Austria

Stab in back

TWO MASS meetings, 800 and 1,200 strong, of Vienna University students voted last week to scale their occupation down. "But hundreds of students are involved in workshops discussing how to resist the Tory/far right government," says Kerstin of Socialist Worker's sister paper in Austria, Linkswende. At the same time mass meetings in work time are taking place in Austria's nationalised industries to discuss opposition to the government's privatisation programme.

Workers in Austria Tabak, the state-owned tobacco company, met last week. Postal workers want to take official action over the sharpest attacks Austrian workers have faced for 40 years. But the leaders of Austria's Social Democratic Party, equivalent to the Labour Party in Britain, are scandalously demobilising opposition to the government. Social Democrat leader Alfred Gusenbauer attended round-table talks with the Tories and the far right Freedom Party last week to discuss how to end Austria's diplomatic isolation. He has said he will judge the government by its "behaviour over the next year".

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