Eurozone crisis: for a workers' Europe!

A general strike on 5 May against planned cuts stopped Greece, and brought onto the streets of Athens the biggest demonstration there since the fall of the military dictatorship in 1974.

Although Greece's big union federations are closely tied to the governing party, Pasok, they plan further strikes. There is protest within Pasok. On 6 May three MPs were expelled from the Pasok parliamentary group for voting against the cuts.

Australian Labor government beats down teachers' revolt

Australian state school teachers took it to the brink this month, when their union declared itself willing to defy legal rulings against its boycott of NAPLAN tests (similar to SATS in Britain).

But in the end a brutal, unashamedly union-bashing approach from the federal Labor government made the union back down. The tests are going ahead, from 10 May.

Iran: condemn the execution of Farzad Kamangar and other political prisoners

The Iranian regime executed education worker, teacher and human rights activist Farzad Kamangar and four political prisoners on 9 May. Farzad Kamangarn, Ali Heydarian, Farhad Vakilie, Shirin Alamhouli and Mehdi Eslamian were all executed in Evin Prison. None of the lawyers nor the families of the defendants were aware of executions.

From the International Alliance in Support of Workers in Iran (IASWI)

Trade unions, socialism, and working-class sectionalism (excerpts from Marx, Engels, Connolly, and Gramsci)

Marxists support, orient to, and give great importance to trade unions as basic organisations of the working class. But in most circumstances, in capitalist societies, trade unions are dominated by the better-off sections of the working class, and often follow a narrow sectionalist policy.

The British labour movement was like that for all the time that Marx was politically active in Britain, and broadened out only after Marx's death and when Engels, though still alive, was an old man.

Save Middlesex Philosophy department

The management at Middlesex University have decided to axe the world-renowned philosophy department. While the department is very successful - philosophy is the highest research-rated subject in the university - it just doesn't make quite as much money as other departments. The staff and students were told the shocking news on 26 April.

The staff and students set up an online petition, which you can sign http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/save-middlesex-philosophy.html.

Camberwell and Peckham: what we achieved in the election, and what we failed to achieve

Working-class socialists are as yet a small minority, Our ideas get a sympathetic hearing among wide circles of working-class people, but as yet it is a tentative, sceptical hearing.

It is a hearing made tentative and sceptical because of people's scepticism, shaped by successive setbacks, about the labour movement being able to mobilise to change society, and because of their disappointments about successive left-sounding political promises.

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