Workers Solidarity no.1 – November 1984

The first issue of Workers Solidarity was published in November 1984, a few weeks after a small group of anarchists from Cork and Dublin had founded the Workers Solidarity Movement. Initially an 8 page A4 monthly, it later appeared as a 20 page magazine, then a 12 page A3 newspaper and currently as a folded A2 paper. Circulation in their first years ranged from 750 to 1,500. Sales were mostly in pubs on Friday evenings, street sales on Saturday afternoons, outside labour exchanges (the biggest regular sale was at the women’s labour in Cork), and at left events.

The WSM is part of the ‘platformist’ current within anarchism, http://anarchistplatform.wordpress.com.

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As befits a first issue, there is an article setting out the politics of the WSM. Others look at the British miners strike, free trade unions in Russia, the Dunnes Stores anti-apartheid strike, how the government managed to cut some some women’s dole payments while conceding equality, the connection between socialism and freedom, and the campaign for conjugal rights by anarchist prisoners Marie and Noel Murray.

The manic looking guy on page 4 is Dessie O’Malley, then Fianna Fail minister and later the leader of the Progressive Democrats. Dessie was very worried about “industrial subversives” at the time. Also of note is a letter from Poland and an advert for a WSM picket protesting about the Polish government’s export of coal to Britain during the miners’ strike.

Black Rag – February 1978

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Published from Belfast, with a few supporters in Dublin, it’s aim was to encourage “organising in small affinity (friendship) groups which cooperate in a non-hierarchical way and support individuals or small groups involved in direct action”. Its politics were feminist and there was a concentration on “oppressions” (prison conditions, drug laws, anti-gay laws). There was never a second issue but some of those involved joined the Belfast Anarchist Collective.

Amnesty International gets slated for doing little when anarchists (and ex-Official IRA members) Maire & Noel Murray were sentenced to death for the killing of a garda in Dublin during a bank raid. And in a review of an early Boomtown Rats gig, we see early indications of the Bob Geldorf we all know. “Then came the first of the many pseudo-intellectual lectures to the misguided audience who waited n every word. These varied from the complete overthrow of the system in Ireland to the fact that they wre not making enough money because of the response to their latest album. This sold only 175,000 copies that week.”