Several hundred people took part in "A Spectacle Of Defiance And Hope" in Dublin on the night of Friday 10th December to protest the way the government have cut funding to vital community services. Janice Feighery a co-ordinator at an after school computer program for young people said “Community programmes are being devastated by the cuts. Our work with young people is strangled by lack of funds." The spectacle draws to a close the week of protests against the austerity budget.

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"They are literally ripping the heart out of our communities, out of our families and our society. People are sick and tired of hearing all of the bad press coverage. We have something that will appeal to you to get involved and may even be inspired to bring others along."
- From Community Workers' Cooperative

"The Spectacle’s participative, imaginative and heartfelt approach will demonstrate that there is another way to a more equal and a more just Ireland. The Spectacle says STOP this madness of punishing ordinary people for the mistakes of others."
- From Claiming Out Future

"There will be no speeches only street theatre, music , chants, defiance and hope!"
- From rade.ie

The death has occurred in London of Bob Doyle, the last surviving Irish soldier of the XV International Brigade of the Spanish Republican Army. Bob, whose health had been failing for some time had survived a recent double heart attack, before passing peacefully last night surrounded by his family. He was a few weeks short of his 93rd birthday.

Bob's career as an political activist has been recorded in his book Brigadista, which recounted his early life in Dublin as a Republican volunteer and later as a member of the Republican Congress, prior to his abortive first attempt to fight against Franco in July 1937, which saw him stow away on a ship to Valencia.

On his return to London (which he was to make his home for the remainder of his life) Bob contacted the CP and arrived in Spain by the more usual route, walking over the Pyrenees in a group of 15 volunteers, including the writer Laurie Lee. Bob was given basic military training and promoted quickly due to his aptitude and experience. Assigned to a training base behind the lines, Bob disobeyed orders and left with a detachment of British volunteers to take part in the second battle of Belchite in February 1938. He was captured at Calaciete with Frank Ryan and survived the concentration camp of San Pedro, before being released in a prisoner exchange in February 1939.

Bob joined the merchant navy on the outbreak of the second world war, where he received a medical discharge for an ulcer. He spent the remainder of the war as a firewatcher on the roof of the CP offices in central London.

He threw himself into political activity after the war and was one of the Communist leaders of a major printworkers' strike in 1959 and the fight for a 40 hour week. Bob was also undertaking more dangerous work, frequently travelling to Franco's Spain helping to organise the underground unions there.

Bob was an unusual Communist. This writer first encountered him in London during a Poll Tax demonstration, dressed in a top hat and tails. Bob was to be seen on many demonstrations in London throughout this period for a variety of causes and was not shy of confrontation with the bosses or the police. Bob was also a firm advocate of the legalisation of cannabis and was an enthusiastic grower of the herb in his north London greenhouse.

More recently, Bob has been in involved with Spanish Civil War commemorations both here in Ireland and in Spain and he was due to accept honorary Spanish citizenship in the coming months. He hadn't taken up an offer extended several years ago from the Zapatero government as it would have required giving up his Irish citizenship in exchange. Under a new law, however, non-Spaniards are entitled to retain their original citizenship.

Bob attended his last commemoration at Jarama last February where he delivered a a speech fired with passion and anger attacking global capital and the hold it still has on the world.

Bob's funeral arrangements are to be announced next week.

No Pasarán

'I am here to make you boil with anger; the powers that supported Franco in Spain are still active, and today their reach is global': Report on Speech by Bob Doyle - September 2006

Some History of Irish Involvement in the International Brigades is Here.
Previous Indymedia Obituary of International Brigades Veteran James Maley.
Homage to an Anti-Fascist: Michael O'Riordan RIP.
Indymedia Article Marking 70th Anniversary of the Connolly Column

NOTE: Indymedia Ireland invite those with memories of, or reminiscences about, Bob Doyle to use this page as a virtual tribute. We will endeavour to, after a period, print the page out and present it to his family.

“Anyone passing Roxboro in the last 8 weeks will have seen the workers from Curran Aluiminium standing outside on the Picket Line in the worst of weather conditions. “

So starts the blog entry on Cheebah which is entitled “Striking a Blow”. It links to the same video that is embedded here on indymedia which has started to meander through the Irish blogosphere. Running at 4'45'' the Polish language piece with English subtitles has the story told by Grzegorz Romanski, Robert Grabowski, Marek Witomski and Robert Sawlewicz – some of the workers standing on that picket line.

While the Irish Times tells us 33% of Poles may return home - or at least gives recruitment firm CPL an advertorial to say so - we see that Grzegorz anyway intends to stay, as he is "fascinated by this country".The roll call at the end of this well constructed and informative video are our workmates and neighbours, members of our class who are currently being scapegoated and attacked. When Robert Sawlewicz ends the video by bluntly reminding us he is on the dole, he and his comrades are joined by more than 277,000 others. The SIPTU members in Curran Aluminium are standing on a picket line in Dublin fighting for the right to good jobs in Ireland, the right to be represented by their union, the right to decent, legally compliant terms and conditions. We should remember - the video may be in Polish but this struggle is all of ours.

Apparently the workers are back in the Labour Court on Friday - but the company has already ignored one labour court hearing that went against them so this dispute is likely to have a bit yet to run. While Country Tom and the Construction Industry Federation are happy to rip up social partnership agreements nationally - Curran Aluminium won't even accept the right of their workers to be repesented. And their own representatives in IBEC are happy to fight on their behalf to help them deny these workers the right to representation. Remember, in the current economic climate the only partnerships that matter will be those between workers of all types as they form strong unions.

The Harp, January 1908. Consider, oh, my compatriots, what this implies! That Polack, whose advent into the workshop you are taught to view with such disfavor, if you could trace his ancestry back a few hundreds of years perhaps you would find for him an Irish ancestor who charged by the side of Hugh O’Neill on that fateful day when the English flag went down in disaster at the Yellow Ford.
............
But, you ask me, why this thusness? What has all this to do with Socialism? My dear friend, this is a lecture on Internationalism. Didn’t you notice it before? It is a lecture written in characters of blood and fire in Irish history; a lecture on the mingling and merging and therefore on the oneness and unity of all the races of mankind.
Link to Original Lecturing Article

Reporting on Indymedia this evening, Andrew from the Workers Solidarity Movement (disguised as personal capacity) drew lessons from the large crowds who marched to Merrion Square in the bright and crisp December day.

How about a system where production is organised to meet people’s needs, where it would be regarded as insanity to have building workers idle while others go without adequate housing, where the idea of paying farmers not to grow food while hunger is still a daily reality in much of the world would be seen as immoral. This can only work when the means of producing and distributing wealth are owned in common, by all of society. That’s the meaning of socialism.
How about a system that takes socialism and freedom to be of equal value? One where people can do as they wish so long as they don’t interfere with freedom of others? One where you can have a direct say in making the decisions that will affect you? One where control is in the hands of the majority through democratic assemblies and councils? That’s anarchism.

Along with the anarchists reporting from the streets of Dublin, the Irish Republican Socialist Party informed us that both the IRSP and the masses of ordinary people made up a crowd of 50,000. Perhaps what we are seeing.....

...... will require the participation of many of our work colleagues, neighbours and friends. It is about the majority rejecting control over us by any minority group (whether it be employers or politicians). If we want the interests of the vast majority to be respected, then the vast majority must be in control.

Whatever, the anarchists and republicans were definitely along with the rest of us in learning something from na muinteoirí (teachers for our non-gaeilgeoir readers) today. Despite his intention to try and ignore our first answer and come back within a year with the same treaty for us to ratify the Offaly gentlemen currently holding the seal of Taoiseach (chieftan for the non-gaeilgeoir) will give up easy. You've always been thought to respect the elderly - now they're worth emulating.

Reports below the fold - add your own with the publish button. Add your photos and set your rights unlike most other sites.

Thousands protested outside the Dáil against the government's education cutbacks.

Related Links: Protest Against Education Cuts | Green Party Sponsor Garden for Private School in Cork | It'll Be a Winter of Discontent - The Old and the Young Arrived at the Dáil | Int. Day of Action (Nov. 5th) Against Commercialisation of Education