The struggle by 600 workers laid off from Visteon on 31st March, originally without any pay or benefits, has attracted both interest and solidarity by many other workers, as shown by the translation of their leaflet into 6 other languages and the appearance of workers from other sectors and even other countries at their occupations and pickets.

The occupation of the Visteon car part plants in Belfast, Enfield and Basildon at the beginning of April is a small but important sign that workers are not prepared to lie down and accept the mauling that capitalism in crisis is inflicting on their jobs and living conditions.

The response to protests against the G20 on 1 April has drawn criticism of the police tactic of ‘kettling', forcing demonstrators, and anyone else in the area, into a confined space and keeping them there for hours without food, water or toilet facilities. This is not a new tactic and its use has to be seen in the context not just of the whole repressive arsenal wielded by the democratic state, but also of its ideological campaigns.

The lesson of the 1984 miners' strike for the working class today is that all unions, with their rule books, their bureaucracy, sectional and corporatist set ups, and relations with the Labour Party, are part of the state and work against the self-organisation and extension of struggles under the control of workers themselves.  

As the wave of unofficial solidarity strikes spread from the Lindsey oil refinery to other refineries, power stations, gas and electricity plants, a gas terminal, steel and chemical works, the media ensured that the ‘British jobs for British workers' slogan was mentioned at every opportunity, regardless of the fact that it wasn't actually one of the workers' demands. Some leftist groups, however, insisted that the short-lived movement only had a nationalist dynamic.

The IMF has declared that, of all the most developed economies, Britain's will be hit hardest by the recession.

Thirty years ago the working class in Britain launched a wave of militant strikes against crisis-ridden British capital in what became known as the ‘winter of discontent'. At its height this strike wave involved over 1.5 million workers in the largest work stoppage since the 1926 General Strike

We find ourselves analysing the British situation today after a year of the developing credit crunch and at the very beginning of a recession that even the chancellor predicts will be long and deep. This poses difficult questions for the bourgeoisie as it tries to keep the banking system afloat with unprecedented rescue packages and stabilise the economy. At the same time it is totally bogged down in failing military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan alongside the USA which continue to drain resources. In spite of a policy of trying to spend its way out of the crisis, with money it has to borrow, the working class will be made to pay for the crisis.

There can be no doubt about the government's determination to defend the interests of British national capital abroad. We have only to look at the UK involvement in the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Britain isalways pronouncing on current conflicts, even if it is powerless to influence, as it was in Georgia, and even more now with David Milliband proposing an EU force on stand-by for the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Financially constrained by a deepening economic crisis, bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, its armed forces already overstretched, Britain can only afford empty rhetoric in it's condemnation of Russian Imperialism.

We are reprinting here one of the articles from the first edition of Tea Break (July 2008). The article in question offers a strong analysis of the way the large-scale public sector strikes of 2007 were dispersed by the trade unions, leaving the workers with little to show after returning to work.

Hundreds of thousands of council workers are striking on 16 and 17 July demanding a 6% pay rise, following the example of teachers and civil servants on 24 April, and Shell tanker drivers last month. They will undoubtedly be followed by other workers, with signs of discontent among health service workers, civil servants and shop workers.

The number of British soldiers killed in the intervention in Afghanistan has passed the 110 mark. The figure for Iraq is more than 175. The government says that these deaths are not in vain and the army is fighting for a good cause - to establish democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq. Cleary, the government felt that this needed to be underlined, because the military interventions do appear to be futile.