Limerick Solidarity with Irish Ferries workers!!!

limerick | worker & community struggles and protests | news report Saturday December 10, 2005 17:35 by St.John

Great demonstration in Limerick yesterday against the crazy Irish Ferries debacle, loadsa folks from all walks of life in the march, biggest one I've ever seen down here

To be honest, I was afraid that the whole thing was gonna be a bit of a damp squib, with just a few union heads around the place, but when I arrived at ten to one it was already obvious that it was gonna be big, Hartstonge St. was thronged, and there were banners from all sorts of unions, groups, parties etc -- nice one to the BATU (Building and Trade Workers Union) for the Connolly and Lenin posters, and the land for the people slogans, fair play!!!

And fair play to the unions for getting people out, though I don't think they could have stopped us if they tried, this is just another bad episode in a long line of abuses of workers rights. I'm not a big fan, but like a few people have been saying, our strength united is so much more, lets concentrate on our commonalities rather than our differences for once!

Best moment of the protest for me was looking over my shoulder down O'Connell St, to see it stuffed with marchers, from top to bottom, and we're not talking about a slip street here. Saw somebody estimated 20 thou on this site, but I'd guess somewhere closer to 10-15,000, though it must be said I didn't get around to a head count and this is a pure guesstimate

One disappointment was the fact that there were feck all students around, I actually met more of my lecturers, which is really disappointing, again just have to emphasise people working towards "progressive" (and they're big inverted commas!) aims need to look to working together in a respectful and horizontal way

Speeches (way better than the usual, aside from the dodgy singing and the bling chair of the council of LimerickTU's) brought up the Limerick Soviet of 1919, and it's a nice analogy --there were a lot of very angry people on that march, lets hope it's a sprongboard to even better things

>>>Pictures to follow tomorrow>>>