Emergency gas flaring has had to take place at the Corrib refinery because unscented gas was allowed into the national grid. Terence Conway of Shell to Sea reports from the gates of the refinery in the video.

Sci-fi is a genre that I’ve never been able to get into and have never had the desire to change this. I find myself in the strange position now, however, of wishing I was some kind of sci-fi expert so that I could easily find a term for something that is half alive and half ghost. If there were such a term I’d use it to personify catholic Ireland, an institution that is still alive but dying with a ghost that wields most of its power.

Catholic Ireland was a violent, brutal regime that existed – among many other reasons - to dehumanise, torture and inflict as much pain as possible on women. The church sexualised us from no age through instilling notions of modesty and chastity in us. They then shamed us and hid us away when we did have sex and the evidence was there to prove it. While in hiding they tortured us in laundries and traumatised us in Mother and Baby Homes.

The 1803 rebellion followed only five years after the rebellion of 1798.  1798 involved tens of thousands under arms, rising across the country over months and the liberation of parts of Wexford, Wicklow and Waterford for long enough for a republic to be declared.  It was smashed by the British empire with great brutality directed at those under arms but also the civilian populations.  As many as 30,000 may have died.

Despite this Robert Emmet who was the brother of one of the 1798 leaders reorganised and with Thomas Russell and others attempted another rebellion in 1803. 

Ask yourself a question.

A relative, a friend, a neighbour, a co-worker or a stranger on a bus says to you that they were pregnant but exercised their right to choose and secured a termination. Would you then imprison them for 14 years? If you wouldn’t jail someone for exercising their right to choose, would you want to be associated in any way with their jailors?

If the answer to the above is ‘no’, then you might consider joining the 6th Annual March for Choice will take place in Dublin this Saturday, 30th September. We anarchists of the Workers Solidarity Movement will be assembling with thousands of other pro-choice people at the Garden of Remembrance on Parnell Square from 1.30pm, before we march on Dáil Éireann at 2pm.