The question of housing in Britain today reveals much about the character of the crisis that permeates our entire society. Through the medium of housing we can see almost every problem our society faces - from inequality to out of control speculation, health problems to overcrowding, groaning infrastructures to gross regional imbalances and distortions.

More than a century after the formation of the Labour Party, the party still remains rooted in the organised working class. Despite everything, the results of the recent general election confirm the ingrained support for Labour throughout the working class areas of Britain.

The draconian budget rolled out in June is only the first instalment in a five year programme of austerity to be inflicted upon the British people. The Tory-dominated government is telling us that the economy is in a hole. This is true. They are softening us up for drastic cuts in public spending, saying we can’t afford it and (in the words of Thatcher) that there is no alternative. This is a lie.

The Croke Park deal has been pushed through by the ICTU leaders. On the surface, the policy of “social partnership” would appear to have won out. But this is based on the idea that such a deal will lay the ground for an end to further attacks. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Last week in France around two million workers came out onto the streets to express their anger at the latest government attacks on pensions. The union leaders hope to hold the movement at this level, i.e. of formal protest but no strike movement. But the workers are looking for more than this, as the growing discontent in the ranks of the labour movement clearly indicates.

The Saville report, almost 40 years since the events, has declared that those killed by British paratroopers were indeed innocent, something the people of Derry had known all along. Now there is an attempt to distance the British authorities from those tragic events and put the blame solely on this or that officer or soldier. Gerry Ruddy comments on why those events took place, the results that flowed from them and the lessons that need to be learnt.

The strategy of British imperialism in the north of Ireland has changed; the emphasis has been to reach some sort of “truth and reconciliation”. That explains why 38 years on the Saville report has declared the victims to be innocent. But today the contradictions in the north are increasing and the cul-de-sac of the Stormont assembly represents no solution for workers from either a catholic or protestant background.

“Open for business.” These were the words spoken by chancellor George Osborne as he delivered the most vicious anti-working class budget for generations – a budget for big business indeed! Not since the slash and burn days of the National government in the 1930s, or indeed the Thatcher regime of the early 1980s, have so many cuts been presented in one day. Indeed in outlining a target of 25% cutbacks in many areas of government spending, the coalition has gone way beyond anything attempted by previous chancellors in office.

The leaders of the two main bourgeois parties in Ireland have reached an impasse. The reason is clear: the economy is in crisis and Labour has overtaken FG in the polls.

In the recent period the response of the Greek working class to a series of severe austerity packages has been magnificent. We have seen mass mobilisations, public sector strikes and general strikes. In spite of all this, the PASOK government has pushed through several austerity packages and is preparing even more attacks. The question is therefore posed as to where the movement goes from here. What is the next step?

The news is full of the plans of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition to hammer the public sector in the interests of the ruling class. But “the best laid schemes of mice and men, go often askew,” as Robbie Burns wrote. This is precisely what happened to Ted Heath's government.

What has the banking crisis cost us all? Andrew Haldane of the Bank of England has tried to work it all out in a paper called ‘The $100 billion question’. As Socialist Appeal has pointed out many times the ‘banking crisis’ is really a crisis of capitalism, but for the time being we’ll stick with Haldane’s terminology.

The present Tory-Liberal coalition is preparing to launch a major attack on British workers. History shows that the British workers have always responded to such attacks with militant class struggle. One such example was the miners' strike of 1972, a rock solid strike that shook the Tory government and prepared its eventual downfall two years later in 1974.

In this article, originally published in The Red Plough, Gerry Ruddy looks at the role of the working class in Irish politics: “Despite the influences of social democracy and reformism, despite the dominance of nationalist and unionist ideology, the working classes in Ireland still have tremendous revolutionary potential. That potential can be unleashed but only when both objective and subjective factors combine.”

The outcome of the ballots among the ICTU (Irish Congress of Trade Unions) affiliated unions over the Croke Park deal will be finally clear by next week when the SIPTU (Services, Industrial, Professional & Technical Union) and IMPACT (public and services union) ballot results are counted. A huge amount of pro deal propaganda has been brought to bear on the membership of the public sector unions, backed up by the trade union leadership who have been desperate to present the deal as the saviour of the Irish working class.