Europe

In the recent period Greece has been gripped by a wave of strikes involving ever wider layers.The PASOK government is facing more and more opposition as the effects of its austerity measures bite into the living standards of ordinary working people. This has opened up the prospect of the PASOK possibly losing the next general election.

In response to the way globalisation affects road transport workers the T&G in the UK and Ireland is launching a pilot project to recruit non-English speaking international drivers, whose pay and conditions are inferior to both EU and UK wages and conditions.

This month marks the 80th anniversary of the death of John Maclean. Maclean was an outstanding figure. He was Britain's most famous Marxist propagandist and revolutionary organiser. At great personal cost, he hailed the Bolshevik Revolution and fought hard to promote the world socialist revolution. The following article gives a glimpse of his life, commitment and contribution to the workers' movement.

On Friday October 24, about ten million workers took part in the 4-hour general strike called by the trade union federations Cgil-Cisl-Uil in opposition to the Berlusconi government’s proposed counter-reform of the pension system. According to the trade union leaders, 1.5 million people participated in over 100 demonstrations throughout the whole of Italy.

On September 10 thousands of Danish students took to the streets to demonstrate against the education policies of the conservative government, which is reducing the quality of education. The national secondary school students’ union (DGS), had called for a one-day strike against the cuts in secondary school education.

George Galloway, the Labour MP for Glasgow Kelvin, was yesterday expelled from the Labour Party by the three-member National Constitutional Committee, which is in reality a kangaroo court designed to simply rubber stamp whatever Blair wants. George Galloway took a clear stand against the war in Iraq. This is the reason why he was expelled. They had tried to remove him on the basis of falsified documents “found in Iraq”. As they were not able to remove him with these, they decided another road.

In the last week of September, the editor of marxist.com, Alan Woods participated in a speaking tour organised by the supporters of the Russian Marxist tendency, the Rabochaya Demokratiya (Workers’ Democracy) group.

The Irish Republican movement has been struggling for a united Ireland for decades. Today it is no nearer this objective than when it was founded. Marxists understand that a united Ireland can only be achieved on a socialist basis. So long as capitalism dominates Ireland there will be division and strife. Therefore it is time to take stock of the past of the Republican movement and to draw a balance sheet. Only by such means can we build the revolutionary movement urgently needed to prevent a further descent into sectarian chaos and achieve instead the historic task of overthrowing capitalism and constructing the 32 county Socialist Republic.

Pierre Broue is internationally renowned for his tireless work as a historian of the international revolutionary movement. His histories of the Bolshevik Party, the Communist International, the Spanish Revolution, and above all his recent Life of Trotsky have been widely admired. His latest book on the Left Opposition is yet another major contribution by this outstanding Trotskyist writer, who has dedicated his life to the fight for international socialism.

Ten years ago this month in Moscow (on October 3 and 4) the “White House” (as the Russian Parliament building is known) was bombed, and hundreds of people were killed. This was the civil war between President Yeltsin and the Parliament (the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation). Today the Russian authorities prefer not to remember those events, not just because of the bloody nature of what happened, but also because what happened back in 1993 questioned the legitimacy of the present Russian system.

It is rare, these days, to see the bloodhound like features of John Pilger on television - rare, but welcome. Occasionally ITV let him out of his kennel and nervously let him off the leash for a short run. For John Pilger made his name as a crusading, left journalist, exposing the truth from the perspective of the poor, the oppressed, and the exploited, especially focussing on the victims of American imperialism such as Vietnam and Cambodia.

Greenland is not renowned for its warm climate. Indeed, to the outside world it is generally regarded as a cold, ice-covered and isolated landmass, inhabited by a supposedly happy people who get on with their fishing and live in a beautiful environment. But recently things have been heating up in the country. We are referring to the class struggle, that is. The unskilled workers were recently on strike, a strike which ended with a victory for the workers. And now the nurses may be about to take the same road. This shows that the general crisis of world capitalism reaches every corner of the globe and the workers everywhere are reacting in a similar fashion, with a fightback against the

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All over Europe national governments have plans to severely cut back on the pension systems. Denmark is no exception to this. There is a lot of talk in the media about this. The politicians are constantly harping on about the fact that "reform is necessary". But what they mean by "reform" is actually the opposite of what anyone would understand from this word. Instead of "reform", what they mean is "counter-reform", i.e. cuts.