As part of the global climate strike about 25 thousand students marched through the center of Dublin city. This was one of many demonstrations that took place around Ireland, even the small dormitory towns around Dublin like Maynooth had their own demonstrations. So the actual numbers protesting in Ireland was probably in the region of 40,000.  In this piece Andrew looks at how collective action can halt Climate Breakdown using the example of the need for transport to illustrate why individual consumer choices cannot fix things.

 The vote to remove the ban on abortion from the Irish constitution in May 2018 was overwhelmingly carried, with almost 2 out of every 3 voters voting Yes remove the ban. The margin of victory was such that some post-referendum polemics made the mistake of arguing that victory was always inevitable, that the campaign didn’t matter. Such arguments tended to be made by opinion writers who never liked the Repeal campaign and in some cases published pieces during the campaign arguing that unless whatever aspect they disliked was dropped the referendum would be lost.

I wrote the following text in November 2012 to have ready in case a smear campaign directed at the freshly renewed pro-choice movement in Ireland gained any real traction beyound the media stories mentioned below. I didn't publish it at the time as it failed to get traction and thus this would, at best, have been a distraction from the organising work being done, work that was going to succeed in a few short years in overturning Ireland's ban on abortion access through the Repeal referendum in May 2018.   The smear was built around an email I had sent as rumours of the death of a women having died in a Galway hopital after being denied an abortion spread amongst pro-choice activists and was basically just me proposing we have a meeting to organise a protest if this turned out to be true and the family did not object.  My main concern was that the anti-choice activists and their pet journalists would work out who I was and concoct a weird conspiracy story through misrepresenting my long activity as an anarchist in Ireland and elsewhere in a somewhat similar fashion to the way they has used the involvement of individual republicans to smear Shell to Sea a few years previously.

This video shows all of the 2018 March for Choice pass down the quays in Dublin.  This year we had won the refrendum but much is left to fight for in terms of the details of the legislation and standing down the inevotable anti-choice attempts that will be made once the lefislation comes in to intimidate doctors,  as welll as women and pregnant who will finally be able to access free, safe and legal abortion in Ireland. [video]

As many as 10,000 people took part in the Stand for Truth rally yesterday, and marched in complete silence to the site of the last Magdalene Laundry to close on Sean MacDermott street [video].  In effect this was a counter protest to the Papal Rally taking place uptake road in the Phoenix park in the aftermath of Pope Francis pretending not to know about the institutions while talking to selected survivors.  In fact he met Philomena Lee in the Vatican in 2014, the Irish Times reporting at the time that afterwards, Ms Lee said: “I hope and believe that his Holiness Pope Francis joins me in the fight to help the thousands of mothers and children who need closure on their own stories.”

In May five houses on Summerhill Parade in Dublin were evicted on almost no notice with some 120 people being thrown on the street.  All were owned by the same landlord who in order to make super profits had packed people in, 6-8  to a room, charging them 350-450 each  per month for space on a bunkbed.  Last night, August 7th, as part of a direct action month around housing people marched from the GPO to Summerhill and occupied No 35.[see video]

At the start of the referendum campaign in March, I took this photograph showing the poster image of Savita, who died because of the 8th amendment, and in the background a huge billboard with a CGI / cartoon of what is meant to be an 11 week old foetus.  Both have the common slogan ‘one of us’ - the photograph invites us to consider if the life of this 31-year-old woman of colour, who was denied a life-saving abortion, really has the same value as an anonymous and unknown 11-week-old foetus.

This is the question we will be voting on this Friday, indeed beyond that we are voting on whether a doctor who gives a life-saving abortion in a Savita-like case should have the threat of a 14-year jail sentence hanging over them - as the 2013 law lays down - whether any of the hundreds of pregnant people taking abortion pills at home in Ireland should be doing so under the risk of that 14-year sentence.  That is the law as it stands - to change it, the 8th must be repealed.

This seemingly bizarre tweet from a No campaign leader in their attempt to prevent the repeal of the anti-women 8th amendment gives a few things away about their ideological mind set.

It read "Referendum will repeal our property rights. Ignore the fact the the Goverenment then plans to pass a law nationalising half the housing stock. #8thref #refcom @morningireland"

On Saturday one of our photographers was assaulted and threatened at the ‘No’ campaigns’ anti-choice Rally for Life.  He wasn’t injured and although his camera was punched (see video) no damage was done but this is yet another example of how the No campaign, having failed to make any impact in the polls, are becoming nastier in their desperation.

The ‘Love Both’ anti-choice rally itself was very poorly attended, attracting around 1500 people.  The feeling in the crowd was one of tiredness and demoralisation with a few people even admitting out loud that the turnout was miserable.  Radical Queers Resist were holding a small silent counter protest opposite the entrance to the rally so after counting the crowd we headed over to this.

In a pattern all to common across rural Ireland hundreds of Yes posters were torn down in an organised fashion by what had to be No activists across Country Cork last night.  This anti-democratic rage typifies the No campaign which has has so much wealth that it is printing 10 No posters to every Yes.  All across Ireland the few Yes posters there are to distribute have been torn down, in one case we have heard of in the west they have even been discovered in the houses of No campaigners.  This is ahead of the May 25th referendum to remove the article of the Irish constitution that equates the life of a women with that of a foetus.