14th November: The European General Strike And Day Of Protest Against Austerity



Fantastic day in Europe on Wednesday! It's a thing of beauty when people find solidarity and fight back against the acceptable and state sanctioned violence of capitalism and austerity. Shame once again that the UK was as a lifeless as the grave but that can all change...

"And so Southern Europe continues to tremble on its very foundations. As smoke rises from the streets of Madrid, Lisbon, Rome and Athens, one thing is becoming ever more apparent: the question is no longer if but when the social explosion will hit. The outrage is building up, and with unemployment rising, austerity deepening, and a generation of Europeans increasingly disillusioned by state intransigence and outraged by police violence, such an outburst of popular rebellion seems ever more inevitable. All it will take is a spark."

See Reflections on a Revolution's account here

Postscript: An unintentionally interesting article from usually boring Blairite hack, Martin Kettle here.

"But we are going to have to get used to austerity. Because relative scarcity, and the need to do more with less, are not going to go away in a hurry. Austerity is remaking our world. The point is to make the best of it. Welcome to 21st-century Europe."

"Today's quarterly inflation review by the Bank of England is merely the latest in a series of indicators that remind governments and peoples across Europe and beyond that the old days are simply over, done, finished. Recovery would be sustained but slow, said the Bank. The economy was sluggish. The environment unfavourable. Things might be weaker for longer."

"The message is hard to miss. Times have changed. The only thing that is certain is further uncertainty. We may have come out of recession again, but the idea that Britain, let alone the countries of the eurozone, can expect to see any resumption of the kind of growth rates to which we have all been accustomed since the second world war, is increasingly fanciful. We are living through not a downturn but an epochal change, and we need to make a more consistent effort to understand what this implies"

But I have news for you Mr Kettle. As things go from bad to worse for the working class and the rich are visibly seen to get even richer, flaunting their obscene wealth and power; strikes, occupations, blockades, riots and other types of resistance combined with regrettable but understandable social collapse will intensify throughout Europe, eventually spreading to these shores. Your system based on profit and power for the minuscule minority and utter misery for the vast majority, including the degradation of the planet, is reaching an end-point. There are no guarantees this will end in a better society but there is one thing I'm sure of-we are fucking well not going to get used to it!