Sunday’s elections in Germany reveal an enormous
shift within the electorate. Of particular importance is the
massive decline of the SPD vote, mirrored by a huge increase in support
for DIE LINKE which stands to its left. The victory of the right-wing
parties means the German capitalists are preparing for an offensive
against the biggest and most powerful working class in Europe.
Between
Wednesday 23
and Friday 25
of September, supporters of Socialist Appeal could be found running a
stall outside the University of Leeds – bringing the ideas of
Marxism onto the campus. The comrades sold 24 copies of the new
Socialist
Appeal
all-colour paper over the three days as well as other literature
Nearly two decades ago. Robert Maxwell – former Labour MP, newspaper
tycoon and (so it turned out) conman died after ‘falling’ off his luxury
boat. Soon after all the scandals he was involved in were revealed to
an amazed world. He was living a great big lie and – worst of all – it
was at the expense of those former and then-current employees of the
Maxwell-owned Mirror Group who discovered that their pension fund had been milked dry by Maxwell.
Northern Ireland: A recent paper on the public spending of
the Stormont Executive confirms that cuts are on the way, which will hit
jobs and services. How will this affect the delicate political balance set up
by the Good Friday Agreement?
You
couldn’t make it up! About two years ago the banks in Britain, the USA and all over the world began to
go bust. It started over here with Northern Rock and culminated in the USA with the
collapse of the giant Lehman Brothers, the biggest corporate bankruptcy in
history. The problem for governments was that the banks were threatening to
take whole chunks of the capitalist system over the precipice with them. The
banking collapse and the ‘credit crunch’ were the triggers for a general crisis
of capitalism.
Nowhere is the chasm between leadership and rank and file more seemingly unbridgeable than in
the student movement. In 2009, students in the UK have spontaneously occupied
universities to protest at Israel’s
war on Gaza, to
fight against deportations of university cleaning staff, and against massive
cuts in teaching staff. At the same time, they face the worst attacks on their conditions
in living memory in the form of increasing fees, the end of grants, and the
vanishing jobs market. This is clearly an explosive combination.
The London School Students Union have dropped us a line to say that as
of yesterday (Thursday), the UCU strike at Tower Hamlets is over – the
management have capitulated and the lecturers’ demands have been met!
After a month of solid striking, which has seen strong daily pickets,
widespread and heartfelt support and large community demonstrations,
they won the dispute.
Following a widescale and carefully orchestrated police operation
aimed at disrupting ‘dissident republican’ activity and two nights of
rioting in Lurgan, it would appear that the north of Ireland’s social
peace has not been in such a fragile state since the signing of the
Good Friday Agreement eleven years ago.
The present world crisis of capitalism means we have entered a new
period in which the workers will face a situation of permanent
austerity, with cuts in welfare and attacks on working conditions. This
is already having a radicalising affect on millions of workers and
youth, particularly in Latin America and other underdeveloped parts of
the world and it is spreading to the advanced countries also. Alan Woods continues his review (given at a meeting in Europe last month) of the unfolding crisis of world capitalism, (Click here to read part one)
Yesterday morning police and army
forces violently attacked thousands of supporters of Honduran president
Mel Zelaya and removed them violently from outside the Brazilian
embassy in the capital Tegucigalpa. However, this brutal repression did
not crush the will of the Honduran working people to resist against the
coup. Following the lead given by the National Front of Resistance,
there were mass demonstrations and barricades in all of the working
class neighbourhoods of the capital and in the main cities throughout
the country. Jorge Martin from www.marxist.com continues his analysis of the unfolding events in Honduras.
Cuts, cuts and even more cuts. This is the
message now being shouted by the leaderships of the Tories, the
Liberal-Democrats and – disgracefully – Labour. Indeed they are all trying to
outdo each other in presenting ever more severe programmes of public spending
cutbacks as part of what has been called a ‘race to the bottom’ on the part of
the three parties.
Yesterday morning it was confirmed
that Mel Zelaya was in the capital of Honduras, Tegucigalpa. He made an appeal to
the people to come out to protect him. The masses responded by the tens
of thousands. The next few hours will be decisive. The balance of
forces is on the side of the masses. They can deal the last blow to the
coup regime and start the building of a new political regime based on
the organisation of the masses.