The Social Forum movement will be in the news this Autumn: The second Irish Social Forum is planned for Dublin and Ken Livingstone and the GLC are about to invest at least ST£400,000 and a lot of time and effort supporting the European Social Forum the week after in London. Predictably neither event has avoided a generous helping of controversy on the side

On 15th - 17th October this year the European Social Forum will take place in London and between the Alexandar Palace and spaces booked in Camden and Bloomsbury up to 50,000 attendees can be catered for. There are plans underway to organise an Irish Social Forum the weekend before that, with a social evening, a thematic conference and a closing plenary switching between city centre locations and UCD. This will be the second ISF while the event in London, involving the Lord Mayor , the trade unions and the people behind the Stop the War campaign will be the third European Social Forum..

The Social Forums are difficult to pin down politically and in many ways that is their strength. Consistent with the Porto Allegre World Social Forum principles, the social forum doesn't make decisions or issue calls – this is left to the Assembly of Social Movements which have started to take place directly after the forum proper. The social movements in Florence two years ago called for the anti-war demonstrations on Feb 15th last year and in some ways could claim to be a voice for that 2nd superpower, civil society, that was spoken of at the time. By consciously challenging existing political forms and refusing to be a “locus of power” the Social Forum model has developed to provide a conference for the movement of movements.

I met the group of people who are organising the Irish Social Forum in Dublin a few weeks ago to discuss the upcoming event. The summer holidays deplete the numbers but the group has been meeting fairly consistently over the last year – forming a network that is now quite sizeable and can call on a certain infrastructural ability that you would normally associate with a much larger organisation. The range of participants was, as usual, impressive. Of course with a range like this there are going to be tensions and differences of emphasis – again, paradoxically part of the strength of the social forum.

UK Indymedia ESF Page
The Irish Social Forum Invite Individuals and Groups to get Involved
Wombles Critique of the ESF Process
Most Recent UK IMC Feature on the ESF
Open ESF Site
Official ESF Site
All the Backstage ESF Drama from the Weekly Worker

Two journalists from Indymedia went to meet Ray O'Reilly from the Independent Workers Union, along with a couple of IWU members who work in Dublin Bus. This article covers part of that interview, the discussion on the Irish Trade Union movement and its constituent parts.

"Your job is yours as a right." To read this in a trade union statement makes you feel like it must be labour history, not a letter drafted by the IWU to be sent to the Aer Lingus Workers about their current predicament. And yet Ireland's youngest union is the one that was smart enough to register the internet domain: union.ie and the letter is up on their website. They have overcome the main legal hurdle to establishing a viable trade union (a negotiating license) and have an evangelical belief in trade unionism that expresses itself in language that comes straight from the 19th century proletariat that gave birth to the movement. Ray talks of "...restoring the Trade Union movement as the organised arm and voice of working people."

There is another funny thing about the IWU - When asked why they are different from other unions they talk of their principles as if they were a creed that was in danger of being lost. Anybody who has been following the Irish trade Union movement's squabbles over the last few years, especially ILDA's struggle for representation, will see the reason for the particular list of principles. But from the outside it reads like an indictment of the labour movement that these have become principles that differentiate one union from the rest. Surely the right to free association, the openness and transparency of the unions, the primacy of members decision making are going to be part of any trade union's core principles? Article continues here . . .

Audio Clips of Interview

• arm and voice - 16 seconds - 250k • I believe - 1 min 16 seconds - 1.2mb • IWU and Congress - 59 seconds - 937kb • In their place - 1 m 12s - 1.1mb • Indentured Servants - 16 seconds 263kb • SIPTU - 1 m 36s 1.5mb

Related Articles on Indymedia

• IWU Charter • Organising home helps in Cork • Inaugural IWU Conference • IWU members victimised in Dublin Bus
Blind Alley of the IWU A response to the article by Liberty Hall Langer

Other Background Material

• IWU Website • SIPTU website • Labour History of Ireland Archive • Irish Labour History Society