Join the Independent Workers Union

When one mentions the Trade Union Movement in Ireland, the names of Jim Larkin and James Connolly are always mentioned in the same breath. Why? Because they were there at the beginning of the movement, which changed the lives of many workers and their families in Ireland for the better, when others in society cared little.Now is your opportunity to get involved in this new movement for change, and like Larkin and Connolly, form the very begining. Get involved to the degree that your ideas will actually shape this new Trade Union.

A group of Irish Trade Unionist were convinced that the Trade Union Movement in its present structure in Ireland has lost its way, and had become nothing more than an arm of the state and management. Its function has become more to control workers rather than advance their interests. People had worked for many years to attempt to reform the movement from within, and apart from some minor victories, their efforts have been continuously stifled by the powers that be within the present Trade Union hierarchy. It is now fair to conclude that the existing Trade Unions cannot be reformed for the advance of the Irish worker. Hence the formation of the I.W.U.

Karl Marx: Capital (1867) The Manufacturers

What they demand is the complete and undisguised ascendancy of the Bourgeoisie, the open, official subjection of society at large under the laws of modern, Bourgeois production, and under the rule of those men who are the directors of that production. By ‘Free Trade’ they mean the unfettered movement of capital, freed from all political, national and religious shackles. The soil is to be a marketable commodity’ and the exploitation of the soil is to be carried on according to the common commercial laws. There are to be manufacturers of food as well as manufacturers of twist and cottons, but no longer any lords of the land. There are, in short, not to be tolerated any political or social restrictions, regulations or monopolies, unless they proceed from “the eternal laws of political economy,” that is, from the conditions under which Capital produces and distributes. First published in 1867