As the Greek government – almost immediately after the victory of the ‘No vote’ which it had campaigned for -  agreed to the intensification of austerity measures, there was genuine sympathy from workers internationally for their Greek comrades.  The extent of the attacks on jobs, incomes, pensions and a whole range of essential services has struck a chord because this is not something restricted to the workers in Greece. But at the same time every part of the bourgeoisie’s political spectrum felt confident to use the situation for its own benefit, and against the consciousness of the working class, above all by distorting the real meaning of class solidarity.

In Greece the triumph in the January elections for the left-wing Syriza party produced a pleasing symmetry in the response of the right and left of the political spectrum. In the UK, from the right, the Times declared “Far-left firebrand races to victory”, joined by the Daily Mail’s “Shock waves across Europe as the far left sweeps to power in Greece”.

After June’s election in Greece, President Obama hailed the result as an opportunity for a new government to “continue on the path of reform and do so in a way that also offers the prospects for the Greek people to succeed and prosper.” This has a very hollow ring as the new coalition is politically little different to the coalition that ruled from last November to the elections in May.

Banners at protests in Madrid made fun of Greek ‘apathy’ in the face of the austerity attacks they have already suffered and those which are to come. In reality strikes and demonstrations have been continuing in Greece, but a new wave of ‘indignant’ protests was soon ignited, in Athens and in towns across the country, explicitly following the Spanish example. At the time of writing this has been going on for more than a week.

This is a report on the struggles against austerity measures in Greece, written by a group calling itself ‘Proles and Poor's Credit Rating Agency', formerly TPTG, whose analysis of the uprising in December 2008 we published in WR 328.

Fires aren’t unusual in the summer months in Greece. But this year the area devastated was ten times the average affected over the last 50 years. More than 60 people died in the fires at the end of August that caught the media’s appetite for sensational images. There were the accounts of people trapped in mountain villages surrounded by fire, the tragedy of the 9 people who died when a car crashed into a fire engine causing a fatal blazing traffic jam, the pictures of burnt-out villages, and the bodies lying in fields, houses, cars and among smouldering trees.