National and international solidarity campaign with electrical engineers in the UK, who in recent months have been forced to organise in response to attacks from the 8 bigger employers in the industry.

Last summer these 8 firms announced their intention to leave the agreement on pay (the JIB) that governs the industry. The workers expect wage cuts of up to 35% and the deterioration of their working conditions. These workers are already required, with their low wages, to perform overtime in order to provide for their families.

It is not an isolated attack on a particular occupation in an individual country. It’s well known that these firms are supported by all firms in the building industry, some of which are multinational.

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The police killing of Mark Duggan resulted in four nights of rioting across England. The immediate trigger was the killing itself, and the disrespect shown by the police to Mark’s family and friends. But the riots rapidly broadened to expressions of a more general anger and alienation; an anger that was all too often unfocused and striking out at the nearest target of opportunity. This resulted in widespread destruction of resources in already deprived neighborhoods and some anti-social attacks on bystanders. Despite this, the roots of the riots lie in the economic and political conditions of these districts, and not in ‘poor parenting’ or ‘mindless criminality’. These conditions were created by the very politicians and business elite who now call for a return to normality and repression.

The riots happened at a particular moment, a moment when capitalism is in deep crisis. Indeed the riots occurred at the same time as yet another crash in global markets. The two competed with each other to be the lead story on the news. This is not a coincidence; the crash, and the cuts unleashed to impose it’s costs on ordinary people, mean not only rocketing unemployment but also the slashing of public services. And while the focus is on the estimated £200 million of destruction caused by the rioting, this pales into insignificance in comparison with the huge destruction of wealth taking place on the stock exchanges.

(Image: By SkyFireXII via Flickr Creative Commons 2.0)

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It's now official, the Irish state is in talks with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund about a so called "rescue plan" to bail out the Irish capitalist class from the disaster created by the international crash of the capitalist economic system.

A crisis that was magnified in Ireland by the corruption of local crony capitalism on the one hand and the dependency of the economy on "globalization" on the other. Trapped between such a cast of crooks and idiots it is perhaps not surprising that many in Ireland hope things will be improved when the running of our lives will be handed over to those who many hope might have a clue.

More articles on the Irish crisis

• Understanding the jargon behind the banking crisis
• Housing & the property bubble in Ireland - Bubbles, Booms and Busts
• The bond crisis and why it matters]
• This is not an IMF bailout but end to ECB life support

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The cancellation of the December 3rd strike is a blow to the developing movement against the cuts on the scale of the cancellation of the March 30th strike at the start of the year. The so called compromise ICTU have been negotiating for is a further blow, it seems designed to drive a wedge between workers and fails to answer the main problem public sector workers have, the inability to take further cuts. But the strike that did happen on 24th November has brought 250,000 workers into their first experience of the power we collectively hold and points towards an alternative

Reports from the picketlines of the strike on 24th November
WSM press release: Anarchist organisation welcomes public sector strike and calls for further action
Report from the mass picket of the Department of Education (with text of INTO leaflet)
Reports from Cork from the General Strike
Interview with CPSU pickets in Cork
"This Is A Statement ..." Kinsale Strike Report

When it was announced that London would host the first G20 meeting since the beginning of the worst financial crisis in almost a century, everybody knew it was a matter of time before protests were called. First the Climate Camp network – known for their annual ecological direct action camps – announced it would set up a ‘flashcamp’ in the City to make sure the G20 leaders put stopping climate change on their agenda. Their language was inoffensive and acceptable – the media found nothing to demonise in it – but they were well aware that any attempt at direct action protests in the City came with a precedent of serious disturbance and radical anti-capitalist politics, from the Stop the City marches in the 1980s to June the 18th 1999.

The second group to call a protest, “G20 Meltdown”, were all too happy to publicly embrace this legacy, with publicity calling to ‘storm the banks’ and ‘eat a banker’. This exceptionally loose coalition centres around a 66-year-old university professor called Chris Knight who is currently suspended from work for telling the media that ‘if the police want violence, they’ll get violence’. Funnily enough, G20 Meltdown were united by anything but violence, more their love of making strange statements and dressing up – having a ‘zombie pancake walk’ for instance, the message being that ‘capitalism is dead and bankers are therefore zombies’. Indeed.

Also see Le G20 ne changera rien!; ما الذي تفعله عندما تخسر عملك أو منزلك ؟

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