The next few weeks will be very
important for the trade union movement in Ireland; either the Public
Service Agreement will be rejected and the trade union leaders will be
forced into organising action, or the government will get away with yet
another attack on living standards and working conditions.
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 General Election on May 6th is undoubtedly the most significant
election since New Labour came to power in 1997. For many of today’s
youth, this election will be the first in which they can vote.
Significantly, this generation of young people will also be the first
voters who were born after the reign of Margaret Thatcher. The upcoming
General Election, therefore, will be partially decided by “Thatcher’s
children”.
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 Militant Student is a new paper written by students, for students.
The intention of government and big business to cut education, training
and jobs to service the bankers debts, means that we are left with
little option but to organise and fight. The situation that looms
before us shows that capitalism today is at a dead-end and offers no
future for workers and youth. This is the Statement of the Miltant
Student Editorial Board in its founding edition.
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.
Goldman
Sachs has been accused of fraud and is up before the American Securities
and
Exchange Commission. What is coming out from all this are the clever
tricks of
the trade, i.e. how to make money from money – without actually
investing in the
real economy – and in the process “advise” people on how to lose their
money
while making the likes of Goldman Sachs very rich… until it all
crashes of
course.
April 14 saw over 200 Glasgow
University staff and students protest against cuts which are emerging as
part
of the ‘restructuring’ process despite management’s earlier promises.
The
demonstration was called by the lecturers’ union UCU but also saw strong
support from Unite and Unison who organise maintenance and admin staff.
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.