Europe

The Netherlands used to be the most politically boring country in Europe. It was dominated by extreme "political correctness", the very existence of problems was denied and there was a suffocating culture of "consensus". After the killing in May of Pim Fortuyn, the flamboyant far-right demagogue, the Dutch people have woken up to a completely new country.

After the elections last week in the Netherlands, the attention of the world's media concentrated on the spectacular advance of the so-called Fortuyn's List - the ad hoc right-wing, anti-immigrant formation formed around the recently assassinated Pim Fortuyn. Coming hard on the heels of the electoral advance of Le Pen in France, many people are asking whether politics in Europe is headed for the right, and whether there is the threat of fascism once again in Europe.

The elections held in Hungary in April this year have given a slim majority to a social democrat-liberal coalition, ousting the incumbent centre-right government of Viktor Orbán who was forecast to win another term in office. Our correspondent in Hungary looks at the real situation facing workers today.

On Wednesday May 8, Alan Woods interviewed Alexander Kuvaev, member of the Duma, and leader of the Moscow City Committee of the CPRF. There are several interesting features in the replies. In particular, the phrase we have cited in the title is a reply to Zyuganov who has stated publicly that, in his opinion, "Russia's Revolutionary days are over." Unfortunately, there was little time to develop the points raised, as the CPRF were busy with preparations for the big demonstration on May 9 (the anniversary of the victory of the USSR over Nazi Germany).

Chirac has won the French presidential elections by 82.2% to Le Pen's 17.8%. This is more or less what the opinion polls were predicting. There was never any doubt that Chirac would win. As we said, many workers would vote for Chirac reluctantly. But the victory of Chirac has solved absolutely nothing. The task in the coming period is to defeat the right wing as a whole - Chirac and Le Pen. This can only done by mobilising all the forces of the labour movement around genuine socialist policies.

The day before the May Day was the day when the result of the vote on the new wage agreement for public sector workers was announced. There had been negotiations for a long time, but the result of the negotiations was very bad, so the leaders of the unions feared that the members would vote No and in this way start a strike. The top leaders had presented the result as the best possible one, and they said that it was impossible to get a better one through strikes. But the dissatisfaction with the result was very big, and in some unions the leaders were forced by the members to recommend a No vote. The result included a 5.55% pay rise over three years, but then there is inflation, and

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In bright summery sunshine, thousands of workers and young people demonstrated on the streets of Moscow today. The demonstration, organised by the CPRF and other Communist and Left organisations included a column of over two thousand young communists that united different youth organisations, including supporters of the Russian Marxist paperRabochaya Demokratiya, who played an active role in the preparations, distributing 12,000 stickers all over Moscow.

"The dogs bark; therefore, the caravan is moving!" (Old Arab proverb)

It is not my custom to respond to provocations or enter into polemics with insignificant sects who appear to have all the time in the world to insult each other. For such groups, this is what passes for political activity.

On Wednesday May 1, France witnessed some of the biggest demonstrations since the revolutionary movement of 1968 and the liberation from Nazi occupation in 1944. This year's traditional May Day parades organised by the workers' unions could not have come at a more tense political moment. The racist National Front party (FN) candidate Le Pen won almost 17% of the vote in the first round of the presidential elections on April 21 and will face the outgoing president Chirac in the run-off on Sunday May 5. Due to the overwhelming desire of workers' to form a united front against the FN, the trade union leaders of the biggest three federations, CGT (Communist), CFDT (Socialist) and the

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This is an eyewitness report of the May Day demonstrations in Paris, which witnessed some of the biggest demonstrations since the revolutionary movement of 1968 and the liberation from Nazi occupation in 1944.

To view these you may need to install the DivX codec. The first is footage from the May Day demonstrations. It is from the bourgeois media, and shows the contingent from the Revolutionary Workers' Party on the march. Click here to play in Real Player or here to open the video normally. The second is footage of the protests in Voronezh on April 11. It shows the official demonstration called by the unions and the Communist Party. However the mood of the protestors was of tremendous anger,...

Those workers opposed to private parasites being brought in to run and exploit the public services are described by Tony Blair as "wreckers". Those who take action to defend themselves and their families are similarly "wreckers".