Workers have not only been balloting for action in Britain but also in Northern Ireland, where the Tory-led Coalition’s attacks on pensions will also apply if carried out. Fightback – the voice of Marxism in Ireland – reports on the ballot results in the North.

The bourgeoisie has never,
anywhere, been able to find the key to unlock the mysteries of their own
economic system. The only way to understand capitalism is to accept and
to explain its contradictory, crisis-ridden nature. It cannot be
perfected; its riddle will never be solved from within its confines.
Precisely because the apologists of capitalism can never accept this
fact, they are forever shifting from one side of the problem to the
other. 

Berlusconi has lost his majority in
the lower house of the Italian parliament. Although he won a vote on the
latest round of austerity measures included in the budget, he did so
with less than half the votes of the MPs in parliament. The result of
the vote was 308 in favour, 1 abstention, but with the majority of MPs
not voting. This means the budget was approved but now Berlusconi stands
naked having lost his parliamentary majority. His days are numbered and
the pressure is mounting for him to go – something we are told he has now promised.