At the beginning of January, in Rosarno, a town of 15,000 people in Calabria in the south of Italy, there were violent confrontations between local and immigrant workers, a pure expression of a society in decomposition.When workers fight for their own demands, the way is open to overcoming all such divisions and offering real hope for the future.

Daily we are told that we have to tighten our belts, accepts jobs losses, pay cuts, lose of pensions, increased work rates for the good of the national economy, to help it cope with the deepening recession. At British Airways they have even pressured workers to work for nothing for a whole month, with the threat of unemployment hanging over them...

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.