Forty years ago, in 1972, Britain faced a sharp and qualative change and
teetered on the verge of a general strike for the first time in nearly
50 years. A wave of factory occupations and sit-ins had swept the
country. More than 23 million days were lost in strike action,
excluding 4 million lost through political strikes. Only once, in the
revolutionary year of 1919, was the number of days lost greater.
David Hopper, General Secretary of the Durham Miners Association, looks back at the remarkable life of ‘Bob’ Smillie as he reviews a new book on this pioneer of the movement.
A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of capitalist crisis.
Events are moving at lightning speed. This slow-motion train wreck has
suddenly speeded up. Each day we come closer to a Greek default and its
exit from the euro. Squeezed by foreign bankers, demanding their pound
of flesh, ordinary Greek people are being pushed to the limit. They are
being reduced to a state of wretchedness and indignity.
In the May elections, workers delivered a sound hammering to the
Coalition parties and made very clear what they thought of them and
their policies.
With two-thirds of its work force in
the rural sector, Bangladesh’s agriculture contributes just 19 percent
to its GDP. Sixty-six percent of exports are from the garment industry
that makes it the third largest clothes exporting country in the world.
It is perhaps the cheapest and most profitable place for garment
manufacturers. However, the conditions of the workers, mainly women, are
atrocious.
Over the past two weeks, the student
strike in Quebec has entered a new stage. What originally began as a
strike against a 75% increase in tuition fees has rapidly progressed
into a movement against the Liberal government itself. Premier Jean
Charest’s government has clumsily fallen over itself, trying to suppress
or divide the movement, with little success. Instead of killing the
movement, every action by the government has only given the movement new
life.
In the recent local elections,
the Coalition parties took an electoral hammering to Labour’s gain. The
Conservatives and Lib Dems lost around 740 seats in total – and control of 13
councils – with Labour gaining 800 seats and majority control of 32 local
authorities
Just five years ago, not a day would go by without global warming making
the headlines. The American politician Al Gore’s documentary film about
climate change, An Inconvenient Truth, was seen by hundreds of
thousands in cinemas across the world. The Conservative Party rebranded
themselves as the champions of the environment, nailing their ecological
colours to the mast and urging people to ‘vote Blue to go Green’. Even
the arch-reactionary American president George W. Bush was forced to
concede that, maybe, the environment was worth thinking about.
The
elections in France and Greece represent a fundamental change in the
situation. The crisis of European capitalism has entered a new and
turbulent stage. A mood of anger is sweeping across Europe. Of course,
we understand that election results do not reflect the psychology of the
masses with complete accuracy. They are like a snapshot of the mood at a
given moment. But it is necessary to analyse election results
carefully, since they do show certain trends in society.
We continue our analysis of the Greek elections of last week with a look at the critical role of the leadership of the Greek CP.
A day after the electoral authorities had announced massive gains for
Labour up and down the country, activists in London were left
disappointed as the Tories kept control of City Hall. In an incredibly
close contest, incumbent Boris Johnson beat Labour veteran and former
mayor Ken Livingstone by 1,054,811 votes to 992,273, after
second-preferences were counted. This contrasted sharply with the other
results: Labour gained 823 council seats nationally, with the Tories and
their Liberal Democrat stooges losing 741 between them.
Public
sector workers in Barnsley today came out in protest against austerity
cuts and attacks on their pensions, some for the third time in the last
12 months