Links for Workers Solidarity Movement

[electionlit]

Workers Solidarity Movement Site (http://www.wsm.ie/)

The old WSM site (http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/wsm.html)

Solidarity Books in Cork (http://www.solidaritybooks.org/)

WSM on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers_Solidarity_Movement)

WSM on IELB (http://irishelectionliterature.wordpress.com/category/workers-solidarity-movement/)

[C. Flower]

An interesting analysis of the history of the WSM, its influences and development.

The issues on which the libertarian "Occupy" movement foundered - organisational effectiveness and ideological cohesion are explored. The article also explains the origins of the explicitly socialist character of the WSM.

http://spiritofcontradiction.eu/bronterre/2012/08/16/the-wsm-a-political-analysis


Founded in 1984, the WSM was oriented towards socialism at a time when radical liberalism was particularly influential in British Anarchism, which was as culturally influential then as tendencies from the United States are today. Given the historical weakness of Irish socialism, let alone anarchism, the few precursors of which came out of the Official Republican Movement, this explicitly left ideological foundation served to ground the WSM throughout its history. The avowedly socialist orientation served to inoculate for a long-time against too great a penetration of the more individualist strains that have bedevilled Anarchism since the 1880s.


Not that the journey was plain sailing. Building any sort of socialist movement in what was still a fairly backward and underdeveloped country dominated by a highly religious and rural culture was always going to be an uphill task, one made harder by the lingering presence of a radical nationalist movement.

[Richardbouvet]

Does anyone know how the WSM can afford to pay for those glossy free mags they give out at demos?