Monthly Archives: February 2006
THE brutalising, maiming, beating and even killing of the ‘subject peoples’ by imperialist troops is part and parcel of the imperialist system and tradition, which breeds racism and treats all non-Americans or non-Europeans as inferiors. Everywhere the troops of British imperialism have gone, from Ireland to India, they have engaged...
The ‘trial’ of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein collapsed into into chaos minutes after it was resumed again yesterday. After boycotting the ‘trial’, Saddam arrived saying he had been dragged to the hearing handcuffed and blindfolded by his US guards, and a key witness refused to testify. The moment he appeared in...
Senior Hamas official Ismail Haniyah, who topped the Islamic movement’s national list of ‘Change and Reform’ in the parliamentary elections, said last Friday that Hamas leaders ‘would be delighted’ to visit Russia if President Putin tendered a formal invitation. Haniyah was responding to Putin’s invitation, made in comments to reporters...
‘THERE’S all hell breaking loose inside parliament right now about this identity cards scheme. The government is facing a hat-trick of defeats and they’re desperately trying to twist arms to prevent it.’ This is what News Line was told by No2ID campaign coordinator, Phil Booth, yesterday, as hundreds of people...
THE locked-out Gate Gourmet workers have vowed to fight until they win reinstatement on their old terms and conditions, six months after the 700-strong workforce was sacked without warning on August 10 last year. When they heard of the mass dismissals, workers at Heathrow Airport walked out for two days,...
THE closer we get to the new Terminal Five, the more intense the class struggle becomes between the bosses of the BAA (British Airports Authority) and BA (British Airways), and the workers and their trade unions, whether it be the pilots, cabin crews, baggage handlers, loaders, security staff and...
THE working class electors in the safe Labour seat of Dunfermline and Fyfe ignored the crisis at the top of the Liberal Democrats, so determined were they to strike a heavy blow at the Blair-Brown leadership of the Labour Party and Labour Government. Their victory took the Liberal Democrats by...
Prime Minister Blair avoided all mention of Labour’s crushing Dunfermline by-election defeat in his keynote speech to the Labour Party Spring Conference in Blackpool, yesterday. Instead, he attacked Labour MPs who oppose ID cards, draconian anti-terror measures in the Terrorism Bill and his schools privatisation plans contained in the...
TWO hundred people joined a mass picket by the locked-out Gate Gourmet workers at Heathrow, six months after the 700-strong workforce at the airline caterer was ‘sacked by megaphone’. Trade unionists from across London, including bus workers, rail workers, firefighters and school staff came to join the locked-out workers on...
‘WE appeal to all Transport and General Workers Union branches and workers and the whole trade union movement to come to our support,’ Gate Gourmet locked-out worker Parmjit Bains said yesterday. She was speaking on the eve of today’s six-month anniversary mass picket between 1.30pm and 2.30pm at the Beacon...
BELFAST postal workers, in the second week of their unofficial strike, said there is ‘huge anger’ over what they described as Royal Mail ‘bullying’. Rank and file Communication Workers Union members are out solid at Mallusk Mail Centre in County Antrim and Tomb Street delivery office in Belfast city centre...
‘WE WILL win this fight!’ That was the message from speaker after speaker at a rally of more than 1,500 delegates from trade unions and tenants’ federations across Britain, who descended on Westminster on Wednesday to fight the government drive to destroy council housing and return to ‘Rachmanite’ private landlords. Labour...
THE UK trade deficit with the rest of the world for 2005 was a catastrophic £65.5 billion. The deficit on goods and services (banking and other transactions) for 2005 also hit a record of £47.6 billion, compared with a £39 billion deficit in 2004. Britain is clearly no longer...
SCOTTISH Power has just reported a 95 per cent leap in its profits. It also warned its 5.2 million customers to prepare for a double digit rise in their gas and electricity bills, just four months after the last increase. The power giant said that electricity and gas price rises...
Striking Belfast postal workers yesterday told union representatives that they are not going back to work. Communications Workers Union spokesman, Owen Davey, said after an early morning meeting, that the strikers’ position had not changed over the unofficial action, which began on Tuesday of last week. Around 200 workers at...
UAW members in Flint, Michigan, announced last Tuesday they will be marching through the town against Delphi autoparts maker’s attack on their pay, healthcare and jobs. The flintsolidarity.com website declares: ‘Spark a movement! ‘Join UAW Local 651 members and the Soldiers Of Solidarity as we protest Delphi’s attempt to nullify our...
A political storm of the highest order has broken out in Greece over mass phone-tapping. This follows revelations, at a special press-conference last Thursday in Athens by three top Greek government ministers, of a gigantic phone-tapping operation which started ‘before the Athens Olympics Games’ of 2004 and continued to early...
Over 24,000 manufacturing jobs are at risk over the next three months as UK firms struggle with falling orders, bosses warned yesterday. The latest Regional Trends Survey of the Confederation of British Industry and research group Experian, showed a drop in domestic and export orders had hit production throughout most...
A political storm of the highest order has broken out in Greece over mass phone-tapping. This follows revelations, at a special press-conference last Thursday in Athens by three top Greek government ministers, of a gigantic phone-tapping operation which started ‘before the Athens Olympics Games’ of 2004 and continued to early...
MRSA is now linked to nearly 1,000 deaths each year in NHS hospitals. There is no doubt that it is a product of the Tory and Labour drive to privatise the NHS. The Tories brought in the Private Finance Initiative and, along with the building of private hospitals that are...
AMNESTY International has renewed its call for the United States to close its Guantanamo Bay concentration camp and try or release the prisoners held there. ‘The US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is condemning thousands across the world to a life of suffering, torment and stigmatisation,’ the London-based...
Locked out Gate Gourmet workers are looking forward to their six months anniversary picket this Friday between 1.30pm and 2.30pm. They have been picketing at the Beacon Roundabout, Beacon Road, near Heathrow airport Terminal 4, every day since 10th August last year. Mrs Asha Varma said: ‘We want supporters...
United States defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday that the military option against Iran was ‘on the table’. He said this would be an option to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. His remarks came in an interview published in the German financial newspaper Handelsblatt. Rumsfeld said: ‘All options, including...
PRE-EMPTING support for a Palestinian government led by Hamas, the UN Security Council on Friday unanimously adopted the ‘conditions’ set by the Quartet of the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia for not boycotting a Hamas-led government in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). Meanwhile, Palestinian President...
THE sight of Danish embassies burning in Beirut and Damascus leaves no doubt as to the depth of anger of Muslim people at the imperialist arrogance involved in the publishing of the Danish cartoons, ridiculing their religion. The reason for this is that in many cases their religion is all...
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have rejected Sri Lankan government proposed peace talks in Geneva, following reports of abductions of pro-Tiger aid workers. The government of President Mahinda Rajapakse said last Friday that talks were due to start in Switzerland on 15th February and were necessary to stop...
LOCKED-out Gate Gourmet workers are inviting all their supporters to join them on their six-month anniversary picket on the hill at the Beacon Roundabout, Beacon Road, near Heathrow Airport Terminal 4 between 1.30 and 2.30 on Friday. Parmjeet Sidhu said yesterday: ‘We are fed up with the union leaders saying...
COLONEL Gordon Messenger, in charge of the future deployment of British troops in the Helmand region of Afghanistan, was putting a brave face on the posting yesterday. He said that troops would not ‘hunker down’ and wait for suicide attacks but would tackle the threat of suicide bombers ...
EIGHTEEN people were killed on 13 January, when missiles were fired by an American CIA drone aircraft into three houses in Damadola, in the Bajaur Agency region in Pakistan. ‘Hellfire’ missiles were fired from an unmanned Predator drone, probably operated by the CIA, Amnesty International reported on Tuesday. The intended...
‘Who will deliver our babies?’ asked an alarmed Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) yesterday. It issued three stark warnings: ‘Unless recruitment improves there will be insufficient obstetricians to deliver the NHS service. ‘Even immediate reversal will take seven years to produce significant effects. ‘Presently there are approximately 1,500 consultants and...
TGWU leader Tony Woodley confirmed yesterday that the hardship payments to the locked out Gate Gourmet workers have been stopped. He informed a delegation of sacked workers that only those who had signed the so-called Compromise Agreement with Gate Gourmet, and had agreed to work to the US company’s...
Gate Gourmet locked out workers lobbied the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) executive meeting at Transport House, central London yesterday, to demand the union restore their hardship pay and make the dispute official. A number of TGWU Executive Council members backed the locked out workers but TGWU general secretary...
‘WE are lobbying the TGWU national executive today to demand that it immediately restore our hardship pay, which has been stopped by Tony Woodley, the TGWU leader and Brendan Gold.’ Mrs Basra, a TGWU shop steward and one of the 700 Gate Gourmet locked-out workers, added that ‘Stopping our hardship...
YESTERDAY Prime Minister Blair was insisting that he can push through his right wing capitalist ‘reform programme’ despite suffering a double defeat at the hands of Labour MPs over new, anti-free speech, religious laws on Tuesday. The two defeats prove that Blair and his whips have not only lost control...
MORE than 400 people took part in a mass vigil at Parliament Square on Wednesday night, on hearing the news that the 100th British soldier had died in Iraq. Military Families Against the War called for demonstrations in 100 towns and cities across the country yesterday, to demand the British...
THE Chinese and Russian representatives at a meeting of the five permanent members of the United Nations (UN) Security Council and Germany on Monday night in London, agreed that the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) should ‘report’ Iran to the UN Security Council. The permanent members of...
Hamas leaders on Monday rejected as ‘blackmail’ Western demands that the Palestinian resistance movement recognises Israel’s right to exist and renounces violence against the Israeli occupying power or risk losing aid vital to the survival of the Palestinian National Authority. The Palestine Media Centre reported: ‘The Palestinian people in the...