Supporters of Socialist Appeal in Glasgow joined
Greek students in a picket of the Greek Consulate to mark the one year
anniversary of the police murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos in Athens.
The murder set off a revolt of working class youth throughout Greece
that was met with huge police repression.
The talks between the government and
ICTU have collapsed following pressure from the FF back benches. Apparently
they had been pressured from “the private sector” to oppose plans for unpaid
leave proposed by the union leaderships. Make no bones about it. What this
really means is that the Irish bourgeoisie and the multinationals are putting
on the pressure and demanding that the public sector takes huge cuts. It raises
the temperature in what is already a charged situation. If the Irish Congress
of Trade Unions had a fighting Socialist leadership; Ireland would be on the
brink of a general strike. But that is far from the case.
The Ryan and Murphy
reports have exposed the extent of the abuse carried out against children by
Catholic priests in the Dublin Diocese between 1975 and 2004. It is also clear
that such abuses have occurred in practically all parishes of the Roman
Catholic Church in the whole island. Physical and sexual abuses also occurred
in industrial schools, orphanages, and the “Magdalene laundries run by orders
of nuns. It’s not our intention to
dwell on the detail of the investigations, but we feel that it is important to
look at the political and social ramifications of the reports.
Just one year ago, in the midst of the meltdown on Wall Street,
millions of Americans, many of whom had never voted before, came out
for Barack Obama, energized by his message of hope and change. His
victory marked a turning point in U.S. politics, a clear rejection of
Bush’s blatantly anti-worker and imperialist policies. The streets
overflowed with joy and the promise of a new era. Around the world,
cries of “yes we can!” could be heard as a collective sigh of relief
swept the planet. The Bush years were over! Surely things would now get
better! But what is the reality?
The TUC has worked out that the richest folk in the land get
subsidised massively in their old age by the rest of us. No change
there, then. £37bn is set aside by the Treasury as tax relief for
pension funds. This tax break is, of course, worth much more to those
on the higher rate of income tax. They get their hands on 60% of the
£37bn. Of this sum, nearly £10bn is grabbed by the top 1% of the
population, people on more than £150,000 a year.
This article originally appeared in "The Red Plough," an
independent Email journal of Republican Marxist opinion. It takes a
clear position against the arguments of the capitalist press around the
strikes on the 24th of November. In particular it deals with the
question of "the national interest". The bosses are always keen to try
and mask the class nature of society and here Gerry Ruddy points out
the contradictions in their arguments and offers a class alternative.
Thursday’s planned public sector strike has
been suspended after the government and the union leaders announced that a
breakthrough had been made. The "agreement" means that some of the
cost of wages would be offset by the workers taking "unpaid leave".
As we pointed out on more than one occasion recently, the political and
economic situation in the state is such that any agreement that has been
reached on the basis of "social partnership" will inevitably mean cuts
in worker’s wages and increased work load and pressure on already stretched
services. Effectively it means that the public sector is being put on short
time.
Socialist Appeal issue number 180 (December 2009) is now out and ready to order.
Click here to order your copy or click on the heading to read more.
The world of international finance has been shaken by the
default in Dubai.
Shares have taken a tumble all over the world. Commentators have suggested that
this could be the cause of the recession moving into a double dip, of a further
downturn in the world economy. Mick Brooks looks at the unfolding crisis in the, until last week, ‘money no object’ world of Dubai.
There has
been no levelling off of the global economy, as economists predicted. Although
industrialisation has expanded to lesser-developed countries, it has generally
been along lines determined by global corporations based in advanced capitalist
countries. From colonialism, we have moved into the age of multinational
corporate domination. Will Roche looks at the rise of monopoly capitalism.
From 7th to 18th December
2009, delegates from 192 countries will be gathering in Copenhagen, Denmark,
in order to create a new, “legally-binding”, global treaty on climate change.
The UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen (known
as COP15) marks the culmination of two-years of negotiation to try and generate
a replacement for the Kyoto
protocol, which is due to expire in 2012.
Stock
exchanges and commodity prices are on their way up. The world economy is
showing faltering signs of recovery. There’s no doubt that it’ll be a long
haul. Millions of people all over the world have had their lives devastated by
the economic tsunami. It will take years to clean up all the mess. But one
major national economy after another has announced that the recession is
officially over – France, Germany, Japan
and even the USA.
All except Britain.
Why is British capitalism still stubbornly stuck in the mire?