Hundreds march with Library workers in Cork against far-right intimidation

through the streets to Cork City Hall. On behalf of library staff, their union Forsa demanded that the City Council take decisive action and greater and more appropriate measures to protect health and safety in the workplace. One of the speeches on the day from a Forsa Library workers representative stated, “Workers rights are human rights, trans rights are human rights, women’s rights are human rights, migrants rights are human rights. The far-right wants to drag us back to a more misogynistic, less inclusive Ireland, but we will not go back”.

Pathetic counter-protest

By Marie-Claire Jennequin

ON FRIDAY, 7 July, in Cork City, Library workers found impressive support from other workers, young people and the LGBTQ+ community, with more than 500 people attending a protest against the harassment they have endured from the far-right. Alongside library workers, other city council workers and Forsa members gathered in solidarity to march to City Hall to demand action from the council.

Demands for safety

A small group of far-right activists have been interrupting library workers and library users, objecting to the presence of specific LGBTQ+ material available in the library. Library workers were subjected to offensive slurs and intimidation and were filmed against their wishes.

Cork City Council has failed to protect the health and safety of its employees. It has become clear to the workers that to have a safe workplace, they cannot depend on their employer and must get organised themselves. This is what led to this protest. To force their employer, Cork City Council, to ensure safe working conditions for the library staff.

Following speeches outside Cork City Library, the march proceeded

A small negligible counter-protest, attended by no more than 20 people, was powerless to disrupt the collective solidarity of the hundreds of workers marching for the safety and dignity of both workers and the LGBTQ+ community. However, their attempts to disrupt the workers’ protest demonstrate that these far-right groups are not only anti-LGBTQ+ but also anti-worker.

The impressive working-class mobilisation of the day indicates the general recognition that this issue extends far beyond library workers, one workplace, and one locality. It also demonstrates how we can, and need to, continue to organise and mobilise against the threat that the far right poses to us all.

RISHI SUNAK Recently came under fire after plans he allegedly masterminded for new school guidance were leaked to the public.

Sunak’s new guidance would exclusively target trans students and would allegedly ban using a trans student’s name, pronouns and preferred uniform without receiving the parents’ written consent. It also permits teachers and other students to refuse to use a trans student's name and pronouns, even if the trans student has the “official” go-ahead. Even more galling though, is that a school head can deny a student the right to socially transition at school if they believe it would have a “negative effect on the rest of the students”. Perhaps the most cruel, openly hateful element of the new guidance, however, is that students who have socially transitioned would be banned from competitive sports, even if they have parental and school approval.

Critics of the guidance have drawn comparisons to the Thatcher era Section 28, a previously overturned law which outlawed any schools or teachers which “promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality" or "promote the teaching…of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship".

These comparisons aren’t actually all that accurate. They are similar in that they are a targeted attack on LGBTQ+ people. These new guidelines would go further in attacking trans people than section 28 ever did. Section 28 didnt mandate that queer students be outed to potentially dangerous families and it didn’t ban queer students from participating in school activities.

Sunak’s new guidance doesn’t come from a place of caution or common sense; it is draconian, hateful, and dangerous. If this guidance becomes practice, trans students will die. Trans youth are already attempting suicide in alarming numbers, and if the institutions where they spend most of their lives are not only allowed but encouraged to discriminate against them, then that number will rise.

If students are permitted to view their trans peers as less than them, then transphobic violence in schools will increase, and there likely be another

Brianna Ghey

We need to be ready to fight like hell if this law is passed; most students don’t have hate like this in their hearts, and we need to be prepared to push for a struggle against this hatred, both from an external level through traditional means, and internal by providing students with guidance and materials on how to combat this from inside their schools. No pride for some of us without liberation for all of us.” - Marsha P Johnson.