Europe

As could be expected, the Socialist Party (MSZP) and their coalition partners the Free Democrats (FDSZ) lost heavily in the recent council elections in Hungary. The problem is the people know what they are voting against but have no real alternative to vote for.Both main political blocs offer the same austerity programme. A genuine Left alternative is required.

Today marks the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street, a landmark event in the history of the British working class, when workers in London’s East End dealt a severe blow to British fascism. In commemoration of this victory of the working class, we republish Ted Grant’s pamphlet The Menace of Fascism - What it is and how to fight it, which offers an analysis of fascism and a programme for how to fight it.

While workers in Britain are forced by Gordon Brown to accept miserably low wage increases, the big fat cat executives are reaping big bonuses. Darrall Cozens looks at the figures, highlighting how the same government that holds down workers’ wages facilitates the rich in every way.

From the ashes of the old SSP two formations have emerged, Solidarity and the SSP, but with exactly the same programme, including a strong element of Scottish nationalism. Nothing has been learnt from past experience. There is an urgent need to return to the genuine ideas of Marxism.

For only the third time in 84 years the Social Democracy lost the recent parliamentary elections in Sweden, leading to the resignation of its leader Göran Persson. Now a bourgeois four party “alliance” will govern the country. But anyone who thinks that the workers of Sweden have voted for more attacks on their living conditions is ignoring reality. The alliance announced the very opposite of what they are going to do. So a new period of conflict is being prepared.

Twenty five years ago British imperialism demonstrated its cold, calculating cruelty in the face of Irish Republican prisoners who felt they had no alternative but to make the ultimate sacrifice in the struggle for political rights, embarking on a hunger strike that would tragically end with their deaths. Gerry Ruddy of the Irish Republican Socialist Party has sent us an excellent and intimate analysis of those events, highlighting the need to build a revolutionary movement based on Marxism and rooted in the working class across all boundaries. Read the article on the Socialist Appeal website.

Last week’s rioting in Hungary drew the attentions of the world’s mass media. Some even tried to compare it to that glorious moment in the history of the Hungarian working class in 1956, when attempts were made to move towards genuine workers’ democracy. But all that is false. Today’s rioting has a reactionary content, the result of a terrible austerity programme, but with no genuine Left alternative being presented to the masses.

As the Blair era draws to close factional intrigue is dominating the media news about what is going on in the Labour Party. There is no fundamental difference between the Blair and the Brown cliques. Their only argument is over who is to fill the seats on offer. What is needed, as John McDonnell MP argues, is “a national campaign for a radical break with the failed policies of new Labour", adding that changing leaders would "not be enough to save Labour at the next election".

On Saturday September 9th a Memorial Meeting was held for Ted Grant in the Friends Meeting House in London. Around 200 people turned up for a lively meeting that included international guests, some video footage and contributions from the floor. Also available is an audio file of Alan Woods' speech.

This summer once again a climate of fear was invoked to introduce further attacks on our civil liberties. At the same time popularity ratings for Blair have plummeted, leading to growing pressure for him to go.

The SSP is now split after a bitter, dog-eat-dog faction fight involving the supporters of Sheridan and McCombes. There are no principled differences between these camps. This is a battle of personalities over the leadership of the party. Yet beneath these clashes the root causes of the crisis are indeed to be found in politics. They spring, above all, from the abandonment of Marxism. Once they had set off down this path, making concessions to nationalism and reformism, there was never any other final destination than crisis.

Today, 62 years ago, Paris was liberated from the Nazis in a mass movement from below. "It has been this mass movement of the French workers, peasants and middle class which has forced the retreat of the German army. The culminating point, which has marked the entry of the French masses once again onto the arena of history, was the insurrection of the workers of Paris." We republish Ted Grant's article from 1944, analysing these significant events.