Solidarity 174, 27 May 2010

A common story on the left now is that "the Tories didn't win the election". Many people claim that the new coalition government is already shaky and could fall apart easily. False reassurance, I think. The government can be made weak, and splits between the two coalition parties (or within the Tories or Lib Dems) can be forced , by determined working-class struggle. But, without strong working-class resistance, this could be as strong a government as a straight Tory administration, or stronger. We have to assume that the Tories and the Lib-Dems agreed a big cuts programme in their coalition...

The latest official figures for inflation are 3.7% (consumer price index) and 5.3% (retail price index), both for April 2010. Both figures have been rising steadily since about June 2009. The vast sums of credit pumped into the system in late 2008 by governments in order to bail out the banks and stop "deflation" (falling prices) always had an inbuilt risk of generating inflation; and it was always likely that the inflation would arrive after some delay. We don't know what will happen to inflation now. A renewed banking crisis might bring it down again, though maybe at the cost of further bail...

On 24 May the Tory-Liberal government announced its first instalment of cuts. It will announce its larger plans on 22 June. The cuts include: More than £1 billion from central government allocations to local government, i.e. cuts in local services. More than £700 million from central government allocations to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. £320 million by scrapping the "child trust fund" set up by the Labour government (which would pay small amounts to each baby, designed to accumulate into a still small but useful stash by age 18). £290 million by scrapping another Labour government...

During the Moscow Trials in the 1930s, a story circulated that Stalin had never been a Bolshevik, but was an old Tsarist spy who had escaped detection after the revolution and remained in the party. Discussing the story, Trotsky rejected it, and said: even were it shown to be true, it would add nothing to our political and social understanding. It would only confuse the issues posed by Stalinism, seen in Marxist terms as a social and political phenomenon that had arisen as a counter-revolution against a working-class regime in an isolated and backward country whose development towards...

Greek workers staged another general strike on 20 May, following general strikes or days of action on 5 May, 22 April, 15 April, 11 March, 10 February, or 17 December. The tempo of struggle is increasing, and now Spanish unions plan a public service workers' strike on 2 June. The 10 May bail-out package organised by the European Union and the IMF has not halted the struggle. Why should it? The Greek government's plans for huge cuts continue, and have become even harsher. And the Greek government may well end up with no choice but to default on its international debt even despite all the cuts...

PCS, by far the largest civil service trade union, met in conference in mid May, as the Tory-Liberal coalition was drawing up its year-on-year slash-and-burn plans for the public sector: huge reductions in jobs and services; privatisation; cuts in real wages; further attacks on pensions and severance terms. Conference got through a record number of motions and was a credit to delegates. Yet only a delegate with rose-tinted glasses would have returned home with the belief that the current PCS leadership is geared up to meet the enormous challenges facing PCS members. The Left Unity/PCS...

Costas Lapavitsas, author of a recent report on the eurozone crisis, spoke to Solidarity. Q. A bit under two years ago, the governments of the leading capitalist countries introduced huge bail-out packages for the banks, which did succeed in stopping the banks going bust. Will the European Union/ IMF package of 10 May do the same for Greece? A. The best way of answering this question would be to point out the differences between the two situations. In 2007-9, US, UK and German banks were running out of liquidity [ready cash] because of the bubble and the speculative games they had played. The...

Paulin, Giannis, and Mika, activists from the Greek revolutionary socialist group OKDE, spoke to Solidarity on 22 May. We asked first whether any new committees or coordinations have emerged which allow rank-and-file workers to discuss and develop perspectives independent of the bureaucratic leadership of the unions. There are no real rank-and-file coordinations at present. But at the base of the workers' movement, a lot of new unions have emerged. ["First-level" or "base" unions in Greece are typically fairly small, often limited to single workplaces or cities. There are about 4000 of them...

Diane Abbott, Labour MP for Hackney North & Stoke Newington, has also announced her candidacy for Labour leader. Abbott’s stated rationale for standing is that the contest needs to be more “diverse” : “The other candidates are all nice and would make good leaders of the Labour Party [!] but they all look the same... We cannot be offering a slate of candidates who all look the same. The Labour Party’s much more diverse than that.” (Daily Mail, 25 May) Abbott has also commented, astonishingly, that “the existing candidates, Ed and David Miliband, Ed Balls, Andy Burnham and John McDonnell ‘are...