A collectively agreed document on WSM publications as drawn up by National Conference Nov 2015

We are the crisis of Irish Water! We do not want to have our water commodified, metered, and privatised. We know why this is happening – to increase the wealth and privilege of a global financial capitalist class and their political servants in the EU and Ireland.

We refuse to bow to them. We have gotten up before dawn to stop water meter installation on our streets. We have organised meetings in our communities. We have marched in our thousands and in our hundreds of thousands, shouting “Enough!” and “No way, we won’t pay!” and “Shove your meters up your arse!” We are not just angry, we are determined. 

We have forced this government into climb-downs and concessions, and we will do the same to the next one. We have decided to boycott Irish Water. We are encouraging our friends, co-workers and neighbours to do the same. Our community of communities is strong and growing stronger. We will keep on growing. When we break Irish Water, we will clear the rubble and grow real solidarity, real co-operation and real community in its place.

The list of jobs to be done in Ireland is endless. Houses need to be built, roads need to be repaired, hospitals and schools need to be adequately staffed. At the same time large number of pople are looking for work but unabkle to find it. Why can't these jobs be given to those who want them?

Despite all the deadlines, threats and promises, government propaganda and hostile newspaper articles the non payment figure as of July 17th is a massive 57%. Hopefully this will encourage some of those who paid out of fear to join the boycott for the second bill.

The 1% Network was an attempt to create an anti-capitalist network in Ireland to fight austerity.  It arose after the unsuccessful attempt by Garda to prevent the anti-capitalist bloc march down to a Right to Work protest outside Dail Eireann. 

Homelessness in Ireland could be solved at a stroke by allowing people without homes to move into the 302,602 empty houses in the country.

That figure comes from the National Institute of Regional and Spatial Analysis. It's the equivalent of half the homes in Dublin, many of the vacants being in ghost estates that developers have been deliberately allowing to fall apart.

May 22nd offers an opportunity for many of us in Ireland to strike a blow against homophobia in voting for Marriage equality.

We find ourselves in Ireland facing a imminent referendum on marriage equality, which the hardline religious right are opposing as part of their program of maintaining multiple oppressions.

A No vote in that context would be disastrous, serving only to entrench homophobia. Therefore anarchists are campaigning for a Yes to Marriage Equality vote but beyond the need to ensure the referendum is not defeated this session of the 2015 Dublin Anarchist Bookfair asked what else needed to be said?

“Ours is a society in which, in every field, one group of people makes decisions, exercise control, limits choices, while the great majority have to accept these decisions, submit to this control and act within the limits of these externally imposed choices. Nowhere is this more evident than in the field of housing: one of those basic human needs which throughout history and all over the world people have satisfied as well as they could for themselves, using the materials what were at hand and their own, and their neighbors labor. The marvelously resourceful anonymous vernacular architecture of every part of the globe is a testimony to their skill, using timber, straw, grass, leaves, hides, stone, clay, bone, earth, mud sand even snow. Consider the igloo: maximum enclosure of space with minimum of labor. Cost of materials and transportation, nil. And all made of water. Nowadays, of course, the Eskimos live on welfare handouts in little northern slums. Man, as Habraken says “no longer houses himself: he is housed” – Colin Ward

Ever wonder why the Gardaí show up in large numbers when you’re trying to stop water meters in your estate, but haven’t got the resources to come straight out when you think your neighbour’s house is being burgled? If so, you’re thinking about the state.

Misconceptions & Reality

The most common misconception about anarchism is that it is in favour of ‘chaos’ or some sort of world generally devoid of order and democratic institutions which would leave us at the mercy of predators within our society. Therefore it aims for the destruction of civilisation and democracy itself, which in this view are represented by the state – the guarantor of peace, freedom, and of course, roads.