Mass resistance breaks out in Greece
Greek workers, students and professionals joined the biggest general strike in the country’s history on 28 February. More than 380 demonstrations were held across Greece and internationally, with sizable protests happening in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth.
The mass outpouring was in solidarity with the victims of a 2023 accident on the Thessaloniki-Athens rail, in which a collision between a passenger train and a freight train claimed the lives of 57 people in the Tempe Valley.
In the two years since, the fallout from the crash has shaped Greek politics. The conservative government has tried to silence the uproar. From tampering with evidence to smearing the movement for justice as a ploy by opposition parties, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, leader of the New Democracy party, never took any responsibility or took any action to bring to justice those responsible for the crash. Instead, the whole case has been blamed on a single station operator in Larissa.
Yet an increasing amount of evidence revealing government interference, negligence and corruption has been brought to light. This reached a boiling point on 18 January, when Kontra News released voice messages containing the harrowing last words of passengers calling the European emergency line. Massive protests followed this development, providing a glimpse of the scale of the demonstrations that engulfed Greece a month later.
The recorded words of a young woman have become a slogan of the movement: “I have no oxygen”. This proved that many of the victims did not die in the initial collision but were engulfed in a massive fireball caused by dangerously flammable fuel being transported without the proper safety precautions, which the Greek state should have had full knowledge of.
Indeed, the National Organisation for the Study of Aviation and Rail Accidents and Transport Safety found that the fireball was “the result of flammable material on the freight train, and not of the collision of the trains”. It also found that poor and antiquated safety nets were caused by “poorly maintained and increasingly degrading infrastructure and a structural shortage of staff to continue to provide the usual service”, which in turn was caused by government funding cuts.
Furthermore, the Syriza government privatised the rail company TrainOSE and sold it to Italy’s national railway holding company for 45 million euros in 2016. This led to further cost-cutting, as the company was now run for profit and not for public use. The Greek working class understands that this crime results from the austerity measures imposed on workers, the slashing of public spending, and the privatisation of public goods.
The 28 February general strike was the third in the past twelve months. It was distinctively political, and brought airports, docks, train lines, universities, hospitality and retail to a standstill. The protests were huge, the most significant being in Athens and Thessaloniki. Photographs from drones could not capture all of the crowds. While the scale is hard to measure, local journalist Nikos Evagelatos put it simply: “It was everyone”.
Greek workers have a long history of resistance and recent memories of the massive movement that fought against the austerity memorandums brought by consecutive governments after the global financial crisis. While that movement was defeated when the Syriza government capitulated to the demands of the European ruling class, this movement shows us that struggle can be reinvigorated.
The message was clear on the placards and banners, and in the chants: it is their profits, over our lives. Similar conditions exist here in Australia. NSW railway workers have been in a long dispute with the state government over pay, conditions and safety. As consecutive ALP and Liberal governments slash public spending, criminalise unions and privatise public goods, a small clique benefits while the rest of us are left to fend for ourselves.
The mass mobilisations of Greek workers and students remind us of the recent anti-austerity movement and show us that something new can come of this situation: a movement of even greater proportions that can not only bring justice to the 57 people who lost their lives in that terrible night two years ago, but bring a new world free from the bloodthirst of capitalism.
