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Thursday 6th May. Election Day. After weeks of campaigning the opinion
polls suggest that the result is still too close to call. Of course,
the polls could be wrong as they were in 1970 and more recently in
1992. But one thing is clear – no one is looking forward to whoever
forms the next government with much optimism.
Since the crisis in Greece has hit
the headlines there have appeared in the bourgeois media many stories
about how Greece has too many civil servants, how the working week is
very short, how people retire early on fat pensions, and so on, as if
this were the cause of the crisis. Facts and figures, however, can be
very stubborn things and they tell a completely different story.
Who killed Blair Peach? This is a question
which has been asked many times over the last 31
years, not only by the family and friends of Blair Peach, but the by the
thousands who joined a demonstration to protest against a so-called public
meeting held by the far right National Front as a provocation in predominantly
Asian Southall, on April 23rd,
during the election campaign of 1979.
Come to the 2010 national conference of Hands Off Venezuela, taking place in London on May 22nd. Hear speakers from Venezeula updating you on what is happening and how you can support the revolution.
Leaving the home you grew up in, the people you will love forever and
experiences to look upon from afar, being an international student is no
easy task, perhaps, even more so, when you come from a small island..
The downgrading of Greece’s credit
ratings by Standard & Poor’s
has sent shockwaves around the world’s financial markets, with stock
exchanges seeing significant falls over the last few days. The fear is
that Greece
could default and drag the rest of the eurozone into a severe crisis,
putting immense pressure on the euro. The problem the bourgeois face is
the Greek working class, which is not taking this lying down.
The Liberal Democrats are riding high
in recent opinion polls. They are presenting themselves as something
“new” and “clean”. A closer look reveals a very old party that has
always carried out the policies dictated by the capitalist class of
Britain.
Given the colossal volatility within the electorate in the
recent period, the outcome of the general election has become impossible
to
predict. With under 10 days to go, opinion polls point to some kind
of hung
Parliament with the Liberal Democrats holding the balance of power.
The Cuban revolution is once more being attacked by the imperialists.
They raise a hue and cry about “democratic rights”, but what they are
really concerned about is a country where private property of the means
of production has been abolished, where the revolution has survived, in
spite of many mistakes and difficulties, and which continues to be a
point of reference for the downtrodden masses of Latin America. In
this,
the International Marxist Tendency stands firmly in support of the
Cuban revolution against the attacks of imperialism.
In 2008 the people of Pakistan voted
into office the PPP, hoping that this would bring genuine change, i.e. a
real improvement in their living conditions. Instead we have a
worsening economic situation, real suffering of the millions of poor,
and warfare killing many innocent civilians. Meanwhile the PPP
leadership is busying itself applying the IMF-imposed policies of cuts
and privatisations. In these conditions it is not surprising that many
are asking themselves what democracy has meant for them.
The eurozone countries in particular are caught in a vice. After the
binge comes the hang-over. The Common Market was set up to develop a
European-wide market as a means of overcoming the narrow constraints of
the
nation state.
The world economy is gradually emerging from the biggest economic crisis
since the 1930s. In Britain last year we saw the biggest fall in
economic
output in any single year since 1921. Now there are signs of a slow
painful
recovery. However, there will be no return to “normality”. The crisis
marks the
end of an epoch economically and politically. We are now entering the
age of
austerity.