💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › workers-solidarity-movement-for-starters.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 14:53:07. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Title: For starters
Author: Workers Solidarity Movement
Date: 1988
Language: en
Topics: Workers Solidarity, Workers Solidarity Movement
Source: Retrieved on 9th October 2021 from http://struggle.ws/ws88_89/ws28_starters.html
Notes: Published in Workers Solidarity No. 28 — Summer 1988.

Workers Solidarity Movement

For starters

WE ARE BACK. It is almost a year since the last issue of Workers

Solidarity and you want to know what happened. Ireland has little or no

anarchist tradition so rather than just learning from those who went

before us we had to make a fair few mistakes while we were developing

our politics and building the Workers Solidarity Movement. The biggest

mistake we made was putting too much emphasis on day-to-day activities

at the expense of achieving a deeper and clearer understanding of the

anarchist idea &emdash; it’s libertarian values as well as its socialist

goal.

Since our formation in 1984 we gained a measure of understanding and

respect for anarchism in the trade union and left wing circles where our

members were active. We made information about anarchism a bit easier to

find by publishing pamphlets and a monthly paper. We took part in

industrial and political struggles such as the Dunnes Stores

anti-apartheid strike, the Divorce Action Group, the UCD cleaners fight

for trade union rights, and the pro-abortion rights “Defend the Clinics

Campaign”.

Unfortunately some members found it difficult to come to terms with the

temporary lull in the momentum of the class struggle that we have seen

in the last few years. Instead they started looking for short cuts to

socialism and eventually rejected anarchism. When they resigned the

remaining members decided to take a good look at what had happened and

to learn from the mistakes we had made. After much discussion we

identified much of what went wrong and now are in a position to step up

our level of activity.

With our, temporarily, reduced numbers it would be quite a task to

continue producing and selling a monthly paper. So Workers Solidarity

has become a quarterly magazine. With the extra pages we hope to be able

to go into issues in more depth. However we will not be able to cover

current issues to anything like the same extent as before, what is a

burning issue now may not be in three months time and some of the

information would be pretty stale.

The main aim of the magazine remains the same. It is not to throw out

the “correct line” and expect you to accept it unthinkingly. It is to

explain things, to win a “battle of ideas”. We know that genuine

socialism can not be created unless thousands upon thousands of people

understand how to change society and have a clear vision of the type of

society they want to live in. There is no way a tiny handful of

“experts” or leaders can substitute themselves for this.

We want Workers Solidarity to be part of the process of spreading

anarchist/socialist ideas and methods of struggle. We hope it will serve

as a “magnet” to attract readers to the WSM to join in the struggle for

socialism, freedom and human dignity.