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Greece: After the Tear Gas

The cowardly police murder of 15 year old Alexandros Grigoropoulos in Athens on December 6th was the catalyst for days of rioting, protests and occupations. Although these have now largely died down, the country remains on a knife edge.

Greece has a turbulent history, being ruled between 1967 and 1974 by a US-backed military dictatorship – a regime brought down by a mass rebellion inspired by students at Athens Polytechnic in 1973.

In the run up to the recent shooting, the country was rocked by a series of high-profile scandals implicating the government, church and judiciary. Wanton police brutality and racism are rife; unemployment levels have soared to 70% among the 18-25s; 1 in 5 Greeks live in poverty, and low pay and high prices run in parallel. To top it all, neo-liberal reforms and austerity measures have compounded a biting recession.

Breaking glass, building solidarity?

A campaign of demonisation has started against the students who trashed Tory HQ on Wednesday, who are being portrayed as unthinking thugs. We re-publish here an article about what happened at Millbank by one of the participants.

Breaking glass, building solidarity?

 

Yesterday was glorious. It was inspiring, fun and yes, ‘anarchic.’ I spent most of it laughing and hollering into the brisk air on those sunlit streets. Scary, huh? The news reports seemed to think it was very serious. That may have been because of the seriousness of the cause for which the demonstration was organised, and indeed the violence of the attack on education by the politicians, directors of institutions and the rest, is far greater than anything demonstrators could have dreamed of doing, even the absolute plank who chucked a fire extinguisher from the roof.

China: trouble in the world's sweatshop

China is experiencing a rising wave of industrial unrest, as workers increasingly turn to collective action to fight against their exploitation.

Rapid industrialisation over the past few decades has created massive internal migration from the countryside to the cities on an unprecedented scale, dwarfing Britain’s industrial revolution two centuries ago. Now, this new urban working class has begun to flex its muscles, disrupting production in order to assert their demands.

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