Europe

Lionel Jospin, freshly back from his holidays at the end ofAugust, made a glowingly optimistic speech about the French economy.Within a few days, France was plunged into chaos. All around thecountry, refineries were blockaded, as were fuel storage plants,airports, motorways, tunnels, bridges, and a number of railway lines.Within 48 hours, petrol stations were running out of fuel, and on thethird day, no petrol at all was available in a number of majorcities, and 8 stations out of every ten were out of stock.Although this particular protest action was not spearheaded byworkers, but by the bosses of the biggest road haulage companies andagricultural enterprises, it was nonetheless...

The demonstrations in Seattle, Washington, London and Prague are an indication that something is changing. For the past twenty years, Capital has been on the offensive. On its banners are inscribed the new slogans: Liberalisation, Globalisation, Downsizing, Outsourcing, Flexibilisation, and a host of other reactionary neologisms. The fall of the Soviet Union gave a further impulse to this offensive. The bourgeoisie was filled with confidence and optimism in the future. But now, a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the whole thing is beginning to come apart at the seams.

In a matter of days a magnificent and largely spontaneous movement of truck drivers, farmers and cabbies has brought large parts of the country to a virtual standstill. This movement represents the biggest national unofficial strike action seen in Britain for decades. The ruling class are quaking in their boots.

Over the last year Socialist Appeal has carried a number of articles on the Balkans conflict which have challenged the official interpretation of events. This is also considered in depth by a number of the contributors to "Degraded Capability: The Media and the Kosovo Crisis." Although, as the title suggests, this book deals mainly with the role and actions of the media, it does start with a consideration of the conflict itself.

This month marks the 80th anniversary of the founding of the British Communist Party. As a result we are publishing the following article on the early years of the Communist Party.

Day to day reports on the Festival of the International Union of Socialist Youth.

The horrific deaths of 58 Chinese migrants found in Dover, revealed to the world the monstrous effects of Britain's immigration regime. By making it virtually impossible for refugees and migrants to enter this country legally, many thousands every year seek to come here illegally. Jack Straw was quick to place the blame on Chinese smuggling gangs called the Snake Head. Thinking people can see through this.

The political climate is hotting up along with the weather. The streets of Athens and Salonika are filled with noisy demonstrators waving flags and placards directed against the Pasok government of Costas Simitis (the Greek Tony Blair). But these are demonstrations with a difference. At the head march black-robed bishops of the Greek Orthodox Church, who claim to represent the big majority of the Greek people.

Hungary put in a GDP growth of 6.8% in the first quarter of the year 2000 and expects a rate of growth of 5-5.5% by the end of the year. These are impressive figures, which any visitor seeing signs of a building boom, lots of new cars on the streets and a well-dressed, well-fed population would quickly confirm. Is the advent of capitalism bringing the horn of plenty to Hungary or is the picture somewhat less straight forward?

On Sunday May 7, Vladimir Putin was inaugurated as President of Russia with all the pomp and ceremony of a tsar. Nothing was missing: twenty-one gun salute, goose-stepping soldiers with uniforms that seemed to have been borrowed from a Hollywood musical, and even the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. Such empty show and tasteless pomp is very typical of the so- called New Russians--a class of upstarts and usurpers who are anxious to ape what they imagine to be the splendours of the western bourgeoisie. To students of history this will be quite familiar. The Thermidorian counter-revolutionaries in France also tried to ape the life style old aristocrats after they had sent...

"Britain is already a different and better country..."
Tony Blair at the Periodical Publishers Association, 9th May.

"I'm totally opposed to New Labour. They are not any different to the Thatcherites. I would like to see a return to the old values."
George Fleetwood, 48, an engineer.

"I have a wife and two children to raise and I really thought in 1997 that we were heading for a bright new era. Tony Blair has failed to deliver. If anything, he is more of a Tory than many Tories."
Brian Cox, 31, unemployed dockyard labourer.

The night of January 17th 1961 Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba, was shot dead in Katanga. Forty years later a new book by Belgian sociologist Ludo De Witte uncovers proof of what everyone already knew: the complicity of the Belgian government and the United Nations in this crime. Pierre Dorremans looks at the political background of this case and explains the politics of Lumumba.

During the methane explosion at the "Komsomolyets" mine in Kemerovo province 12 people were killed. This tragedy occurred soon after another terrible tragedy in the Donbass in the Ukraine. The Russian Marxist paper Workers Democracy (April 2000) blames the restoration of capitalism for these miners' deaths.