The New Year will be ringing in not joy but woe for working class people. It is the year that the cuts really begin to bite. It is the year that many people lose their jobs. It is the year that, in the words of Nick Clegg, “painful” Universal Benefits are introduced. It is the year that many lose their housing benefit and become homeless. It is the year the capitalist crisis deepens in Europe, with Spain, Italy and France following in the footsteps of  Greece. Britain, however, is not far behind.

Cyprus is a small rarity in the Mediterranean sea. It's a country where the Communist Party (Workers' Progressive Party, AKEL) has strong roots in the labour movement and society as a whole and holds the Presidency of the Republic, as well as being the first party in parliament.

British Prime Minister, David Cameron uses words such as “shocking” to refer to the activities of his own security forces then you know something is up. He was responding to the publication of the de Silva report, a review of the papers accumulated from different investigations carried out by different agencies of the British state into the death of Pat Finucane, which show that there was indeed collusion between the British state and those who murdered him back in 1989.

Far from heralding a new promise for the British economy, the 1% growth figure announced a month ago has already been buried by a pile of bad news. Few economists are looking towards 2013 with any real hope. Socialist Appeal editor Rob Sewell explains why.

Jura Soyfer, a political activist, cabaret artist, journalist and author in Vienna in the 1930s, would have turned 100 years of age on 8th December this year. In his poems, articles, and plays, Soyfer spoke up for a better world and encouraged the working class to remember its strength and to stand up against fascism and National Socialism.

The Tories’ latest attack on welfare benefits threatens to place even more of the burden of the bankers’ crisis onto the shoulders of the unemployed, the disabled, children and pensioners.

Below we publish an interview with Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the left wing formation Front Gauche in France . Jean-Luc Mélenchon participated in the French presidential electionsearlier this year and received 11,1% of the vote. For more material on Mélenchon please read the following articles (Mélenchon as candidate of the Left Front – What campaign, on what programme? andMassive support for

In the run up to Christmas we are seeing the usual desperate appeals from charities to raise money but the recession has meant that even their income is now falling. At the same time, the Tory-led Coalition’s programme of cuts, combined with job-losses and pay freezes are forcing more and more people to rely on hand-outs from charities.

Events in Greece are once again in the headlines, after another day of militant strike action and the new 'deal' agreed by the EU today. This deal to reduce Greece's debt is completely inadequate to solve the problem and is an insult to the Greek working class, who have now endured years of brutal cuts whilst the EU dithers. The only real solution to Greece's problems is for the debt to be cancelled and for the expropriation of capitalism in Greece and Europe. This article, which was produced in the second issue of the In Defence of Marxism magazine - the theoretical journal of the International Marxist Tendency -  gives some theoretical analysis to the economic and political

The recent killing of a prison warden from Maghaberry prison, by an as yet unknown republican grouping, has sent shock waves through the body politic. Many had assumed that as a result of the outpourings of both the Good Friday Agreement and the St Andrews Agreement the days of violence were behind us.

The general strike in Spain against austerity policies of the right-wing government of Mariano Rajoy (PP) had a massive turn-out and culminated in huge demonstrations in all major cities.

The bourgeois in Europe noted that while the response to yesterday’s day of action called by the European trade unions was mainly concentrated in the South (Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece) there was one exception in the north, Belgium, which saw significant mobilisations, particularly in French speaking Wallonia.

While in many countries the call by the ETUC for an European-wide day of action against austerity and in solidarity with the Greek people led to significant protests and even strike action, the Austrian TUC (ÖGB) did not take up this initiative in a serious way. For weeks it has not been clear whether the ÖGB is going to answer this call at all. Eventually, just one week before 14N, the website of the ÖGB published an article where a collection of signatures in Vienna was announced.

The BBC, the traditional mouthpiece of the British Establishment, is presently engulfed in a major scandal involving the Savile paedophile cover-up. This comes on top of the MPs’ expenses scandal, the News of the World phone hacking scandals and many others that have undermined the legitimacy of once highly respected institutions.

Austerity isn’t working; in fact it is simply exacerbating the deep crisis that Spain finds itself in. None of the mainstream parties have come up with a programme that can put an end to this crisis. Here we publish the programme of the Spanish Marxists of Lucha de Clases.