Since the first day of our strike, the Royal Mail propaganda machine has been spewing out misinformation.
Over the last 24 hours we have received hundreds of messages of condolence from groups and individuals from all over the world.
Leaders of the CWU postal workers’ union have suspended national strike action planned for today and Monday of next week following a new offer from Royal Mail.
The postal workers have not been defeated or crushed. Instead their fightback has been curtailed by the CWU union leaders’ decision to conclude an "interim agreement" and halt the action.
About 20 post strike supporters came together in Brent trades hall in West London last night to prepare for the week ahead.
The events of autumn 1989, and the end of the East German state, can be traced back to the spring and summer before the Wall came down – and even further back in history as well.
Two big promises were made in 1989. First, that Poland would be a democratic society. And second that living standards for the mass of people would match those in the West.
On 17 November 1989 tens of thousands of students marched through the streets of Prague. They were marking the 50th anniversary of the suppression of student resistance to the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. The air was full of the feeling for change.
1980 A strike movement sweeps Poland in response to an increase in food prices in July. The Solidarity trade union is formed as a result. It wins massive support and challenges the regime. Though it is suppressed through the 1980s it becomes the main opposition to the regime, which is fatally damaged by the growth...
In 1989 popular revolutions across Eastern Europe overthrew their Communist dictatorships. These countries had nothing to do with socialism. The state and party bureaucracy that ruled society acted as a collective capitalist that exploited the working class.
The fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 were widely hailed as the triumph of free market capitalism.
For Karl Marx, socialism was about self-emancipation. Unlike capitalism, where a rich elite rule, socialism would mean power for the vast majority of people – the working class.
