Rebecca Anderson, a rep in the PCS civil servants’ union, looks at the political situation in Britain and asks why growing poverty, and mass anger and disgust with the Tories has not translated into a tidal wave of protests and strikes The reality of what austerity means for working class people is really […]
As sectarian militias roam the countryside seeking to drown the Syrian revolution in blood, Marcus Halaby argues that the only progressive solution is one based on class After the massacres in Houla on 25 May and in Qubair on 6 June, anyone on the left who still opposes the Syrian revolution should be treated […]
WITH A SECOND economic crisis looming on Europe’s horizons, there has been a turn in the public consciousness towards the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes, famous for promoting growth as a solution to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Groups as varied as the TUC, the Peoples Charter, the Communist Party of Britain, and Counterfire […]
With millions of Greeks prepared to vote the left-reformist SYRIZA coalition into power on the basis of its programme of rejecting austerity, revolutionaries in Greece should fight for the formation of a workers’ government. The Fourth Congress of the Communist International, held in December 1922, outlined the key tasks of a workers’ government; “The most […]
Dave Stockton looks at why the formation of a workers’ government in Greece is necessary to mobilise the popular forces to strike the decisive blow against austerity regimes in Greece, in Europe and in every country where capital insists that workers, youth and the unemployed must be made to pay for its crisis On […]
SYRIZA is no revolutionary party, but neither is it a normal reformist one. Since 6 May, Syriza has become wildly popular across Europe and around the world. In Europe, at least, it is decades since a party that could seriously challenge for power has had such radical proposals in its programme or its leaders’ speeches. […]
It’s no wonder that the opinion polls, immediately after 6 May gave Syriza between 23 and 28 per cent. People realised that Syriza was now a serious contender for power. They realised, after the experience of the last two years, that protest alone would never solve the problems they faced. The issue was quite simply […]
WHY HAS Greece taken the lead? Quite simply because its ordinary people have been subjected to five austerity packages between February 2010 and February 2012. The first three alone amounted to a total cut of €30 billion (12.5 per cent of the 2009 Greek GDP). There was a further cut of five per cent […]
ANTARSYA HAS recognised the importance of the massive swing of voters behind Syriza as an act of rejection of the austerity programmes. They have elaborated a series of demands as the basis for a social movement from below and demand that Syriza should commit itself to implementing them. They are: 1. Cancellation of all […]
AT THE moment, it is vitally necessary for revolutionaries to pursue such a tactic within Syriza and to campaign for maximum electoral support while criticising every limitation of its programme and leadership. Any sectarian abstention would be suicidal for the left because it would pass the initiative to the fascists, who could grow like wildfire amongst the […]
Celebrations on the streets, in the Place de la Bastille and across France, greeted François Hollande’s victory in the second round of the French presidential elections. The Socialist Party (PS) was back in the Elysée Palace after seventeen years in the wilderness. People do have real reasons to rejoice.With parlaimentary elections taking place, Marc Lasalle […]
Pham Binh, an American socialist, has written a series of articles criticising far left groups on his Planet Anarchy website. This includes a critique of Trotskyism asserting that its failure to create mass parties or lead revolutions is primarily due to the elevation of programme above all else. Since Pham Binh’s ideas played an important […]
By Marcus Halaby The principal demand of the February 2011 protests that marked the beginning of Egypt’s revolution was for President Hosni Mubarak’s immediate resignation To many, it therefore looks like a defeat for popular aspirations, that one of the two candidates for the second round is Mubarak’s last prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq. Only about […]
After a heavily contested first round, the Egyptian presidential election came down to a run-off between two candidates, representing two wings of the same ruling class. As we go to press the results are not known. The candidate of the undisguised counter-revolution is Ahmed Shafiq, puppet of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), […]
Delegates to this year’s PCS conference were clearly in favour of further strike action in defence of pensions, pay and jobs and against the European austerity agenda, but the motions passed were careful not to commit the leadership to any specific action. Delegate Rebecca Allan reports The conference kicked off with a debate over the […]
THE COALITION took a drubbing in the local elections. The Tories and Lib Dems lost 741 seats and 13 councils, including major cities like Southampton, where a year long strike campaign by local authority workers has finally seen their wage-cutting Tory bosses defeated at the polls.
As we go to press, news is breaking of victories for the left in France and Greece. François Hollande, first Socialist Party president for a generation, told his cheering supporters, “Austerity is no longer an option,” and pledged himself to seek policies from the European Union for “growth, jobs and prosperity… a new start for […]
The recent police killings of Mark Duggan and Anthony Grainger expose the racism rife in the police force. Conditioned to see young, black men as drug dealers and gangsters, in both cases the police shot dead an unarmed man.
The #justice4grainger campaign is growing – and it will not stop until it gets justice. It now counts more than 6,000 members and is forging solidarity links with many other police justice campaigns. The campaign was launched after Greater Manchester police shot dead Anthony Grainger on 3 March 2012. His death at the hands of […]
Joy Macready takes stock of the results ot the local council elections and asks where now for Labour? Thursday 3 May proved to be a red-letter day for Labour. The local elections saw a mass turn to Labour, despite its lack of strategy to oppose austerity. This was clearly a protest vote against the […]
Britain is experiencing “the deepest recession and weakest recovery for 100 years,” according to Michael Saunders, an economist at Citigroup. Output has not recovered even half of what it lost in the great crash of 2008-09 and the economy has flatlined over the past year, and has started to contract again with a 0.2 per […]
The Eurozone crisis is the main immediate threat to world economic stability and could spark another worldwide recession. Now the 6 May elections have added a new political dimension, with the victory of the Socialist Party’s Francois Hollande in France and his calls for a new growth pact. Andy Yorke explains why this is no […]
THE CAPITALISTS’ LUST for oil and gas knows no boundaries. From wars to extortion, economic sanctions and environmental disasters, these are all just unfortunate blips in the profit figures for those who control the globe’s ever-dwindling supplies of fossil fuels. In recent years rising oil prices, in part due to the instability caused by imperialist war […]
VETERAN IRISH Republican Marian Price has been imprisoned without trial since May 2011. This harks back to the British government’s widespread use of internment in the 1970’s as a way of silencing opposition to its rule in the north of Ireland. This repressive policy only succeeded in broadening the scale of the anti-Unionist and anti-British […]
By Marcus Halaby THE HEADY combination of big business, land development, local and national politics, and the struggle for international prestige has always ensured that major sporting events like the Olympics are fraught with issues for the communities that live and work near them. Few people, however, could have expected the news that ground-based […]
By Sally Turner REMPLOY, a government-owned company that provides disabled people with employment, is closing 36 of its 54 factories and sacking at least 1,700 workers. Everyone should oppose this act, which will destroy workers’ dignity and independence, as well as halting socially useful production. Workers Power and Revolution members went to meet the […]
By Rebecca Anderson The issue of overriding importance at this year’s conference of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union will again be the battle to save our pensions. The government has now implemented the changes to our pensions – we will work longer, pay more and get less – but this does mean […]
BUS DRIVERS in the capital are to ballot for strike action in pursuit of a £500 Olympic bonus to compensate for the 800,000 extra passengers expected during the summer Games. The mental stress and physical strain (the extra work of the engine in a jam-packed bus jars the drivers’ back) of working extra hours in this […]
By Sally Turner As soldiers prepare to scab on tanker drivers, it is clear that the threat of a national strike remains very real. Despite ongoing negotiations and a final proposal from the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) to prevent a strike, it seems unlikely that drivers will accept it. Last month, workers […]
The fight to save the NHS starts with the pensions strike on 10 May, argues NHS worker Dara O’Connell A HUNDRED thousand health workers in Unite will take strike action on Thursday 10 May over attacks to their pensions. Members of the PCS, UCU, Nipsa and the RMT will join them, as strikes hit […]