Thousands of demonstrators, workers, young people, unemployed and pensioners, flooded the centre of Athens on Saturday 5 October, as well as dozens of other cities all over Greece, in militant rallies and marches, organized by the All-workers’ Militant Front (PAME).
The mass and combative march of PAME in Athens reached Syntagma Square, outside the Greek Parliament. These demonstrations were organized against the political line of the ND-PASOK government, with the demands:
•The signing of Collective Bargaining Agreements together with the National Pay Agreement and the abolition of the anti-worker laws regarding contracts.
•Protection of the unemployed, unemployment benefit and medical cover.
•Abolition of the anti-social security laws, the abolition of the cuts and the return of the 13th and 14th pension, the return of the pension funds stolen by the state and the employers.
•Reversal of the dismissals in the public sector, cessation of dismissals in the private sector.
•Funds for the cover of basic needs in Education, Health, Welfare.
•Abolition of all the heavy taxes, prevention of the foreclosures and auctions at the expense of the popular families.
At the same time the demonstrations took on the character of a clear condemnation of the criminal activity of the fascist organization of Golden Dawn. The demonstrators maintained a minute’s silence in the memory of Pavlos Fyssas, who was murdered by Golden Dawn.
PAME: A pro-people management of capitalism does not exist
Giorgos Skiadiotis, member of the Executive Secretariat of PAME, at the beginning of his speech at the rally noted that the labour and people’s movement, the movement of the youth, has the strength to isolate, to smash and eradicate from the face of the earth the fascist formation of Golden Dawn. As he said characteristically:” The fascist criminal formation can be smashed, if it is understood by every working man and woman who is suffering that Golden Dawn has nothing to do with the worries and problems of the people. It is a force that has been prepared and trained to carry out violent acts, to intimidate, to carry out crimes. It is a racist, mafia organization. Capital created it, funds it and uses it (…)
Golden Dawn struggles for precisely the opposite of what we and the workers as a whole are struggling for. We are struggling for decent salaries and wages, while they are on the side of the employers so that the wages fall. We are struggling for trade unions freed from the influence of the employers and state, while they are in their service as a thuggish mechanism. We are struggling to unite the workers, regardless of colour, religion, labour relations, against capital, while they are sowing racism, racial and religious hatred. We are trying in an organized way to resist employer and state violence, while they are a section of employer and state violence against the labour movement. We are struggling for the abolition for the system of exploitation, while they are one of the murderous tools of the system against us in order for it to maintain its power. (…)
We are also here, in this mass rally decided on and organized by PAME, in order to break and respond to the climate of fear on the one hand and the false hopes and illusions on the other that the government and the forces of capital are trying to impose.
Against the fear that if the measures are not implemented there will be worse to comes. Against the fear due to the authoritarianism and repression. Against the hopes that these measures will allegedly be the last. Against the hopes that through these measures we will have development and there will be better days for the workers. No fear and no illusions (…)
We are also here:
•Because the trade union movement, the people’s movement, can not have any other line of struggle apart from the unity against capital, the multinationals that are the source of evil, the common tyrant over the popular strata. It can not have the line of class collaboration. It can not have any other line apart from the line of rejecting all the managers of capitalism.
•Because life has confirmed it many times: there is no pro-people management of capitalism.
•Because we do not want to live with the lies, the utopia of a fairer capitalist development, an allegedly fairer distribution of the wealth that we produce, which the government and SYRIZA are promising. There can be no fair division between those who produce the wealth that belongs to them and the thieves that appropriate it.
We have proposed, to all the organizations of the working class, a general strike on the 23rd of October as an escalation of the struggle.
Because we must impede the new barbarity which is coming to add to the previous situation, making our lives an even worse hell, in every way. Because the employers and government, the foreign allies of the local beasts must feel our hot breath on their necks, at the moment when they are planning new nightmares for us. Because we must create the preconditions for the total overthrow of these measures and the forces that promoted them. All the trade unions share the obligation to take position regarding our proposal and for it to be a positive one. All the workers must take a strict stance in relation to trade unions and trade unionists who will refuse our proposal.
Some seek through alleged indefinite strikes to impede the measures and overthrow the government. Without discussing with the workers, without the right preparation, without alliances. They lead the mobilizations to degeneration in a very few days and of course they lead the workers to disillusionment, to demobilization and to the even greater consolidation of the government and government coalition.
We are talking about yesterday’s stooges which comprise the majority in GSEE and ADEDY, “Independent Intervention” and ANTARSYA, whose adventurism and anti-PAME fury know no bounds.
Up until the realization of the strike, we want to have discussed, if possible, with all the workers, all the people. We want to have integrated thousands more into the trade unions and thousands to take part in the general meetings and to decide. We want on that day for all the factories to shut down, with working men and women themselves at the gates. For the streets to be flooded with working men and women from the factories, and the services. For millions of unemployed, as well as women and immigrants to be together with us on the streets. For the self-employed to be with us who are suffering without a day’s bread, without income, the poor farmers who are having new nooses wrapped around their necks.
If we achieve all this, if the strike is a step in this direction, then the domestic and foreign tyrants will lose their sleep.”
The representative of PAME underlined that only then would the preconditions for this government to unravel be formed. And not only for this government to unravel, but so that another government does not come that will, with other arguments and slogans, continue the anti-people political line.
