Conditions in Greece are becoming
desperate as unemployment continues to rise, wages and pensions are
slashed, many small businesses close and the country slides towards a
likely disorderly default. The pressure on ordinary working people is
relentless.
The latest shocking unemployment figures provide grim
evidence of the real affects of the crisis and the measures being taken by the
Coalition government to “resolve” it. Women and youth have again been hit
hardest.
For the government and the City of London, the ‘austerity’
measures are all about cold balance sheets, charts and slashing figures on
computer screens. However these cuts are also about real people facing real
misery.
February 11 saw 300,000 people march
in the Portuguese capital Lisbon against the reform of the labour law
and the austerity measures proposed by the government as part of the
bailout agreed with the troika. The CGTP trade union, which
organised the demonstration under the slogan of “no to exploitation,
inequality and impoverishment”, described it as the largest in 30 years.
The Greek crisis has now reached the point of a pre-revolutionary
situation. On Sunday we saw the biggest demonstration in the history of
Greece. Hundreds of thousands of people gathered to protest the
reactionary deal before the Athens parliament. Here was the real face of
the Greek people: workers and students, pensioners and shopkeepers,
young and old, came onto the streets to express their rage.
It will go down in the annals of the labour movement as one of the
greatest victories that has ever been achieved in Britain. Forty years
ago to the day, when the NUM was picketing the Saltley Coke works in
Birmingham, some 30 to 40,000 engineering workers struck in support
across the city.
Saturday February 11 marks the one year
anniversary of the fall of Mubarak. Summer, Autumn and Winter have
passed since the beginning of the “Arab spring”, and the Egyptian masses
are still taking to the streets. Despite all that has happened over the
past 12 months, nothing has fundamentally changed for the majority of
ordinary Egyptians. There have been a series of victories and defeats
for the workers and youth of Egypt, but now, with the anniversary of the
Revolution, the movement is entering a new phase.
For many of us older comrades who were
politically active in the Labour Party Young Socialists in Coventry in
the late 1960s and 1970s, Fernandez Montes was the living embodiment of
the Spanish Civil War.
In November of 2011 record-breaking
statistics for youth unemployment were splashed across headlines in the
UK, with 21% of all 16 to 24-year-olds being unemployed, out of
education or training. In December the records were broken all over
again with youth unemployment reaching 1.027 million– equating to 22% of
all 16 to 24-year-olds.
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists: A new two-handed version of Stephen Lowe’s original
adaptation of Robert Tressell’s book.
ON TOUR THROUGHOUT 2012 – read on for more info
IRELAND: The nineteenth century was
proving to be another age of poverty, oppression and starvation for the
mostly Catholic tenant farmers. They were still at the mercy of the
landlords who charged increasingly exorbitant rents and would not
hesitate to evict any family who could not pay. Keeping his tenancy was a
matter of life or death to the farmer and his family.
When things get bad the ruling class has been known – if all else fails –
to turn on its own "for the greater good." With all the anger
continuing to boil up over the cuts and the role of the bankers, the
government decided it was time for a sacrificial lamb to come forward.
So this week "Fred the Shred" – Fred Goodwin – got his knighthood taken
away from him. The former head of RBS was told that he was being
punished for helping to bring down the world financial markets.