SYRIZA letter

Letter published in News and Star.

Well done Hazel and Stephen Grahame for showing solidarity from Carlisle in Athens, and well done the Greek people for rejecting austerity misery, despite Tsipras’s capitulation to EU blackmail. Greek debt wasn’t caused by lazy workers drinking ouzo and smashing plates – even before the world banking crash and mass unemployment (26%, over 50% for youth) they worked the longest hours in Europe for little pay. It was created by European banks recklessly lending corrupt Greek Tory and Labour governments money, for example to buy submarines, planes and weapon systems from Siemens, Mannesman etc, for what was the world’s fourth costliest military, International banks, corporations and EU politicians colluded in the corruption by the rich and powerful. Goldman Sachs helped the Greek conservative PM, Samaras, to fiddle the books to join the Euro, with the knowledge of the Eurozone leaders.

There was no bailout for the impoverished Greek people but for the European banks, offloading their unpayable loans onto state institutions. Now they are making Eurozone taxpayers and the Greek working and middle classes, especially pensioners, pay the bill. But the Thatcherite economics of austerity have resulted in 5 years of depression, crashing the  economy by 25%, halving living standards, throwing millions into destitution and despair  – yet worsening the debt level even further. Now even the IMF admits the country will be pushed deeper into permanent debt and decline without a partial write-off, yet they and the EU/ECB still oppose this demand from Syriza.

Why? Because they are using their unelected power to blackmail and sabotage the democratically elected Syriza government, force regime change and impose their bureaucratic will firstly on the Greek voters and, by example, on the coming elections in Spain, Portugal and Ireland. Anyone in the Labour Party or trade unions here who thinks the EU is somehow “social” needs to check this brutal reality.

Carlisle Socialist Party believes that Syriza must now cancel the debt and determinedly lead the people out of the undemocratic EU and Euro. The constitution, which exempts the billionaire owners of the world’s biggest shipping fleet from paying taxes, must be scrapped and the fleet, along with the banks and corrupt corporations, nationalised. Democratic control and planning by the Greek workers would then allow the economy to be rebuilt in their interests.

Brent Kennedy

Carlisle Socialist Party