Under a blazing sun, at midday on Thursday, May 17, tens of thousands of Greek workers poured onto the streets of central Athens to protest the anti-working class policies of the right-wing socialist government of Konstantinos Simitis. This was the second general strike in the space of one month. Although the final figures have not yet been published, it was clearly a very successful strike.
On Tuesday a general strike took place in Greece - following on from the two massive general strikes
that shook the country in the spring of 2001, and forced the government to back down on
its proposed attacks on social spending. As we said at the time, these strikes marked a watershed, a turning point.
Now the new mood of militancy has been shown once again.
Towards the end of July the Greek media launched a campaign of
slander about the ideology of the terrorist organisation 17N (November
17),
claiming that it was a Trotskyist organisation. The Greek Marxists sent
a letter of protest to all the newspapers and channels, which was
published in two major newspapers. We are publishing this short article
on the
subject.
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