Front page article End Army Scabbery reproduced in full below introduction.
A nice find this, a copy of Class Struggle (the paper of the Irish Workers Group) from 1988, during the Dublin Fire Brigade strike. Up top there is an ad for a public meeting on the subject of ‘Gorbachev and the Irish Left’ and those wishing to subscribe to the paper are told to address their envelopes to a certain ‘J.Larkin’. The paper also features a lengthy piece on the situation in Palestine at the time.
The Irish Workers Group (Workers Power) emerged out of the Socialist Workers Movement in the 1970s.
” It was formed as a separate organisation after being expelled from that group in 1976. It affiliated to the League for the Fifth International (L5I). By the 2000s, it had ceased producing Class Struggle, its publication, instead distributing the publications of the Workers Power group in Britain. The group was active in several places in Ireland, notably Dublin, Derry and Galway, and, amongst others, published a book on James Connolly”
(sourced from Wikipedia)
This newspaper was handed to my father on route to a Union meeting in Liberty Hall during the dispute. I’ve always been intrigued by the strike for a variety of reasons. While troubles raged in the North for example, firemen from Derry stood outside Dublin firestations with signs proclaiming ‘Londonderry FBU Support Dublin Firefighters’. Despite media smear campaigns, the workers managed to hold some degree of popular support, and perhaps nothing was more poignant than the sight of relatives of Stardust fire victims supporting the Brigades workforce.
(Article from front page, on Fire Brigade strike)
End Army Scabbery!
Union officialdom gave lavish notice to the state before the fire strike to enable them to organise a complete alternative service for the capital. Hundreds of soldiers driving Civil Defence tenders and ambulances are now engaged in the most systematic military scabbing operation since the lengthy bus strike of five years ago.
Union officialdom in fact relies on the state to do precisely this so as to take the cutting edge off the workers’ own direct action, exhausting the strikes and making sellouts and compromises eaiser for them to engineer in their private negotiations. But the issue is too important to be left at this. Every time the state is let get away with army strike-breaking, a nail is hammered into the coffin for the organised working class.
The savage attacks of the ruling class that lie ahead in the increasingly unstabble conditions of capitalism demand that we begin to act now with the sharpest possible response to neutralise the strike breaking capacity of the state whose ultimate logic can carry it into armed assaults and internment of workers in severe cases.
Resolutions and public statements must be issued from every level of the trade union movement, attacking the army action and demanding all out union action to stop it. Anti working class actions of the kind by the bosses state have a significance vastly greater than the breaking of one particular strike. They add up to a question of life and death in the long run for the fighting ability of our class against capitalism, and they demand a militant class wide fight up to the level of indefinite general strike if neccessary.
Victory to the Firefighters!
For A National Firefighters Strike!
All Local Authority Workers Out Now In Support!
For National Trade Union Action To Break The Army Scabbery!
If you’re interested, I wrote an article on the Irish Workers Group for Irish Left Review last year, outlining its origins and ideology. Jim Larragy and Bernadette Barrington (both ex-members) left comments/clarifications.
http://www.irishleftreview.org/2009/10/29/irish-workers-group-1976-class-struggle/
Conor, fantastic! Thanks for posting that.
Out of general interest, do you have anything in your own collection relating to the 1988 DFB strike? I may try the Irish Labour History Museum soon. Beyond Class Struggle, there are meant to be a few An Phoblachts knocking about the attic but nothing more exciting than that.
I don’t have anything on that strike, and would you believe I don’t even remember it though I’m well old enough to be able to.
I’m just guessing here now but I reckon Militant might be ok for that strike. There’s a decent enough run of it in the national library. And I must pass you on the index I’ve done up of newspapers and periodicals in the Labour museum. It’s incomplete, but you might find it handy.
I’ve uploaded to Google Docs the provisional (March ’09) index to periodicals and newspapers in the Irish Labour History Museum.
http://tinyurl.com/ylz6luq
The museum is in the process of re-shelving everything so it might be a while until these are available, but just to give an idea of what’s there.
Thanks for that Conor.
Unfortunately I can’t seem to access the document though.
When I click the link, the following message appears:
“We’re sorry, matchgrams(at)gmail.com does not have permission to access this spreadsheet.
You are signed in as matchgrams(at)gmail.com, but that email address doesn’t have permission to access this spreadsheet. (Sign in as a different user or request access to this document)”
When I click “request access”, I get the following message:
“We’re sorry.
We’re sorry, a server error occurred. Please wait a bit and try again.”
Feck.
I’ve uploaded a web page version of it. Hopefully this’ll work.
http://www.irishlabour.com/dublinopinion/labour-museum-provisional-march2910.htm
Works for me!
Cheers again.
Reading over the list now.
I reckon the list contains about 40% of the museum’s newspapers and periodicals. It’s just what I’ve gotten around to indexing so far. There are hundreds of boxes left to check.
It really is some collection.
What a load of shit. Firemen gained nothing from this strike, only the loss of wages. this event was organised by the officers who saw the old promotional system being endangered. Promotion in the DFB came automatically, no matter how bright or, dumb a person was. Remember the ‘officer’ who could not read the drill manuals? Well I do!