Monthly Archives: August 2005
THE working class continues to pay a massive price for its reformist trade union leadership. This is completely committed to supporting the capitalist government of Tony Blair, at the same time as this government is making war on the people of Iraq and on the working class and...
FORTY-SEVEN people were massacred in two bombing raids by American warplanes in occupied Iraq early yesterday morning, close to the Syrian border. The air strikes took place on the western Iraqi town of Al-Qaim. In one house alone, 35 people were killed when it was bombed. Twelve more people were killed in...
‘WE’RE coming back!’ Gate Gourmet strikers shouted defiantly at the scab lorries accompanied by video surveillance vans as they drove past the mass picket which was maintained at Heathrow airport throughout the Bank Holiday weekend. Strikers told News Line that the attempts to divide them with proposals brought forward by...
OVER the weekend, President Bush made personal phone calls to both the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Abdul Hakim al Aziz, and also to the US puppet Prime Minister, the leader of the Dawa Party, Ibrahim al Jaafari. Despite the phone calls,...
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmad Qurei, also known as Abu-Ala, last Saturday said that an independent and sovereign Palestinian state will inevitably be established on national Palestinian soil no matter how long this takes. He rejected US President George Bush’s suggestion of a Gaza state. Qurei added that Israeli schemes would only...
‘THEY are trying to break our unity. We reject this deal,’ Gate Gourmet picket Mrs Gill said yesterday. She was responding to proposals brought forward to the mass picket at Heathrow Airport by Transport and General Workers Union District Officer Oliver Richardson. Richardson told pickets: ‘Yesterday at the TUC an agreement...
‘THEY are trying to break our unity. We reject this deal.’ This is what pickets near to the Gate Gourmet plant told News Line yesterday morning. That the company has hit upon a formula for attempting to cut wages and conditions, while at the same time...
PLO Executive Committee member Yasser Abed Rabbo has called on the European Union to take a firm stand against moving the Zionist settlers evacuated from Gaza into the West Bank Israeli colonies. During a meeting in Ramallah on Wednesday with the EU special representative for the Middle East peace process...
THE attempt by the US to foist its version of a ‘constitution’ onto Iraq, in alliance with a section of the Shi’ite clergy and the traditional Kurdish leadership, is now bursting apart at the seams. Central to this constitution is an attempt to split Iraq and Iraqis into sectarian areas...
‘The new measures, proposed today by the UK government, targeting non-nationals considered to be threatening public order, national security and the rule of law, violate basic human rights and the UK’s international obligations,’ Amnesty International said on Wednesday. In a statement, Amnesty expressed concern that: ‘The Home Secretary Charles...
THE Gate Gourmet strikers have poured scorn on company chairman David Siegel’s departure from Britain to America, which was announced on Wednesday. Picket Mr Bakra said: ‘Siegel has gone to see his billionaire boss who spent $10 million on his own birthday party. Some people are saying he’s getting...
EX-US presidential candidate Pat Robertson, an ultra religious leader of the US’ ‘moral majority’ has just called for the US state to murder the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, as the best way to do the job of securing Venezuela’s oil, rather than fight ‘another $200 billion war’. He made...
THERE WERE no talks yesterday between the TGWU and Gate Gourmet bosses after its chairman David Siegel flew back to the US for crisis meetings with the company chiefs. This was after talks broke down on Tuesday evening at the TUC, with Brendan Gold the union’s chief negotiator condemning the...
TGWU leader Tony Woodley’s speech at Southall on Monday, and his remarks to journalists both before and after the meeting, were a dereliction of his duty, as the general secretary of the TGWU, to the locked out Gate Gourmet workers, to win their life and death struggle to keep...
Over three hundred friends and supporters of the family of Jean Charles de Menezes – the young Brazilian electrician murdered by Metropolitan Police firearms officers while he was on his way to work last July 22nd – held a vigil opposite Downing Street on Monday evening. De Menezes was shot...
Imprisoned Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has vowed in a letter to sacrifice himself for the cause of Palestine and Iraq. He urged Arabs to follow his path and used language implying he would become a martyr for the Arab cause. The letter, published in two Jordanian newspapers on Sunday, was...
THE policy of the Labour government, as far as the NHS is concerned, is to hand over more and more of the NHS budget to the private sector, while bankrupting more and more NHS trusts, forcing them into closure. While billions have been handed over to the private medical industry,...
Last Saturday evening, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Asefi outlined his government’s position to the foreign media on a number of issues, beginning with Iran’s development of nuclear power. He said Iran is ready to talk to the EU trio, France, Germany and the UK, about the Natanz nuclear site. On...
YESTERDAY, the determination and militancy of the 670 Gate Gourmet locked-out workers forced the High Court judiciary to acknowledge that they did indeed have the right to picket the plant, and that their picket line was legal. The judiciary was also forced to back off from the submission by the...
GATE Gourmet strikers, at Heathrow, were jubilant yesterday after the High Court verdict that they had the right to picket the company which sacked them 12 days ago. Mr Justice Fulford decided that the picket outside the factory should be reduced from ten to six pickets, but refused to disperse...
A cousin of Jean Charles de Menezes, the young Brazilian electrician murdered by Metropolitan Police CO 19 firearms officers, yesterday demanded those responsible ‘must face justice’. He also demanded that Met Commissioner Sir Ian Blair resign. Reading out a statement at a family press conference near Stockwell, Alex Alessandro Pereira called for...
THE family of Jean Charles de Menezes, murdered by police on the Tube on July 22, have called for the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, to resign and for those responsible for the murder to be prosecuted. Yasmin Khan, from the Jean Charles de Menezes’ Family Campaign, said...
Union Network International (UNI), a federation of unions from across the globe, will convene more than 1,500 delegates from six continents, 140 countries and 900 unions for its 2nd World Congress on August 22-25 in Chicago, Ill. It will be one of the largest gatherings of trade unions in...
BA is seeking to put the boot into its workforce at Heathrow to create a climate of intimidation and fear. It has announced in its weekly newsletter that it has set up a hotline so that finks can inform on the 1,000 baggage handlers, bus drivers and cargo workers who...
Lawyers for the family of Jean Charles de Menezes yesterday said they wanted the truth, and answers to ‘lies that have been told’ about his execution by police. Defence solicitors Gareth Peirce and Harriet Wistrich met with the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) yesterday morning to demand answers to a...
Iraq’s newspapers warned Tuesday of the risk of the total collapse of basic services like electricity and water, saying upgrading them was more important than drafting the constitution. ‘The petrol crisis stole the spotlight from the constitution crisis,’ said the editorial in the leading independent daily Azaman. Iraqi puppets missed the...
DOCUMENTS leaked from the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) show that on July 21, a young Brazilian, Jean Charles de Menezes, was shot seven times in the back of the head and once in the shoulder, while he was being held down in the seat of an underground train...
TRANSPORT and General Workers Union general secretary Tony Woodley led a delegation into talks with British Airways chief Rod Eddington at Heathrow Airport yesterday afternoon. Before entering the talks, Woodley and TGWU national secretary for Civil Aviation, Brendan Gold, visited the 300-strong picket of locked out Gate Gourmet workers on...
‘Talks have, indeed, broken down as a consequence of Gate Gourmet wanting to selectively re-employ those who had been sacked, even though there is enough work for everyone,’ Transport and General Workers Union General Secretary Tony Woodley stated yesterday early evening. He added: ‘The T&G remains in talks with British...
RISING crude oil prices are driving up the price of petrol at the pumps. Petrol is now at around 92 pence a litre, an increase of eight pence a litre in the last month. This works out as an increase of up to 40 pence a gallon in the last...
The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) officially began a historic evacuation of the Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip at midnight Sunday, reported the Palestine Media Centre (PMC) on Monday It added: ‘The Israelis say it’s the end of their occupation of the coastal strip, but the Palestinians insist it’s only...
It has just been confirmed what we already knew – that the Gate Gourmet bosses, in a well planned action, provoked a walk-out by a section of their workforce so that they could sack the entire workforce. Prior to that action, the bosses made arrangements to bring in scabs from...
Several hundred people joined an anti-Iraq war protest outside President George W Bush’s holiday ranch in Crawford, Texas, on Sunday, as the American Civil Liberties Union accused the White House of trying to avoid responsibility for torture at Abu Ghraib. Sunday’s demonstration was organised by Cindy Sheehan, whose...
THE US President, George W Bush said on Friday: ‘All options are on the table,’ adding that he had not ruled out the option of using force against Iran, after it resumed work on its nuclear programme for an alternative source of energy. He continued that, although he was working...
Locked out workers at British Airways caterer Gate Gourmet demanded their dispute be made official as talks between the company and the Transport and General Workers Union resumed at ACAS yesterday morning at 11am. Talks were still continuing yesterday afternoon. Attempts by the company to divide them were rejected by the...
Amnesty International has expressed considerable alarm over the onslaught on basic rights announced by Prime Minister Blair on Friday 5th August to deal with the ‘terrorist threat’. It notes that while ‘there are currently no detailed legislative proposals, the Prime Minister indicated that such proposals as “necessary” were being “urgently...
THE Blair government announced yesterday through its Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, that it was going to bring in legislation that will tell judges how the Human Rights Act is to be interpreted. This will effectively end the role of the judiciary as the legal guardians of the interests of the...
Backers of the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) claimed the bill would increase US textile jobs – but a new study by the University of Michigan says those assertions are false, says the AFL-CIO trade union federation. The bill the AFL-CIO refers to authorising CAFTA, was passed by...
FURIOUS locked-out Gate Gourmet workers yesterday slammed Transport and General Workers Union officials for demanding British Airways workers, who came out on strike in their support, should return to work. Locked out Gate Gourmet workers said union officials must cease repudiating strike action by BA baggage handlers, check-in staff, caterers,...