Monthly Archives: October 2006
ALMOST 25,000 students marched through London on Sunday demanding free education, despite the lack-lustre campaign by the leadership of the National Union of Students (NUS) for this national demonstration and their acceptance of £3,000-a-year tuition fees. The most popular slogans on the march expressed the mood of students. These included:...
‘ONE, two, three, four – education, not war!’ ‘Five, six, seven, eight – occupy and demonstrate!’ shouted large contingents of students on Sunday’s national NUS march against tuition fees in London, attended by 25,000 students. Many students were angry at the NUS leadership’s position of pleading for fees to remain...
‘We will be consulting our members on what action should be taken to defend these NHS jobs’, GMB trade union national officer Sharon Holder told News Line yesterday. She was was responding to the Department of Health’s admission that just over 900 NHS staff are set to be compulsorily...
‘Tony Blair we want justice!’ shouted over seven hundred bereaved families and supporters outside Downing Street last Saturday. They had marched from Trafalgar Square on the annual United Families and Friends Campaign remembrance procession, to commemorate those who have died in state custody. ‘Too many people in this country have...
THE top NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Jones, has just apologised for the death of up to 80 Afghan civilians in a series of bombing raids over 24 hours last Tuesday in an area near Kandahar City that the NATO forces had declared to be free of Taleban...
‘IN GREECE and France they have changed things by taking to the streets – you can change things,’ University and College Union joint general secretary, Paul Mackney, said yesterday. ‘Pass it on, the idea is “subversive’’ – together we can change things,’ he added, addressing a rally in Trafalgar Square...
ANGRY teachers and students fought with police yesterday in Salonica, turning Tsimiski Street, a central highway of the city, into a battleground. The normally festive annual parade of schoolchildren to mark the twin anniversaries of Salonica’s liberation from the Turks in 1912 and Greece’s heroic stand against fascism in 1940,...
GATE Gourmet locked-out workers got great support when they visited Heathrow Airport yesterday in their campaign for their public meeting on Sunday November 5th. Many workers bought tickets and took leaflets saying they would encourage their friends to come. British Airways loader John Bosher told News Line that the BA workforce...
THE Greek working class remains undefeated as the clashes between teachers and students with the riot police in Salonica on Thursday have proven. The source of the fury amongst these undefeated workers is the attempt to betray them by the Social Democratic and Stalinist trade union leaders who called their...
YESTERDAY the UNISON trade union pointed out what most health workers know from hard experience, that; ‘Huge increases in the basics of life eat up “cost of living” pay increases for NHS staff covered by the nurses, and other health professions’ pay review body.’ In its evidence to the PRB,...
ON Monday 23rd October Hertfordshire County Council gave five hours notice of closure of Radlett fire station, betraying understandings and agreements made with the local community which would have kept this vitally needed fire station open. This fire station played a vital role in the Buncefield oil depot...
MANY Heathrow Airport workers, most of them Transport and General Workers Union members, bought their tickets yesterday for the Gate Gourmet locked-out workers pre-Tribunal meeting on Sunday 5th of November. The meeting is being held in Southall Community Centre, Merrick Road from 2-4pm just before the beginning of the locked-out...
HUNDREDS of angry pensioners from all over Britain descended on parliament on Wednesday to demand an immediate increase in the basic state pension to £114 a week and a restoration of the link between the state pension and earnings. The National Pensioners Convention said that over 2.5 million pensioners are...
Leading officials of fourteen trade unions representing nurses, physiotherapists, radiographers, occupational therapists and other NHS staff held a press conference on Tuesday, declaring they have joined forces to challenge the government’s 1.5 per cent limit on public sector pay increases. They announced they are demanding a ‘substantial above inflation pay...
‘It’s shameful the way Gate Gourmet workers have been treated by both the company and the union,’ Hounslow local government UNISON assistant branch secretary Gavin Mott said yesterday. Buying his ticket for the locked out workers pre-employment tribunal meeting on Sunday November 5th (see ad page 2), he said: ‘Our...
Changes to shifts and rosters at Scandinavian Airways at Heathrow (SAS), now to be known as Scandinavian Ground Services (SGS), may lead to industrial action, warns the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU). Jo Jaques, TGWU regional industrial organiser for the staff concerned, said yesterday the airline’s planned imposition of...
YESTERDAY was the first day after the US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad announced that he had given the Iraqi puppet government a timetable for the carrying out of a number of ‘key tasks’. He said these were ‘inducing Iraqi religious and political leaders who can call and influence armed...
IN his press conference yesterday, the US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad revealed, with the US commander, General Casey standing next to him, that the US has given its Iraqi puppets a timetable for carrying out ‘key tasks’ in the next year. Khalilzad said: ‘Success in Iraq is possible and...
Fourteen trade unions representing nurses, physiotherapists, radiographers, occupational therapists and other NHS staff have joined forces to challenge the government’s 1.5 per cent limit on public sector pay increases. At a press conference at UNISON head office in London yesterday, the unions released joint evidence submitted to the ‘independent’ Pay...
Al-Sharqiyah TV reported on its 2 pm news broadcast last Sunday the security and political developments of that day. The report stated: ‘The US Army announced that five of its soldiers were killed in Baghdad, raising the number of Americans killed in Iraq since the beginning of October to 85,...
‘GATE Gourmet are not going to get away with what they did, sacking us for no reason,’ said Raj Sahdev yesterday on the locked-out workers’ campaign team for their public meeting on Sunday 5th November (see ad page 2). She continued: ‘Our tribunals start in November and they will show...
RAIL UNION leaders took the campaign against the privatisation of the East London Line to commuters yesterday. RMT general secretary Bob Crow, TSSA assistant general secretary Manuel Cortes and TUC southeast regional secretary Megan Dobney were at Canada Water station from 07:45 on Monday urging East London...
THE Chinese working class is definitely on the march. It has already compelled the Stalinist bureaucracy to start bringing in legislation forcing the western capitalist monopolies to accept trade unions into their factories in the New Economic Zones. The foreign capitalists are angry and threatening to withdraw their capital, and they...
Patients staying in hospitals where there are fewer nurses on the wards are more likely to die or experience complications, according to a major new study launched by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) yesterday. The independent study establishes a direct link between the number of nurses working on wards...
THE Egyptian security delegation’s efforts succeeded last Friday night in reaching a mutual agreement between Fatah and Hamas to contain the tensions and differences between the two movements, reported the Ma’an pro-Hamas news agency. In a meeting that was held tonight under the auspices of the high-ranking Egyptian security delegation,...
TREVOR Phillips yesterday warned that Britain was becoming polarised and that the controversy over women wearing veils would lead to worse riots than were seen in Bradford and other northern cities in 2001. Phillips is the head of the Commission for Racial Equality, who sparked off the current ministerial ...
Gate Gourmet locked-out workers were campaigning yesterday on Southall Broadway near Heathrow Airport for their public meeting on Sunday November 5th. The meeting is being held at Southall Community Centre, Merrick Rd, from 3pm to 5pm on the eve of the workers’ initial employment tribunal hearing the following week. The locked...
Palestinian prime minister, Hamas leader Ismail Haniya escaped an assassination attempt yesterday. Haniya was unhurt after his convoy came under heavy gunfire in Gaza, witnesses and Hamas officials said. He had just finished making a speech at a Gaza mosque. A car in his convoy was set alight during the incident in...
THE Transport and General Workers Union has reacted with caution to the news that Indian conglomerate Tata has bought steelmaker Corus, formerly British Steel, in a deal worth a reported £4.3bn. John Rowse, T&G national secretary for manufacturing, said details of how the deal would impact on UK operations...
THERE is not the slightest doubt that the Labour government has declared all-out war on all NHS staff with its decision to impose a massive pay cut by awarding a 1.5 per cent ‘wage rise’. Inflation is running at 3.6 per cent according to the government’s own...
The US economy is at the centre of the worldwide capitalist economic crisis. It is in slump, with major industries, such as the motor car industry, being broken up, with scores of plant closures and tens of thousands of redundancies, with the bosses saying that they can no longer...
Trade unions representing nurses, midwives and health workers covered by the ‘independent’ Pay Review Body (PRB), yesterday reacted angrily to a government-proposed huge ‘pay cut’. Health workers ‘cannot be expected to “swallow” the 1.5 per cent increase proposed by the Department of Health (DoH) in its evidence to the PRB’,...
YET more mass demonstrations were held on Wednesday in Athens and Salonica by state primary and secondary school teachers and their supporters in the trade union and student movements. In Salonica, demonstrators wore red Santa Claus hats and carried Christmas trees to symbolise the determination of teachers here to...
THE opening of the long-awaited Velázquez exhibition was disrupted yesterday, as 140 non-shift attendants walked out for the first one-day strike in the 200-year history of the world renowned National Gallery. Pickets were out at the gallery entrances in Trafalgar Square over attempts to impose changes to their terms and...
THE NUS has described a drop in the numbers of students going to university as ‘deeply worrying’, and has called on the Government to re-think their ‘disastrous’ policy. The figures released today by the University and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) show a drop of 3.7 per cent in the number...
ON Tuesday, at the Prime Minister’s monthly press conference, the NHS chief executive, David Nicholson confessed that he did not know how many jobs would be lost this year in the NHS as a result of the budget cuts and the NHS reorganisation (privatisation). He however rejected the figure that...
THE Rail, Maritime and Transport Union (RMT), the Marchioness Action Group and others demonstrated on Tuesday against the lowering of age and training standards on the River Thames, as proposed by the New Boatmasters Licence. They sailed past the Palace of Westminster aboard a 150-foot passenger vessel decked in banners...
A PANEL of White House advisers led by a former Secretary of State, James Baker, is reported to be recommending a major shift of US policy in Iraq to US President George Bush. Baker has stated: ‘Our commission believes that there are alternatives between the stated alternatives, the...
‘There must be no dilution of safety and if we find that our members are put in danger then there will have to be some industrial action,’ Bob Crow said yesterday. Rail, Maritime and Transport Union (RMT) General Secretary Crow was speaking about the effects of an EU directive introducing...
‘Whether it’s redundancies or posts not being filled, thousands of jobs are still being lost in the NHS,’ a British Medical Association spokesman said yesterday. He was referring to claims made by prime minister Blair earlier that just three hundred nurses and other NHS staff have been sacked. The BMA...
Senior Israeli officials warned last Sunday that they will step up their attacks against the Gaza Strip, vowing not to let the heavily populated area become a ‘second Lebanon’. The IOF has said the offensive – launched after the capture of a soldier in a deadly cross-border raid from Gaza...
THE Chinese Stalinist bureaucracy and its big business friends are under attack from the Chinese working class, which is insisting that the super-exploitation of Chinese workers by Western companies, in the Special Economic Zones, must stop. Workers are demanding trade union rights and agitating for the establishment of free and...
China has refused to search North Korean ships, throwing US attempts to enforce a blockade and sanctions into disarray. The United States is urging China to fully enforce the United Nations (UN) sanctions on North Korea over Pyongyang’s nuclear test. China’s cooperation is essential, given its close ties with North Korea. But...
FOLLOWING the remarks of Dannatt, the armed forces chief of staff, about the country having lost its ‘moral compass’ since the ‘anchor of Christian values’ has been ‘pulled up’ by politicians, another section of the Christian capitalist state has joined the battle for the soul of the nation –...
THE decision by Sinn Fein to accept the north of Ireland law courts and the police service wholeheartedly (including the special branch) completes the package that signifies that the once-revolutionary nationalist organisation has become a 100 per cent bourgeois nationalist movement. It is now completing its evolution. It began with its...