Pay more! Work longer! Get less! This is the stark and uncompromising message on pensions that the Tory- dominated government is sending to millions of working class people. In the public sector, six million state employees will find that the expected reward of a half-decent pension in exchange for low wages during their working life is now being taken away. In the private sector of the economy 87% of final salary schemes have been abolished as being “unaffordable”, the latest one being Unilever in April. Not content with attacking directly the living standards of the working class with job losses, wage freezes or even wage cuts, the government is also reducing living standards

In spite of a massive mobilisation of the workers and youth, a movement of revolutionary dimensions, the PASOK government managed to push through parliament its austerity measures. This comes at a price, however, for now the masses have had a taste of their own strength and have been deeply politicised. The Greek Marxists of Marxisti Foni and Revolution provide here a balance sheet of the situation.

Over the recent period, splits and divisions have opened up within sections of the ruling class, which reflect a deepening unease over the crisis and the effects it is having on British society.

The phone-hacking scandal that has rocked the British establishment in the past week is not only bad news for Rupert Murdoch's News of the World and its parents NewsCorp and News International, who have now had to sacrifice their main paper, it is bad news for the politicians, the police and the capitalist class as a whole.

Cameron and Osborne appear oblivious to the crisis unfolding in front of their very noses. While standing on the edge of a precipice, they are busy reassuring everyone that Britain has nothing to fear from the European financial crisis. They are the modern equivalent of the emperor Nero, who fiddled while Rome burnt. British banks, they say, are sound and with enough capital to insulate themselves against a sovereign debt crisis across the Channel.

Thousands of trade unionists hit the streets of London and other cities all over Britain today in a national strike called by the Public and Civil Service Union (PCS), the National Union of Teachers (NUT), University and College Union (UCU) and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) to protest the government’s plan to vandalise pension schemes. This was an important turning-point for the British labour movement.

Yesterday the Greek parliament approved the austerity measures required to get further lending from the European Union. The PASOK government is determined to force through its austerity measures, even though 75% of the population is totally opposed to any further austerity being imposed on them. [Note: this article was written on the basis of discussions with the Greek comrades of the IMT, of Marxistiki Foni, presently intervening in Syntagma Square].

Today the Greek trade unions embarked on a 48-hour general strike against the austerity measures which are being debated today and are to be voted on tomorrow. Papandreou says the cuts and privatisations are the only way of rebalancing Greece’s finances, but the workers and youth on the streets have other ideas.

The powerful 24-hour general strike and the mass demonstrations of June 15 in Greece demonstrated how deep the anger of the Greek working masses runs. It served to send the ruling class a warning: that this is no ordinary protest movement, but one with revolutionary connotations. That is why they hurriedly patched together a new government, in the hope of cutting across the movement. But to no avail!

The Greek drama becomes more intense by the day and by the hour, threatening the stability of the whole European Union. Yesterday amidst a mood of growing fury on the streets, the Papandreou government scraped through in a critical vote of confidence as tens of thousands of people gathered outside the parliament building in Athens chanting: "Thieves! Thieves!"

The UVF attacks on the Short Strand area of Belfast over the last days and the clashes between Catholic and Protestant youth demonstrate that despite the claims of the various ministers at Stormont, the underlying tensions and conflicts in the North have neither been resolved nor overcome.

Surpassing all expectations, hundreds of thousands of people once again took to the streets of cities and towns across Spain on June 19 in the largest demonstrations so far of the movement which started on May 15. What started as an expression of general anger against politicians and bankers, and the attempt to make ordinary working people pay for the economic crisis, has become a mass movement which is becoming more overtly political and orienting to the working class.

Yesterday hundreds of thousands of workers and youth participated in a 24-hour general strike called by the GSEE and ADEDY (private and public sector trade union confederations), marching on demonstrations to the main squares of seventy cities and towns across Greece. From the early morning hours participation in a mass gathering to encircle the Houses of Parliament was enormous.

From early this morning, hundreds of thousands of workers and youth participated in the mass rallies during today’s 24-hour general strike, encircling the Houses of Parliament. There is no doubt that had it not been for the outbreak of rioting, with such a huge level of participation the numbers concentrating on Syntagma Square would have exceeded one million.

The statement we are publishing here is of extreme significance. The POE-OTA (the official Greek municipal workers’ union) has come out with a call for a political general strike, which naturally flows from the movement in the squares.