Solidarity 246, 16 May 2012

Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union had its vote drop by 8% in provincial elections on 13 May in Germany’s most populous state, Nordrhein-Westfalen. The SPD (equivalent of the Labour Party) gained 5%, and the SPD/Green coalition in Nordrhein-Westfalen now has a majority where before the election it was a minority government. The maverick Pirate Party went up from 2% to 8%, and, maybe in part as a result, the leftish party Die Linke went down from 6% to 3%. This result will increase the pressure on Merkel to modify the EU’s hard-neoliberal policy by adding in some “growth initiatives”...

Following the French presidential elections, which returned centre-left Parti Socialiste candidate Francois Hollande, the French legislative elections will take place on 10-17 June.

The former government parties of Silvio Berlusconi and Umberto Bossi were emphatically defeated in Italy’s administrative elections of 6-7 May. The success of Genovese comic Beppe Grillo’s “Five State Movement” was another notable feature. Grillo is the radical-populist scourge and bête-noire of the whole bourgeois political order in Italy. Berlusconi’s party lost 61% of its support compared with the same elections two years ago, even it its major strongholds, while La Lega of Bossi fared even worse. In its heartlands it lost 67%, and 30% in localities of populations under 15,000. Already...

Dear comrades, Do you really want the European Union to break up? The majority of Greek workers do not. In the 6 May election, 70% voted for parties opposed to the cuts, but polls show that 80% want Greece to stay within the EU and within the euro. The party that did best in the election, the left coalition Syriza, says that a left government in Greece should refuse the cuts, call the bluff of the EU leaders — who may want cuts, but also want to stop the eurozone breaking up — and enforce a renegotiation. They want a united Europe without cuts. So do we. If the Greek left wins a majority, and...

European Central Bank officials, and other bankers, are now openly discussing the possibility of Greece quitting the euro. How would it work? There is no formal procedure by which a state can quit the euro. Probably things would start with money promised to Greece by the ECB not being paid because the Greek government had failed to make required cuts. Then the Greek government would be unable to make its debt payments, including to the ECB. The ECB would block the Greek government printing more euros. It might demand that the Greek central bank pay the 100 billion euros it currently owes to...

Since Greece’s election on 6 May, frantic attempts have been made to try cook up a pro-cuts government of some sort in defiance of the Greek people’s electoral wishes. As Solidarity goes to press on 15 May, it looks as if Greek president Karolos Papoulias will take the risky course of calling new elections on 10 or 17 June, hoping that between now and then the voters can be blackmailed into voting for pro-cuts parties. Despite the grossly unfair Greek electoral system, which gives as a bonus an additional 50 seats to the first party (so ND [Tories] ended up with 108 seats instead of 58), ND...

Now the weather is improving (at least we hope) Workers’ Liberty members plan to spend the coming weekend (19-20 May) starting and restarting public sales of Solidarity in city centres and on estates. Increasingly we are finding more people want to stop and talk to socialists selling papers. To talk about almost anything that comes under the general rubric of “the state of the world.” Why do bankers continue to claim massive bonuses? (Still!) What is going to happen in Europe?... People don’t always agree with us, far from it. But these conversations, the debates we have is one way to ensure...

Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of News International, is to be charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice along with five others (including her husband). The charges is that she tried to conceal evidence from police conducting investigations into phone hacking and bribes to public officials. Brooks and her co-defendants will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on 13 June. The potential maximum sentence for this crime is life, but those convicted of it serve an average of 10 months in jail. The charges are the first to be made since “Operation Weeting”, the police...

Ballot papers to elect the six constituency representatives on the Labour Party's National Executive (NEC) go out on 25 May and must be returned by 13 June. For some time a “centre-left” slate has won three, or sometimes four, of those six places. Since the unions have 12 of the 33 places on the NEC, this means that if the unions take a stand on an issue — and if the issue comes to the NEC at all — those constituency reps can decide issues, as they helped decide last year's election for Labour Party general secretary against the diehard-Blairite candidate. Even though some of the "centre-left"...

Members of the Anarchist Federation in Nottingham, the “Autonomous Nottingham” group and some individuals staged a protest at the Nottingham May Day rally which ended up disrupting the whole rally. The anarchists opposed the inclusion of Mansfield Labour MP Alan Meale on the platform of speakers. Meale is undoubtedly a self-serving, middle-of-the-road Labour MP. He was once a supporter of the miners in their battle against the Thatcher government, but any vestiges of explicit working-class politics have long since vanished from sight. Meale has been knighted by the Queen. He was embroiled in...