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Title: For starters (WS45)
Author: Workers Solidarity Movement
Date: 1995
Language: en
Topics: Ireland, Mexico, Chechnya, Workers Solidarity
Source: Retrieved on 26th November 2021 from http://struggle.ws/ws95/start45.html
Notes: Published in Workers Solidarity No. 45 — Summer 1995.

Workers Solidarity Movement

For starters (WS45)

THE DUBLIN GOVERNMENT has finally agreed to pay outstanding social

welfare money owed to 70,000 married women. An average £3,900 is to be

paid to each woman, 75% to be paid in August & December with the

remainder over the following eighteen months.

A European Community directive ordered that discrimination in social

welfare be ended by December 1984. Up to then unemployed married women

got almost £5 less than men and their benefit ran out out three months

earlier. Married women were also completely barred from claiming

Unemployment Assistance.

The Womens Dole Campaign was set up to oppose this inequality. More

recently ‘Married Women for Equality’ and the Free Legal Advice Centres

carried on the fight. More than a decade later the government says it is

going to pay its debts. [Imagine if you tried to put off paying the rent

or mortgage for over 10 years!]

Mexican protest

The saga of the Zapatistas took a new turn when a major international

bank called on the Mexican government to wipe out the rebels before any

more loans are given. “The government will need to eliminate the

Zapatistas to demonstrate their effective control of the national

territory and of security policy”. This was the advice of Chase

Manhattan Bank on January 13^(th).

Countries, such as Mexico, which depend on the International Monetary

Fund and international bank loans, are continually being dictated to

about their public spending policies. But it is rare to find such clear

evidence about the control that is exerted.

Within two weeks the government had launched an offensive against the

EZLN rebels. It failed. All it ‘achieved’ was a massive devaluation of

the peso, meaning a lower standard of living for the working class and

the poor.

News came from Mexico that suspects were being tortured. Amnesty

International reported that it had “documented widespread human rights

violations in the context of this conflict, including summary execution

of prisoners, extensive use of torture, and ‘disappearances’ perpetrated

by the Mexican army”. Despite this widespread use of torture, the Group

of Seven (G7) most powerful countries in the world approved loans to

Mexico of $47.8 billion last February.

All over the world protests were organised against Chase Bank. In Dublin

they have a branch in that haven for tax evaders, the Financial Services

Centre. The local WSM organised an ad-hoc ‘Stop the Torture in Mexico

Committee’ to provide a neutral banner under which a protest could be

organised. A lunchtime picket was placed on Chase and staff were

leafletted about their employers support for repression.

Murder in Chechnya

In January Workers Solidarity Movement members also responded to calls

to protest against the assault on Chechnya, when they got together with

other socialists and placed a picket on the Russian embassy in Dublin’s

Orwell Road. About 25 braved the rain to leave the Russian government’s

representatives in no doubt about the way their invasion of Chechnya and

bombing attacks on civilians are viewed here.

The Moscow regime’s lies had been exposed when they claimed only

“military targets” were being hit. Reporters in Grozny described and

filmed massive civilian fatalities. A letter handed in to the ambassador

accused the Russian army of “indiscriminate slaughter of the civilian

population” and expressed our solidarity with the Russian army

conscripts who are refusing to fight and are deserting from the army.

We give no support to the former Chechen government (a collection of

gangsters every bit as bad as Yeltsin’s lot). Our support goes to the

ordinary people who have a burning desire to be free of occupation

forces, poverty and the horrors of war.