There were unprecedented scenes in Birmingham on N30 after the Tory-Lib-Dem coalition that runs Birmingham City Council tried to ban the planned TUC protest march.

The parliamentary elections in Russia on Sunday, December 4, were seen as a popularity test of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who is running for the presidency in March. The result was a blow to Putin, registering a sharp fall in support for his United Russia party. According to the official results, which are undoubtedly rigged, United Russia obtained just under half of valid votes cast, which gives it a very small majority in the State Duma.

Alan Woods speaking on Russia Today, November 18, on the question of the Eurozone crisis.

More than two million public sector workers took strike action yesterday. That amounted to a virtual general strike of the public sector. In terms of numbers, the action was bigger than the “Winter of Discontent” in 1979  - bigger even than the 1926 General Strike. Even The Financial Times, the organ of Big Business, surprisingly described Wednesday’s strike as “undoubtedly historic”.

Around Britain, supporters of Socialist Appeal have been on picket lines and demonstrations. Here are the reports we har received so far. [Updated 2 December with more reports]

A powerful general strike and massive demonstrations on November 24 was the answer of Portuguese workers to the austerity budget proposed by the right-wing governmnent of Pedro Passos Coelho. The troika approved the measures taken as part of the bail out package but demanded more cuts as the economy is forecasted to fall by 3% next year.

The results of the Spanish elections on Sunday November 20 represented a massive defeat for the Socialist Party (PSOE) which had introduced austerity measures to make the workers pay for the capitalist crisis, rather than a victory for the right wing Popular Party (PP) which will now have to introduce even more savage austerity cuts in the face of the acute crisis of Spanish capitalism.

The formation of the Papadimos government is the result of the economic and political stalemate that Greek capitalism finds itself in and represents a desperate effort on the part of the ruling class to subjugate the working class which is in a rebellious mood.

Norway, until recently was seen as one of the most politically stable countries in Europe. That was before the dramatic events of this summer, when Anders Breivik, an ultra-right-wing fascist killed 69 youth at the Labour Youth Organisation’s summer camp. Yesterday, his appearance in court reiterated how much Norway has changed in the recent period. Already in September an article in “Bloomberg” pointed out that the deepening global crisis of capitalism is beginning to come to the fore in countries that seemed to have escaped it, such as Norway.

As in all other European countries, the Sarkozy government in France is applying a vicious policy of “austerity”. The workers – and also the middle classes – are to suffer further cuts in their standard of living in order to maintain and increase capitalist profits. In these years of crisis, French banks doubled their profits from 5.5 to 11 billion euros in 2009, and almost doubled them again to 21 billion in 2010.

Yesterday, the former vice-president of the European Central Bank, Lucas Papademos was named as Greece's new prime minister. He is to lead a national unity government whose task is to implement sever austerity measures and then take the country to elections in February. We are publishing here an analysis by Greek Marxists as to what this means for Greek and European workers.

On November 30^th 2011, three million public sector workers in Britain will strike over the government’s attacks on their pensions. This coordinated strike action represents the biggest strike movement since the general strike in 1926. To all intents and purposes it will be a 24-hour public sector general strike.  

Switzerland is also being affected by the global crisis of capitalism, with growing pressure on Swiss workers. In the recent elections, although the Social Democrats received the lowest number of votes in 20 years, where candidates posed the real issues facing workers, such as jobs, wages and housing, they did remarkably well. Here we publish an analysis by the Swiss Marxists of Der Funke.

Last Thursday’s by election in Dublin West came down to a three horse race between Councillor Patrick Nulty of Labour who won and Councillor Ruth Coppinger of the Socialist Party who came third, while Fianna Fáil (FF) squeezed into second place after a tie for second and third place – on the basis that they had more first preference votes.

As we write these lines the Papandreou government is staggering towards collapse. In a matter of days the whole situation has been thrown into turmoil.