Europe

On February 21 some 200,000 workers and their families took to the streets in Dublin, to demonstrate their opposition to the government's decision to impose a pension levy on 300,000 Public sector workers. Apart from that, the most significant in recent months may have been the occupation of workers by Waterford Crystal.  The class struggle is growing in Ireland and the union leaders are under pressure.

Workers of the Prisme Packaging Plant in Scotland are occupying their factory since March 4 after they were told that they were to be laid off without any back pay. Since then the workers are fighting for their right to work and pay. This shows the growing radicalisation of the working class of not only Scotland but also of Britain as a whole.

Despite the fact that the leaders of the Spanish unions are still trying to maintain social peace at all costs and despite the psychological impact of the economic crisis, the whole social environment is heating up very fast, such that a sudden entry onto the stage of the Spanish working class as a whole is being prepared.

There is a burning anger in the workplaces against the bosses’ attacks. Pressure is mounting for the trade union leaders to act in defence of jobs and wages. Internationally, workers have taken to the streets, such as in the recent demonstration of 200,000 workers in Dublin. The British workers will inevitably move in the same direction at some stage.

75 years ago workers in Austria took up arms in an attempt to stop the fascists from taking power. Unfortunately, although the workers fought valiantly, the reformist leaders who dominated the labour movement refused to move in the direction of revolution and thus the workers suffered a terrible defeat. Today, as similar conditions begin to re-emerge what are the lessons we can draw?

The civil servants’ strike, the first national civil servants strike in twenty years, was rock solid. Now the task for Trade Unionists and Socialists in Ireland must be to build for March 30th; let’s turn it into a one-day general strike!

High-ranking British police officers have expressed concern that Britain may be facing an outburst of street protests. The head of the Metropolitan police's public order branch has spoken of the possibility of riots like those that rocked the country in the 1980s, erupting later this year as people who lose their jobs, homes or savings join a wave of violent mass protests. The perspectives of the police come close to those of the Marxists.

The ICTU has called for a national strike day on March 30th because the employers in both the public and private sectors are reneging on the national wage agreement. The Irish Trade Union leaders are clearly under enormous pressure and have no doubt also been emboldened by the mood of the workers and the show of force on Saturday.

Today, almost 25 years since the miners’ strike began, the industry has been decimated, with only a few thousand jobs left. The proud traditions remain and many miners have taken their fighting traditions into the wider labour movement but many of the pit villages are crumbling. The main lesson of the Ridley Plan for the labour movement and the politically active layers of the youth is that a Tory government would be forced to move against the working class, to deal with the crisis that the capitalist system clearly faces.

At the end of January French students were out of the classroom and back on the streets. On January 29, students and teaching staff joined in the national strike that had an estimated 2.5 million French workers marching in the major cities to prove to President Sarkozy that his provocative remark in the summer of 2007- ‘These days, when there’s a strike in France, nobody notices,’ was as wrong as it was rash. [This article was originally published on February 9.]

Coupled to the Bologna Process has been the privatisation of education and all that this entails. So now not only are students faced with the fact that they will have to work harder and longer hours for a shorter period of time, that the costs of their education will also increase, but also that their courses may end up being influenced by some company who’s only real interest in to create profit out of the process.

On Saturday a huge demonstration of 200,000 marched through the streets of Dublin, protesting over unemployment and job cuts. The development of the past period has enormously strengthened the Irish working class and now in the face of crisis it is flexing its muscles.

As the capitalist crisis continues to ravage the once mighty ‘celtic tiger’ the Irish government has stumbled across a sure fire method to stimulate economic growth and raise living standards; cut the wages of the lowest paid workers!

Socialist Appeal published a supplement containing articles on the wildcat strike at Lindsey Oil refinery. The pdf file is available for download here (1.4mb). The supplement was used to intervene at picket lines around Britain.