HALF a million Greek workers, students and youth marched through Athens on Wednesday.
This was as part of a two-day general strike against a government Bill that imposes 30 per cent wage and pensions cuts, the abolition of collective labour agreements, high taxation on workers’ income and will lead to an estimated 300,000 sackings in the public sector.
Throughout the march workers shouted ‘Withdraw the Bill now!’ and ‘Down with the government!’.
It was the biggest ever workers’ march in Greece, comparable only to the liberation march from the Nazis of 1944 and of the Athens Polytechnic Uprising Anniversary march of 1974 which led to the overthrow of the military junta.
For Thursday, workers and youth were set to stage an encirclement of the Vouli (Greek parliament).
All the different working class sections participated in the truly colossal march and along with them university and school students, the self-employed, lawyers, shopkeepers, the unemployed and immigrant workers.
There were huge contingents of public sector workers, health workers, civil servants and teachers.
All shops, offices and banks were shut throughout the Athens city centre. The national shopkeepers’ association had ordered its members not to open their shops in support of the strike.
The stoppage was total in the public sector and in banks, ports, refineries, building sites, airports, railways. The Athens public transport workers staged stoppages early in the morning and late at night to facilitate people attending the march.
Workers and youth marched in a joyful and determined mood hoping that their demonstration of hundreds of thousands could lead to the withdrawal of the Bill and the overthrow of the hated Papandreou government branded as a junta.
The Greek Communist Party (KKE) demonstration marched first to the Vouli and once there blocked the entrance to the square in front of the Vouli for the rest of the marchers. Like previous times, the KKE-led march stayed in the square for an hour and then moved out to disperse half a mile away.
The square was refilled by the hundreds of thousands of workers and youth that had marched independently of both the KKE and of the trade union bureaucracy of the GSEE (Greek TUC) and ADEDY (public sector trade unions federation).
But the GSEE and ADEDY leaders, assisted by the leaders of the big public sector trade unions, did not ask workers to stay in the square.
From about 2.00pm youth started throwing stones, bottles and fruit at the armed riot police stationed at one of the corners of the Vouli building.
The riot police responded with noise bombs and tear gas canisters but they didn’t dare to get out of the Vouli confines and face the angry workers and youth in their hundreds of thousands.
But once both the KKE Stalinists and the GSEE-ADEDY bureaucrats had told workers to go home, the riot police in their thousands went on the offensive.
For about two hours the square in front of the Vouli and the rest of the Athens city centre was transformed into a battlefield.
Eventually the riot police cleared the square using hundreds of tear gas canisters and beat up workers and youth with shields and truncheons.
Dozens of arrests were made. Barricades were set up in several places to protect demonstrators from the vicious attacks of riot police motorcycles.
Similar events took place in all the Greek major cities with huge demonstrations attacked by riot police. Even in villages on the Aegean islands marches were reported against the government.
The monstrous government Bill passed the first stage late on Wednesday with a majority of four. The crucial vote was to take place late on Thursday night.
Workers and youth left the square on Wednesday determined to come back next day and fight on. Already several unions have decided to call strikes and occupations for next week.
The Greek government were under immense pressure to pass the Bill through the Vouli but the events in Europe, with the downgrading of many banks and of Spain and possibly France, means that the masters of Papandreou are busy now trying to save their own skin.
Statement of the Ergatiki Antistasi (Workers’ Resistance), newspaper of the Revolutionary Marxist League, Greek Section of the International Committee of the Fourth International.
NO TO THE GOVT BILL!
FOR AN INDEFINITE POLITICAL GENERAL STRIKE TO OVERTHROW THE JUNTA OF PAPANDREOU-IMF-ECB!
THE troika of IMF-EU-ECB overlords with the Bill dictated to the Papandreou parliamentary junta aim to drive to destitution the Greek workers and youth through mass sackings of hundreds of thousands, huge cuts in wages and pensions, new unbearable taxation and the abolition of collective labour agreements.
As the government decision to impose the dictatorial measure of ‘civil conscription’ on the local government workers on strike show, the Papandreou junta have plans for violent privatisation of municipal and public services with the use of the army. The Greek Constitution has become nothing but toilet paper for Papandreou. To break the working class they are preparing a so-called national government of a dictatorial nature.
Throughout Europe and the USA today the working class and the youth have arisen against the banks and governments who impose wage and pension cuts, privatisations and mass unemployment. In Libya the resistance is continuing against the NATO bombings, in Egypt workers are fighting against the military government and in Palestine they move forward for their own independent state. The insoluble crisis of the world capitalist system has unified the workers’ resistance throughout the world.
EITHER THEM OR US!
The aim of this 48-hour general strike is the withdrawal of the monstrous government Bill. But just a strike, a march through Athens and the encirclement of the Vouli (Greek parliament) are not sufficient. What is needed is an INDEFINITE POLITICAL GENERAL STRIKE along with a MULTI-FORM OF STRUGGLE, of occupations, strikes and demonstrations for the OVERTHROW OF THE GOVERNMENT, the tool of the IMF and of the EU. Whatever happens inside their Vouli this Thursday, workers and youth must continue this multi-faceted fight in an even bolder way for the kicking out of the troika.
FOR A NATIONAL PEOPLES ASSEMBLY
In every district and neighbourhood we call upon workers and youth to form Residents Committees and Strike/Struggle Committees at places of work (Councils of Action) and in very city and town Peoples Assemblies with the immediate task of forming a National Peoples Assembly made up of representatives of trade unions, the unemployed, students and youth, the self-employed and the immigrants. This Workers’ Vouli should have a programme for the nationalisation of all banks and large-scale industry and business without compensation and under workers’ control and management, the cancellation of Greece’s debt and its exit from the European Union, the Euro and NATO.
SOCIALISM IS THE ONLY HOPE!
We call for the overthrow of capitalism and for a workers’ and small farmers’ government elected by the National Peoples Assembly. For the building of a mass revolutionary party to lead workers and youth to the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and on to socialism!
Athens 18 October, 2011
