Europe

The largest left protest ever against the policies of a French Socialist Party (PS) government took place in Paris on May 5. To the stirring sounds of the protest anthem “On Lache Rien” (“We Don’t Give In”), up to 180,000 workers, pensioners, unemployed and students marched from the Bastille to Place de la Nation.

Luigi Preiti, a 49-year old unemployed man from the Calabria region of southern Italy, walked towards Palazzo Chigi on April 28, the seat of the Italian government in Rome, holding a gun. As the military police patrolling the palace tried to stop him, Preiti went on a shooting spree.

He wounded two policemen before the he was restrained and arrested by the Carabinieri. Apparently, Preiti’s intended plan was “to kill a politician” and then commit suicide.

Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, veteran Irish civil rights leader, said in response to the case of Irish republican Marian Price, who was returned to jail in 2011: “It is a clear signal to everyone who is not 'on board' and who is not of the same mind as the government that no dissent will be tolerated.

“No dissent will be tolerated and you challenge the status quo at your peril.”.

The 39th anniversary of Portugal’s 1974 “revolution of the carnations” that overthrew a 48-year-long dictatorship, was marked on April 25 by a huge march against austerity in Lisbon.

The symbols of that revolution — the carnations and the song “Grandola, Vila Morena” (broadcast in the early hours of April 25, 1974 as the signal to start the revolt )— were massively present.

They now stand for the need for another rebellion, this time against the austerity imposed on the country by the “troika” -- the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund.

The citizens of the Spanish state awoke on April 14 to shocking news ― acts of “pure Nazism” were spreading across the country.

Not only that, but they were being organised in concert with “elements close to ETA” (the armed Basque independence group that has declared a permanent ceasefire).

Who was responsible? A Spanish equivalent of the Greek neo-Nazi outfit Golden Dawn? Some surviving cell of the Falange (one-time shock troops of the Franco dictatorship and admirers of Hitler’s New Order in Europe)?

In the wake of Margaret Thatcher's departure, I remember her victims. Patrick Warby's daughter, Marie, was one of them.

Marie, aged five, suffered from a bowel deformity and needed a special diet. Without it, the pain was excruciating. Her father was a Durham miner and had used all his savings. It was winter 1985, the Great Strike was almost a year old and the family was destitute.

A 700-strong march wound its way through the medieval streets of Freiburg, in the south-west German state of Baden-Wurttemberg, on April 20 to protest against the imminent resumption of deportation flights from the state.

The theme of the protest was “Those who want to stay should stay”.

Those targeted for deportation are Roma refugees who fled Kosovo, Serbia and Macedonia during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, and their German-born children.

Margaret Thatcher is dead. Her policies as prime minister ruined the lives of millions of people.

Now, her political heirs are trying to extend the damage she did in ways she only dreamed of. The political task is to ensure they fail. We need to make sure Thatcher’s legacy dies with her.

Those who will mourn the death of Thatcher include the bankers and get-rich-quick speculators in the City. She pioneered the neoliberal casino capitalism that enriched them.

So will Rupert Murdoch's newspapers, which have done so much to champion her rotten values.

The United Nations warned on April 10 that austerity measures in richer, developed countries were hitting children hard. Most European governments have turned to austerity measures to cover their bankers' gambling losses.

Social and economic policy research head UN children's agency Unicef Chris de Neubourg, said that they must reflect on how their cuts are affecting children. Instead of sparing today's children a future burden they are, in many cases, “presenting the bill to the children now,” risking "”letting them pay both now and in the future,” he told reporters in Geneva.

The admission on April 2 by former French Socialist Party (PS) government budget minister Jerome Cahuzac that he did have a Swiss bank account for tax evasion purposes has set off a storm of disgust and fury in France.

The already unloved government of prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault has been shaken to its core. President Francois Hollande’s popularity has sunk faster and lower than that of any president in the history of France’s Fifth Republic.

It is not hard to see why. Here was the minister entrusted with the fight against tax fraud found out to be a lying tax cheat.