workers Take on their bosses
The strike wave that rocked France in the closing month of 1995 is yet another example of the great fighting spirit of the French working class. Yet when we look at the causes of the strike and the relative weakness of French workplace organisation the question that emerges is ‘if they can do it, why can’t we’?
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RTS on Baggot St. a great success
Sundays (Sept 22nd 2002) Reclaim the Streets was a great success. Over 1,000 people took part in the four-hour party. Despite attempts by the Gardai to whip up a panic because the organisers refused to meet with them in advance of the party the day was trouble free and very good humoured.
Today for the first time since 1918 the population of Ireland, north and south are going to the polls. The questions are somewhat different in the two jurisdictions but they amount to the same thing, acceptance or rejection of the Stormont ‘peace’ deal.
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Sectarianism deepens in North
The results of the 2001 Life and Times survey in the north of Ireland confirm that sectarian attitudes are spreading and deepening. In 1998 we warned that
"the structures proposed in the [Good Friday] agreement actually institutionalise sectarian divisions. Politicians elected to the proposed Assembly must declare themselves either ‘unionist’ or ‘nationalist’ – those who refuse will not have their votes counted in measuring the cross community support necessary for passing legislation. We are supposed to line up behind Catholic/Green or Protestant/Orange banners and seek the best deal for ‘our community’. The concept of working class interests is not even considered".
Monday 23rd July 2001 saw two separate demonstrations take place outside the Italian embassy on Northumberland Road. Both had been called to protest the savage repression of the anti – G8 Protests in Genoa.
May Day (2001) saw a very successful and well attended demonstration that forced the Dublin Stock Exchange to shut early. Some 300 protesters joined a demonstration called by Globalise Resistance which blocked the street outside the exchange.