Bin Tax Blockades - Day 2
No Bin Tax | 12.09.2003 01:31
For a second day residents have blockaded bin trucks into their estates in North and West Dublin. The local authority (Fingal County Council) has been attempting to withdraw the bin collection service from non-payers of the unjust bin tax. After two days of total disruption, the Council has sought a court injunction.
Again the residents and anti-bin tax activists met with total success in grounding the Councils's bin trucks. Almost no bins have been collected in North and West Dublin for two days.
Residents will not give in to the establishment's attempt to bully them. They know that the bin tax is an attempt to shift the burden of taxation even further onto ordinary working class people and away from the rich and the big corporations. If this tax is accepted it will go up every year and then an attempt will be made to reintroduce a water tax, another regressive flat-rate local tax.
Not only that, inevitably the acceptance of a bin tax will be followed by the privatisation of the service as has already happened in a number of towns in Ireland.
Residents across Dublin have been taking part in a campaign of mass non-payment for a number of years. The attempt by Fingal Council to withdraw the service from non-payers is an attempt to break the campaign.
The blockades have the Council running scared. On the one occasion where the Gardai (police) tried to move residents out of the way on Wednesday they were faced down. The Council has turned to the courts and now has a temporary injunction against 15 named anti-bin tax activists, ordering them to cease disrupting bin collections.
According to news reports, the 15 include local Socialist Party TD (member of parliament) Joe Higgins and two local Socialist Party Councillors, Ruth Coppinger and Clare Daly.
When the blockades resume tomorrow it is likely that the Gardai will carry out a number of arrests and they may use force to try to clear the blockades.
Activists in the other three Dublin local authority areas have already begun to take solidarity action with lobbies of bin truck depots. From tomorrow, solidarity blockades are planned in parts of the corporation area.
Residents will not give in to the establishment's attempt to bully them. They know that the bin tax is an attempt to shift the burden of taxation even further onto ordinary working class people and away from the rich and the big corporations. If this tax is accepted it will go up every year and then an attempt will be made to reintroduce a water tax, another regressive flat-rate local tax.
Not only that, inevitably the acceptance of a bin tax will be followed by the privatisation of the service as has already happened in a number of towns in Ireland.
Residents across Dublin have been taking part in a campaign of mass non-payment for a number of years. The attempt by Fingal Council to withdraw the service from non-payers is an attempt to break the campaign.
The blockades have the Council running scared. On the one occasion where the Gardai (police) tried to move residents out of the way on Wednesday they were faced down. The Council has turned to the courts and now has a temporary injunction against 15 named anti-bin tax activists, ordering them to cease disrupting bin collections.
According to news reports, the 15 include local Socialist Party TD (member of parliament) Joe Higgins and two local Socialist Party Councillors, Ruth Coppinger and Clare Daly.
When the blockades resume tomorrow it is likely that the Gardai will carry out a number of arrests and they may use force to try to clear the blockades.
Activists in the other three Dublin local authority areas have already begun to take solidarity action with lobbies of bin truck depots. From tomorrow, solidarity blockades are planned in parts of the corporation area.
No Bin Tax
Homepage:
http://www.socialistparty.net/bintax/index.htm
