In this article, originally published in The Red Plough, Gerry Ruddy looks at the role of the working class in Irish politics: “Despite the influences of social democracy and reformism, despite the dominance of nationalist and unionist ideology, the working classes in Ireland still have tremendous revolutionary potential. That potential can be unleashed but only when both objective and subjective factors combine.”

The outcome of the ballots among the ICTU (Irish Congress of Trade Unions) affiliated unions over the Croke Park deal will be finally clear by next week when the SIPTU (Services, Industrial, Professional & Technical Union) and IMPACT (public and services union) ballot results are counted. A huge amount of pro deal propaganda has been brought to bear on the membership of the public sector unions, backed up by the trade union leadership who have been desperate to present the deal as the saviour of the Irish working class.

The Netherlands has been further destabilised by the impact of the world crisis of capitalism. An already fragmented political set up saw even more fragmentation in last week’s elections. There is huge volatility in Dutch society, as the major parties bend to the needs of capital. Whatever coalition is formed will be called on to implement harsh cuts. The Dutch working class will not allow their hard fought for gains to be taken away without a fight.

Draconian austerity measures are being imposed on the Danish workers by the conservative government presently in power, including plans to sack 20,000 public sector workers. This has provoked a massive worker backlash, with the recent 80,000-strong demonstration in Copenhagen. This is a taste of what is to come.

Britain is heading for a showdown. The British establishment is taking stock of the situation. They are fully aware of the social crisis that is unfolding. The illusions of class harmony have evaporated. They consider that it is time that the working class learned its lesson that capitalism cannot afford any reforms. Counter-reforms are on the order of the day. The workers are therefore being sent to the school of the coalition government whose programme is “red in tooth and claw” austerity.

Tens of thousands of public sector workers went on strike yesterday, May 31, against the government’s austerity plan, which includes cuts in pay and pensions. The austerity package, coming into effect on June 1st, will see public sector wages slashed by 25% and pensions and unemployment benefits by 15%, with the aim of reducing the budget deficit to 6.8% of GDP. All government spending will be cut by 20% and anywhere between 80,000 and 300,000 workers out of a total of 1.4 million in the state sector will be sacked.

Ian Isaac’s new book, published on the 25th anniversary of the end of the 1984/85 miner’s strike, is essentially an autobiographical account of the St John’s Lodge of the National Union of Mineworkers during the late 1970s and ‘80s. Ian was the youngest Lodge Secretary in the NUM at the time, a South Wales Executive member and a supporter of the Militant newspaper and Labour Party Young Socialists. The book will be fascinating for any young socialists or trades unionists who are interested in finding out the truth of what happened during that great strike.

Following the report published last week on the Russian miners’ protest, yesterday (Monday) we received the following message from a comrade in St. Petersburg.

An explosive situation is developing in the Kuzbass, the heart of Russia’s mining industry. 66 miners were killed in an accident at work and 24 (on some accounts more) are still unaccounted for The real figure for dead miners is more like 150. Grief turned to anger at the lying and indifference of the company and government.

No sooner has the dust started to settle on the fall out from the 2010 general election and the decision of Gordon Brown to fall on his sword both as Prime Minister and Labour Party leader than we are already seeing names being put forward as “suitable” choices to become the new leader of the party.

A reader from Portugal wrote to us asking our opinion on the vote of the BE members of parliament in favour of the European Union bailout loan for Greece. In our opinion this position is scandalous.

It was one of the surest things in British politics: when an election comes around, no matter the national trend, Scotland will always vote Labour. But with the SNP managing to form a minority government, winning one more seat than Labour in the 2007 Scottish Parliament election, and then their shock by-election victory in Glasgow east in 2008 it seemed, to some, that the Scottish working class was switching their allegiances. The SNP could now challenge Labour in its industrial urban heartlands. We explained then, as now, that the SNP gain only because of Labour's continuing failure to present the working people of Scotland (and the whole UK) with a Socialist programme.

The isolation of electoral politics in the north of Ireland from that in Britain meant that the general election campaign and result were of a very different nature to the campaign elsewhere. The sectarian divide once again raised its ugly head as the dominant factor in politics in the north. Yet the result also highlighted discontent within the working class; Peter Robinson’s defeat in East Belfast demonstrated not just disgust at the actions of Peter and Iris Robinson but also with the expenses scandal and the degeneration of parliamentary politics.

The vote in the Dáil to force a by election in Donegal South West was defeated on the casting vote of the Ceann Comhairle on Wednesday night (5^th May). Although the vote was tied as a result (apparently an accidental result) of the failure of two FF TD’s to vote for their own side, it shows how wafer thin the position of the ruling coalition has become. This is a particularly bad situation for a government that seems hell bent on taking on the working class and holding the fort for the bourgeois.

It didn’t take long for the Liberal democrat leaders to understand that any principles they may have had are far less important than their own personal careers, and even less important than the needs of the market. All the election campaign rhetoric went out the window as they join a coalition with the Tories, whose task will be to carry out a draconian anti-working class programme.