Greece Follow

Our societies are supersaturated with unrecognised anger that can suddenly crystallise around a single incident of police abuse or state repression. Yet although the seeds of revolt have been so flagrantly sown bourgeois society seldom recognises its own harvest.

Over 2,000 people took to the streets of Athens on Saturday 20 December against the Greek state’s attacks on migrants. The march was a sign of the deepening anger in the country against the right wing New Democracy government.

Mass protests and strikes are continuing in Greece, two weeks after the police killing of 15 year old Alexandros Grigoropoulos. The mass movement that has taken to the streets has intensified the pressure on the right wing New Democracy government. Alexandros’s killing has become a focus for all the general discontent in society.

The current struggle in Greece is the latest in a long line of battles against different governments. Both the centre-left Pasok party and the right wing New Democracy party have tried to attack workers’ rights – and they have always faced resistance.

Yiannis Theoharis Yiannis Theoharis is a member of the steering committee of the union of workers of the Intracom telecoms company in Athens

One of the high points of resistance in Greece is the Athens Polytechnic uprising of 1973, which helped to sweep away the right wing dictatorship that ruled the country.

The anger that exploded in Greece following the police killing of 15 year old Alexandros Grigoropoulos is still raging.

The furious response to the police killing of a 15 year old boy in Athens last Saturday has seen mass protests, strikes and student walkouts rock Greece's right wing government.

Greece Greece is still in the grip of a growing strike wave in opposition to the right wing government’s attempts to pass the costs of the economic crisis onto working people.

Letters

When British academic Chris Jones, acclaimed for his writing on radical social work, went to live on a small Greek island he discovered that he was living on a frontline. He reports on the plight of desperate refugees who risk their lives to escape to Europe, and the reaction of the community.