Mahon Report: Majority in society pay price for corruption and dishonesty

The recent riots in the most unequal borough in the UK - Tottenham, London - in response to the shooting of Mark Duggan by police have many parrallels with the Brixton riots in London 30 years ago. In advance of a fuller analysis of the recent events, we repost an article for our readers from April of this year, where the Socialist Party of England and Wales (our sister group) loked back at the Brixton riots on it's thirtieth anniversary and warned that the "conditions for new 'Brixtons' are being prepared".

Many issues have come up so far in the Lisbon debate, some very relevant, some less so. The key issues the Socialist Party have been raising so far are workers rights, public services and miltarisation. Elsewhere Joe Higgins has looked at the issue of workers' rights and public services. Here, he goes into precisely how Lisbon boosts the armaments industry and is another step towards a militarised EU.

The impressive attendance of  1,100 at the recent  “Claiming Our Future” conference in the RDS was a positive indication that people want an alternative to the cutback agenda on offer from the entire political establishment, both government and official opposition.  In fact twice as many applied for tickets to attend but could not be accommodated for reasons of space

Attacks on working people are mounting right across Europe. The so-called PIGS (Portugal, Ireland & Italy, Greece, Spain) countries have been to the forefront of these attacks. In Ireland, we have seen €7 billion of cutbacks, seriously damaging public services, including health and education. In Greece, there has been a 10% cut in wages and spending in the public sector, together with an increased retirement age, VAT increases and the freezing of pensions. Portugal has a plan to cut its deficit by €11bn over four years through a crisis tax on wages and cutbacks in public services. The Spanish Parliament has passed cutbacks worth €15bn on top of €50bn already agreed. Italy is due to implement "emergency-cutbacks" of €24 bn.