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Greek workers will not roll over and die. Thousands took to the streets in Athens today to protest at swingeing cuts aimed at ordinary men and women who will be expected to pay the price for a faltering economy. How much of Greece’s woes are due to economic mismanagement, corruption, or the global financial crisis is unclear, but what is clear is that once again, the person in the street is having to foot the bill.

There must be many solidarity groups around the world watching with envy as the cradle of democracy refuses to bow down to austerity measures in order to repay an IMF and EU loan of 110 billion dollars. If other countries showed the same determination to see justice done perhaps the real perpetrators of this economic disaster could be unmasked and reprimanded. It is unfair that the victims of bankruptcies and redundancies have to suffer, while the top two hundred richest people in the world actually became richer during the recession.

No doubt these demonstrators suspect, as I do, that they are being used as whipping boys to cover up gross negligence at a higher level. Or perhaps there is a clear line of cause and effect leading from the boardrooms of Goldman Sachs and other companies to the perilous state of economic affairs in Europe. Whatever the real cause of the malaise, we can be sure that the average Greek worker (or Spanish, or Italian, or Irish) is nothing more than an innocent casualty of the butterfly effect of Wall Street greed.

We have now seen how a few men who “exceed the remit of their job descriptions” (or shall we just say “behave fraudulently”?) can wreak global havoc and take away the livelihoods of millions of innocent people. Why must the axe now fall on those who least deserve it? Why is it the real culprits cannot be brought to book? It seems the Greeks are alone in their courageous fight for fairness. If a Conservative government is elected in the next few days in the UK, a stringent austerity programme will be implemented there which, once more, will hurt the most vulnerable in society. Perhaps there too the seeds of discontent will be sown which will result in workers taking to the streets. For once, very few people would blame them.

The Greeks’ appetite for a fight may well spark copycat demonstrations around the world as put upon workers unite in their attempts to right the terrible wrongs of unscrupulous billionairism.

Milton Johanides is a retired businessman, church elder, writer and artist. He has been featured on BBC TVs Songs of Praise, owned numerous art galleries and once ran an award winning picture framing business in Scotland. The views expressed in these articles are his own. email: miltonjohanides@yahoo.co.uk
http://miltonjohanides.webs.com/
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