John Grahl (Professor of European Integration, Middlesex University), will be speaking at “Ideas for Freedom”, 9-10 July. He talked to Solidarity.

Some of the Baltic and central and east European countries are in virtually the same situation as the eurozone crisis countries. One big difference as far as the west is concerned is that they’re not in very heavy debt to western banks, so western banks haven’t got a lot to lose. Their debts are largely to the IMF and so on.

The strikes on 30 June by teachers and civil service workers against pension cuts were the labour movement’s opening salvo in a war against the government. If we are to win, the war will involve many more strike days and other creative forms of industrial and political action.

Last year another Workers’ Liberty member and I went to a meeting about organising against an EDL demo in Bradford.

After a few minutes a group of about half a dozen young guys turned up. They were led by a middle aged guy calling himself "Snowy" (aka John Shaw). He was from the EDL. We had a bit of an argument. Snowy said he wasn't racist and had mixed race relatives. He described himself as a working class Tory who was just trying to counteract Islamic extremism.

The Sheffield pensions demo on 30 June was no place for the unemployed, according to elements of the left and trade unions.

Charles Cartwright, a brickie who has been unemployed for two years, started to heckle the crowd as it was forming in Ponds Forge. His point was that people on the demo were lucky to have a job. Unfortunately that is the sentiment of many working-class people, especially if they are feeling the sharp end of the recession.

AWL London forum: Wed 20 July, 19:30, Calthorpe Arms, 252 Grays Inn Rd, London WC1X 8JR. Speakers Dave Osler and Cathy Nugent.

Some say that the recent protests in Spain are similar to the upheavals in the Arab world.

Much of the agitation has come from the 15 May movement, a “movimiento de indignados”.

They advocate more participation by the ordinary people in government. They cite the pernicious influence of banks and major corporations. They have a slogan “No somos marionetas en manos de politicos y banqueros” — roughly, “We aren't puppets in the hands of politicians and bankers”.

On 28 June, the Government released its White Paper on the future of higher education.

It is dressed up with talk of improving “the student experience”, but, as the President of Oxford Student Union has said, that is like putting lipstick on the pig of big cuts in teaching budgets and big increases in student fees.

Universities minister David Willetts wants to remove the legislative restrictions on private capital entering the university sector.

The government wants more like A C Grayling’s New College of the Humanities, or Buckingham University.

Economic output in the UK has now been fairly static for about eight months. It is still 4% below 2008.

This makes this slump harsher than any since 1930-4, when output was 5% down a similar time along.

The National Institute of Economic and Social Research reckons it will be 2013 before output is back to 2008 levels.

In early July film footage came from an unnamed Syrian town, showing a group of young men – perhaps six or eight of them – bare-chested on a dusty road.

They are so agitated they are repeatedly getting up and then lying down again. They are beating their chests and shouting at figures in the distance. The translation tells us they are screaming: "Cowards! Kill us if you dare!" at the Syrian armed forces.

As of early July, rebel forces are only 60 miles from the Libyan capital Tripoli.

The war is continuing in the Nafusa mountains to the south, and the rebels are advancing from the east, although Misrata is still being shelled by government forces.

Qaddafi is thought to be hiding out in hotels and hospitals. This kind of ending is what we hope for for all Shahs, Tsars, Caesars and despots of all kinds.