Despite some increasingly desperate and clumsy attempts to hide the fact that they were in discussions with the EU and the IMF over a bailout the Government was eventually forced to admit what everyone already knew; that they were desperate to secure a huge bailout to attempt to stabilise the Irish economy. The announcement was met with a huge wave of anger and the thin veneer of normality in Ireland has been ripped apart on prime time TV.

News that the Coalition reached a deal with the EU and IMF hasn’t come as a shock. Reports were circulating for days that the EU and the Finance Ministry were locked in discussions and some have even claimed that the IMF was been briefing the heavyweight financial bourgeois press internationally in an attempt to pressurise the coalition and the opposition parties into seeking a deal. This article was written prior to the announcement of the deal but its analysis has been confirmed by subsequent events.

The results of the recent municipal and regional elections in Greece clearly outline the current social and political crisis in the country. The main feature that stands out is the rejection of both the PASOK government and the New Democracy, the right-wing conservative opposition. This was expressed by a high level of abstentions and also by the increase in the votes for various Left forces, especially in the largest municipalities of Greece. In particular, the growth of the KKE [Communist Party] reveals a shift to the left within the Greek electorate.

We are told that because of rising life expectancy the number of pensioners is going up and therefore, to afford pensions, we must cut payments and increase the age of retirement. This conveniently ignores one important detail: the wealth produced by the working class has been growing much faster than the increase in life expectancy. So where does the problem lie?

As in all other European countries also in Austria the government is trying to make the workers and the youth pay for the capitalist crisis. Austria was severely affected by the crisis. In 2009 it was in deep recession with a sharp decrease in industrial production. And at the beginning of 2009 the government had to intervene with huge sums to prevent the collapse of the shaken bank system.

On Wednesday, October 27 a demonstration of 80,000 assembled in front of the Romanian parliament. Nurses, teachers, police officers, statisticians, electricity plant workers and many other civil servants converged on Bucharest from all over the country. At the same time inside the parliament the second vote of no confidence in ten months was being taken.

Events have taken a turn in Britain as the first mass reaction took place this week against the programme of vicious cuts being introduced by the Tory-led coalition. On Wednesday, November 10th, London witnessed an overwhelming response from the students as a demonstration of over 50,000 marched in protest at the attacks taking place in Higher Education.

The current economic crisis, which started as a financial collapse in 2008, has since been transformed into a crisis of sovereign debt. This is due to governments across the world bailing out the banks. With historically high deficits, along with massive public debts, Greece and Ireland have been very much at the forefront of the cuts. Along with Portugal and Spain, these countries are now considered to be the weakest links in the global economy. However, with a budget deficit in Britain of 11.5% and a public debt of 68.1%, the Con-Dem coalition has announced the biggest austerity programme since the 1920s. The working class is in for the fight of their lives.

We are reprinting this article because the arguments used by Connolly in answering the capitalists are as valid today as when they were written in 1901. Taken from the Workers’ Republic, May 1901.

“Each measure to which capitalism is constrained in order to make a step forward in restoring equilibrium, each and all of this immediately acquires a decisive significance for the social equilibrium, tends more and more to undermine it, and ever more powerfully impels the working class to struggle.” (Leon Trotsky 1921)

Dr Jim McDaid’s decision to resign as a TD is just the latest symptom in the terminal crisis affecting the Fianna Fáil/Green coalition. While the government still holds a tenuous majority of three seats, there are four by-elections pending, the chances are that we will be propelled into a new general election sooner rather than later. Doubtless Cowen and Lenihan will try and hang on. But the opinion polls and the economic catastrophe mean that the coalition is likely to lurch from one crisis to another.

On Friday, October 22, finally the French government managed to get the pensions reform passed through the Senate. The increasingly unpopular government of Sarkozy, faced with an unprecedented movement of strikes, demonstrations, road blockades, mass pickets and general assemblies, hoped that this, together with the beginning of the All Saints school holidays, would bring the mass movement to a halt. This does not seem to be happening, however.

The French unions have called another day of action for October 28. Here we provide an English translation of the leaflet that will be given out on that day by the Marxists of La Riposte.

Comrades on holiday in France get a taste of the protests taking place there.

We are publishing here an English translation of a press release of the Executive of the FNIC-CGT (Chemical Workers’ section of the CGT). Original French text at: Solidarité financière avec les grévistes des raffineries !.