Greece

Solidarity for all

On a recent trip to Athens, Solidarity visited a “solidarity health clinic” run by volunteers to provide healthcare for those unable to access it. We spoke to Constantine Kokossis who volunteers at the clinic in Omonia, central Athens. Solidarity for All, a fund set up five years ago using the money from Syriza MPs, helped set up clinics like this one. This clinic has been working for three years, providing primary care to everyone in need. Our clinic is a community — everybody is providing services for free. The idea of solidarity is our inspiration. We have a staff of about 80. There is a...

A memorandum for the rich

Solidarity spoke to Petros Markopoulos, member of the Syriza Youth secretariat. S: People on the left in Greece tend to talk more about the conflict with European capitalists than with Greek capitalists. What do you think of that? PM: We have to change that. If you need money, to restore the working class, the solution is not to insist on this fight of Greeks versus EU. You have to face your own local bourgeoisie. You need money to undo the last 5 years that were ruinous for the workers, you need to get the money back from the local bourgeoisie, to reverse the memorandum situation, to create a...

Greece: break the stalemate

Workers’ Liberty members Edward Maltby and Gemma Short went to Athens, Greece, from 25 – 29 May to meet and interview activists inside and outside Syriza. We will be publishing interviews in our paper and online soon. There are some signs of the years of austerity in Athens; building projects have been left unfinished; empty buildings are left to fall into disrepair; pavements and roads in some districts are cracked and overgrown with weeds and grass. But there is a shiny new extension to the metro, opened only two years ago, and we saw no more people living or begging on the street than might...

Greek health workers and dockers strike against cuts and privatisation

The trade union Poedhn, representing all workers in Greece’s public sector hospitals, has called a 24-hour strike for Wednesday 20 May, with a demonstration at 12.30 outside the Ministry of Health. The hospital workers are demanding money to fund public and free healthcare, staff recruitment, and payment of accrued overtime for doctors and nurses. The role of Syriza’s trade union fraction in the health sector is of pivotal importance. General meetings were called of all Syriza’s healthcare workers between 11 and 15 May and a decision was taken to build and support the strike. Every Syriza...

Syriza's leaders must listen to the party

Over 100 days have passed since the popular verdict of the Greek people on 25 January, which led to the formation of the Syriza-Anel government. If only on a symbolic level — but symbolism has its importance in working-class politics — this government is of a different quality from the previous once. We saw Alexis Tsipras meeting and hugging the reinstated cleaners at the Ministry of Finance, thanking them for their class struggle, and for key members of the Syriza cabinet such as Katrougkalos and Valavani joining the cleaners’ celebrations. In the ND-Pasok years ministers were photographed at...

Left calls on Syriza to defy ECB and IMF

According to Stathis Kouvelakis, a left-wing member of Syriza’s central committee, writing on 3 May: “The latest from the negotiations between Greece and the Eurogroup in Brussels is that breakdown seems quite close. “The IMF is in the frontline, asking for further deregulation of the labour market and opposing the government’s plan to reestablish collective bargaining. According to the usually well-informed right-wing paper Kathimerini the demands of the IMF also include further cuts in pensions and oppose any raising of the minimum wage.” Yet the Syriza-led government is rapidly approaching...

Syriza left says: “We won’t vote for austerity”

On 24 April eurozone finance ministers meet again to discuss whether to release the remaining credits to Greece which were agreed under the last memorandum. Greece made an outline deal on 20 February, but the eurozone ministers say they want more details before they release cash. In the run-up to 24 April, they are more hard-faced than ever. German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble has said: “Nobody expects that there will be a solution”. He indicated what way he wants Greece to go by saying: “The UK has done a very good job in the past few years and Osborne has a very good plan for the...

Greece's Nazis go on trial

On 20 April, the trial of 69 members of Greece’s fascist party Golden Dawn — Greece’s “little Nuremberg” — began in a packed room at the Women’s Prison of Korydallos, near Piraeus. It was then adjourned to 7 May, in order to designate defence counsel for one of the defendants who had no lawyer. The 69 defendants include the head of the party, Nikos Michaloliakos, and all the previous parliamentary group of Golden Dawn. The matters before the court are: • The murder of the musician Pavlos Fyssas on the night of 17 September 2013 • The attack on three Egyptian fishermen in their home in Perama...

EU set to push Greece to its knees

After the re-invigoration of the squares movement with mobilisations in support of the Syriza-led government and against the Troika (EU-ECB-IMF) blackmail, the movement is slowly starting to intervene with mobilisations which are not anti-government (except those of the anarchist groups) but seek to “remind” the government of its election commitments and to counter the lTroika’s ultimatums. The process is slow, but we can see the first steps of it. There were demonstrations of 10,000 in Thessaloniki / Skouries-Chalkidiki against the gold mining activities of Eldorado Gold and to “remind” the...

Syriza left can be decisive

The weaknesses of the Syriza-led government’s position are weaker still if viewed in terms of the international balance of power. The brazen blackmail of the European “institutions” and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is designed to force the government to choose between direct subordination to the lenders or rapid collapse. To paraphrase a famous saying from the time of the Russian Revolution — one that we can appreciate today: Without a transformed policy in Europe, without the outbreak of a political resistance movement led by the left in Spain or Ireland or France or Italy, we will...

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