Monthly Archives: February 2007
yesterday afternoon the British Airways Stewards and Stewardesses Association (BASSA) branch of the TGWU met in a hotel near Heathrow airport to discuss the Woodley-Walsh deal which led to their three-day strikes being called off. BASSA members who spoke to News Line before the meeting said they had been sold...
Family and friends of the victims of racist murders have reacted angrily to a leaked Home Office internal memo which describes the murders of black teenager Stephen Lawrence and young Asian Zahid Mubarek as ‘low impact’ events. The mother of Ricky Reel, Sukhdev Reel, told News Line yesterday: ‘That...
THE fact that the deepening capitalist crisis is turning the whole planet into a US war zone has begun to seriously alarm the Russian Stalinist bureaucracy, led by President Putin. Recently, the new US Secretary of Defence, Robert Gates, put a congressional committee on notice that the US must have...
MORE than 400 Chagos Islanders and their supporters marched through Crawley town centre on Saturday, shouting: ‘We will return to Diego Garcia – it’s our right!’ Led by the banner of the Chagos Islanders Community Association, the march was joined by leading members of the GMB and Amicus trade unions,...
2006 saw Britain’s trade in goods dive to a massive deficit of £84.3 billion.This was £15.5 billion more than the £68.8 billion deficit figure for the trade in goods in 2005. The growth in the goods deficit by 23 per cent in one year proves that British capitalism is...
ABU Bakr, the 27 year old English teacher, and one of the nine Muslim men arrested by the police, and put under the media floodlights, as part of a group allegedly planning to behead a serving British Muslim soldier, was released without charge on Wednesday. He said of Britain, ‘It’s...
The Canadian Federation of Students last Wednesday held a National Day of Action for affordable, high-quality, post-secondary education in Canada. ‘Education shouldn’t be a debt sentence,’ said Amanda Aziz, National Chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students. ‘We have terrific universities and colleges in Canada, and access to them shouldn’t...
MILLIONS of Africans will understandably be fearful at the latest strategic initiative that US President George Bush has just announced. The president has instructed his Secretary of Defence, Gates that an Africa Command must be set up and running by September 2008. The job of this Africa command said Bush, is...
US trade union leaders have hailed the adoption of the Employee Free Choice Act by the US House of Representatives yesterday as a blow for trade union freedom. Edward J McElroy, the President of the American Federation of Teachers, said ‘Every year, millions of American workers...
The crisis over government plans to axe A&Es and maternity units deepened yesterday as it emerged that at least a dozen Labour ministers are campaigning against the closure of maternity and child care services in their constituencies. The minister in charge of maternity services, Ivan Lewis, was absent from...
THE University and College Union (UCU) yesterday wrote to the University and Colleges Employers’ Association (UCEA) to ask the employers to act to stop creeping privatisation in UK universities. In the letter UCU joint general secretary, Sally Hunt, says that UCU is concerned about the quality of education...
LAST Monday’s branch meeting of BASSA T&G cabin crew, to gain their approval for the deal agreed by TGWU leader Woodley and BA boss Walsh, had to be cancelled and rescheduled for next Monday, after support for the Woodley-Walsh deal could not be guaranteed. Workers were angry that their 96...
TWO hundred Chagos Islanders and their supporters demonstrated in London on Monday, demanding their right to return home after 40 years of exile imposed on them by the British government. They were at the Court of Appeal in the Strand, before demonstrating outside Downing Street because the British government is...
A DEMONSTRATOR highlighting the plight of dying Iraqi children was read a section of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act by a police officer yesterday, outside the gates of Downing Street. The law introduced by the Blair government bans demonstrations near parliament not agreed by the police. Peace campaigner and...
WHAT is being termed as a coalition of trade unions (Unison, the GMB and Amicus), charities and faith groups yesterday warned Tony Blair that any military action against Iran would have ‘unthinkable’ consequences. This warning follows on from the warnings given by three US ex-senior officers telling Bush that...
TWO hundred Chagos Islanders and their supporters descended on the Court of Appeal in London yesterday, demanding that the court upholds their right to return to their islands. The islanders were forced to leave 40 years ago when the British government leased their islands to the US government, which then...
Over 2,000 workers and youth last Saturday marched through Leyton and Walthamstow, north east London, against the closure of Whipps Cross Hospital. The march was organised by the the Save Whipps Cross Hospital campaign and set off from the hospital entrance, led by its banner. Other banners on the march were:...
AT a time when the crisis of the Labour government is reaching the point of explosion, the WRP and the Young Socialists are calling for action to defend the NHS, and in particular for occupations to stop hospital closures, and national strike action to bring down the Blair–Brown government....
Chagos Islanders are at the High Court in London today, where the British government is making a second appeal against the ruling that they were illegally removed from their island of Diego Garcia in 1966. They are holding a march through Crawley in Sussex this Saturday and over the weekend...
THERE is no doubt that the US and UK ruling classes are hard at work seeking to organise a Palestinian civil war. The object is to overthrow the Hamas Palestinian government that was elected with a huge majority by the Palestinian people. The UK and US ‘champions of democracy’ – as...
PRIME Minister Blair has been secretly questioned, for a second time, by police investigating allegations that honours were sold for cash by his government. The questioning took place just before he left the UK for the Davos summit of billionaires. This has just emerged after a six-day news blackout. The blackout...
Thousands of university students and lecturers staged mass and militant rallies and demonstrations last Wednesday in all major cities against the government’s plans to revise the Greek Constitution so as to allow the foundation of private college and universities. The government also threatens to introduce Bills to curtail students’ rights...
‘Paramedics don’t have referral skills. ‘Andy Burnham is not redefining the health service and Patricia Hewitt got her facts wrong last year when she said 90 per cent of patients did not need to go to A&E.’ This was the response of Association of Professional Ambulance Personnel (APAP) press officer,...
STRIKING PCS members in Harrow, north-west London, staged pickets at the Land Registry, the local Jobcentre, Harrow Magistrates and Harrow Crown Court from early Wednesday morning at the start of the one-day national strike by 280,000 civil and public servants. At 11.30am they held a demonstration at St Anne’s shopping...
‘If the government don’t give us what we want we will take this campaign further,’ PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka pledged to a packed London rally of striking civil servants yesterday. The rally followed a 1,000-strong march from the Treasury. Yesterday’s national strike drew massive support from 280,000 civil and public...
‘ENOUGH is enough!’ The Palestinians must be treated with equity, with Israel ending its occupation of the Palestinian territories. That was the message from the launch of a new, broad-based coalition including British celebrities, trade unionists and MPs at Westminster on Tuesday, in the run-up to a mass demonstration to...
‘IT is of utmost importance for us to establish good relations with the West,’ said President Lukashenka of Belarus on Tuesday. This statement is a massive turn-around, since the EU has spent an enormous amount of time and money trying to engineer the overthrow of Lukashenka, in order to restore...