Monthly Archives: June 2007
THE victory of the Hamas movement in the fighting in the Gaza Strip is a huge setback for the imperialist diplomacy of the US and the UK. It was the US and UK governments that turned on the Palestinian people in their anger at the landslide election of a Hamas...
HAMAS yesterday released dozens of Fatah security commanders and Fatah officials detained during the past week in Gaza, and offered an amnesty to other Fatah security personnel. Hamas also called for the immediate release of captured BBC journalist Alan Johnston, saying ‘this situation can no longer be allowed to...
SAMI Abu-Zuhri, a Hamas leader in Gaza on Wednesday made a statement about the fighting that is taking place in Gaza between Hamas and the Fatah movement. He said: ‘I would like to reiterate that this confrontation is not between Hamas and Fatah but rather between Hamas, together with...
ROYAL Mail chairman Allan Leighton reiterated yesterday that the organisation cannot afford to improve its 2.5 per cent pay offer, despite staff voting 77 per cent for strike action. He said that ‘The money on the table is the money on the table because that is what the business...
Barnet, Haringey and Enfield Clinical Strategy Board has made it clear that it is rapidly proceeding with the closure of Chase Farm Accident and Emergency, Maternity and Paediatrics departments. The Board has announced that on June 28 it is beginning a so-called ‘public consultation’ on two ‘options’ only for the...
BRITISH troops were told to hood Iraqis and use banned ‘stressing’ techniques when interrogating them, human rights lawyer Phil Shiner claimed yesterday at a press conference outside parliament. He was speaking after Law Lords ruled 4-1 that anyone detained by British forces in Iraq, or anywhere in the world,...
COMMENTING on a report from the Student Loan Company (SLC) on Monday, National Union of Students (NUS) President Gemma Tumelty said: ‘Fee loans, along with levels of borrowing for living expenses, have now ratcheted up typical graduate debts to a massive £30,000.’ She warned: ‘Debt does not only affect students’...
THE Reading Employment Tribunal yesterday reported that as a result of its May 18th hearing it had struck out and dismissed 37 claims for unfair dismissal by sacked Gate Gourmet workers. The Tribunal chairman Mrs J Hill, who had heard the submissions on May 18th sitting alone conceded that the...
THE Fatah movement said on Tuesday night that it is suspending participation in the three-month old unity government with Hamas until the street battles in Gaza end. The announcement came at the end of one of the bloodiest days of factional fighting in the Gaza Strip. The death toll...
The UNI Communicators Forum, attended by union communicators from across the globe, has received a report on Australia’s unions’ battle for the rights of workers as they face an unprecedented attack from the conservative Howard government. Rod Masson from Australia’s Finance Sector Union, informed participants that the Howard Government has...
students are being invited to join striking workers in a mass picket at Hackney Community College in east London today, to stop 25 lecturers being forced to take redundancy and leave their jobs. There is real anger amongst the staff and students, who are determined not to let a single...
THE Alchemy Partners gang of asset-strippers have got Land Rover and Jaguar in their sights, now that cash-strapped Ford is ready to sell off the two prestigious companies. The trade union leaders of the TGWU and Amicus, now together in Unite, were first of all absolutely incredulous that Ford should...
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief inspector Mohamed El Baradei yesterday warned that the ‘brewing confrontation’ with Iran over its nuclear ambitions ‘must be defused.’ El Baradei told an IAEA meeting in Vienna: ‘I am increasingly disturbed by the current stalemate and the brewing confrontation – a stalemate that urgently...
RUSSIA’S Stalinist leader, President Putin, addressing a business forum in Leningrad on Sunday, told the assembled capitalist leaders that the IMF and the World Trade Organisation were ‘archaic, undemocratic and inflexible.’ Speaking to his audience of capitalist wolves he demanded that they turn into their opposite, from bloody beasts...
‘We will work with one hand and save Iraq from darkness’, said militant Iraqi Shi’ite leader Moqtada al-Sadr last weekend. He said in an interview with Iraqi television: ‘The presence of the occupier and the invading forces in Iraq escalate sectarian sedition and war in this holy country. ‘Every time...
OVER 20,000 youth, trade unionists and solidarity activists marched through central London on Saturday demanding ‘End the occupation – free Palestine!’ on the 40th anniversary of the Israeli invasion of the Palestinian lands in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza Strip. Israeli forces also invaded Egypt and Syria’s Golan...
US President George W Bush yesterday threw down the gauntlet to Russia, when he said ‘the time is now’ to grant independence to Kosovo. Russia has threatened to veto any attempt to declare Kosovan independence at the UN Security Council. But during his visit to Albania, Bush said: ‘I happen...
NO WONDER both the British and US governments are absolutely determined that none of the Chagos Islanders be allowed to return to their homes in Diego Garcia. One of the main reasons for this became absolutely clear at the end of last week when the Council of Europe Inquiry...
Postal workers at the CWU Conference in Bournemouth said yesterday they are ready for a fight to defend their jobs, wages and the postal service. Paul Wood, a Parcelforce Rep from Charlton, south-east London, told News Line: ‘We should all stand together and fight for our jobs and people’s rights. ‘If...
IT IS 40 years since Israeli warplanes destroyed the Egyptian airforce on the ground and Israeli troops occupied the Sinai peninsula, occupied Syria’s Golan Heights and occupied more of Palestine, including East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The ‘Six-Day War’ led to Israeli maps being published which...
CWU MEMBERS working in Royal Mail have voted overwhelmingly in favour of strike action against Royal Mail’s attempts to cut pay, jobs and conditions. The result was announced to a standing ovation at the CWU annual conference in Bournemouth yesterday. Postal workers are now pitched into an historic struggle for their...
A BRITISH soldier has been killed in southern Iraq, bringing the number of British troops who have died in Iraq to 150, with thousands seriously wounded, and thousands more suffering from severe mental problems as a result of the operations that they have been engaged in. At the same time,...
ANGER over the junior doctors training debacle saw hospital consultants on Wednesday demand the ‘immediate resignation’ of NHS Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Liam Donaldson. The British Medical Association Consultants Conference in London voted overwhelmingly for supplementary motion S1, from South West Regional Consultants and Specialists Committee (RCSC). The motion stated: ‘That...
The BMA Consul-tants Conference yesterday heard a call for trade union action to defend the NHS from cuts and privatisation. Moving Motion 138 from North-East London Regional Consultants and Specialists Committee, Anna Athow said: ‘This government has gone to war on the NHS and on our District General Hospitals. ‘They decided...
ON Tuesday the GMB annual conference decided that a sub-inflation cap on pay negotiations is completely unacceptable to GMB public service members. The conference called for coordinated industrial action across the public sector against government pay restraint. The GMB press release states: ‘With disputes now reached across the NHS,...
OVER 100 workers, youth, pensioners and NHS staff from inside the hospital participated in the North East London Council of Action picket to defend Chase Farm Hospital from closure on Tuesday from 7am to 2pm. The campaigners called on workers and patients to be prepared to join an...
TODAY’S Senior Consultants BMA conference is due to hear a warning from Doctor Jonathan Fielden to Premier-elect Gordon Brown that he will ignore the medical profession at his peril. In his speech Fielden is due to condemn the government ‘for a woeful dereliction of duty, towards patients,...
MOVES towards a trade union boycott of Israel are gaining momentum, with UNISON announcing this week that it is to debate a boycott at its Annual Delegate Conference in Brighton later this month. This follows the UCU university and college lecturers’ union conference voting last week that every one of...
‘we will not stand by and see you decimate hospitals for purely financial reasons. We will not stand by and let you damage patient care,’ Dr Jonathan Fielden, Chairman of the BMA’s Consultants Committee, will warn incoming Prime Minister, Gordon Brown today. Fielden will tell the annual consultants’ conference at...
OVER 100 workers, youth, pensioners and NHS staff from inside the hospital participated in the North East London Council of Action picket to defend Chase Farm Hospital from closure yesterday from 7am to 2pm. The campaigners called on workers and patients to be prepared to join an occupation...
THE Palestinian newspaper Al-Hayat al-Jadidah on 2 June praised the decision of the UCU trade union to discuss in every one of its branches a boycott of the Israeli universities. The article asked: ‘Which is more useful and better serves the Palestinian cause and even the Arab and...
‘Schools should hold off until there is proper guidance,’ NASUWT general secretary Chris Keates told News Line yesterday. The teachers union leader was responding to a Liberal Democrat survey of Local Education Authorities (LEAs) which found that at least 285 schools in England are fingerprinting pupils without any education...
WITH the result of the CWU Royal Mail industrial action ballot due on Thursday, the bosses are getting ready for action, while the position of the CWU union leadership is that it has no intention of calling all out strike action, and that the ballot is more about...
The Communic-ation Workers Union yesterday said its members would not be impressed by remarks from Royal Mail directors that bosses are ready for a three-month ‘bloody’ struggle. Speaking from the union’s annual conference in Bournemouth, CWU Head of Communications Kevin Slocombe told News Line: ‘If this is true, there is...
PREMIER to be, Brown, yesterday told the world, five days before the outgoing Home Secretary Reid is to introduce his counter terrorism measures into the House of Commons, that his intention is to bring in further security measures when he is premier. Reid, who is resigning as...
Risky loans are leading to a financial crash, leading bankers warned yesterday. William Rhodes, senior vice chairman of Citigroup warned: ‘Lenders all too often, are setting aside key documentation and credit standards.’ Rhodes added that the surge in liquidity is the greatest he has seen. Warning a crash is imminent, Rhodes...
FOR the whole period that Labour Left MP John McDonnell was seeking to get the backing of the 40 plus MPs that would have allowed him to stand for the Labour Party leadership, UNISON with its allegedly ‘left’ leadership kept completely silent. It certainly did not press UNISON sponsored MPs...
The Palestinian government and the Hamas movement have rejected the admittance of any Arab or international military forces to the Gaza Strip, or to bring the Strip under the supervision of the Arab League. In a press conference in Ramallah on Wednesday, Information Minister Mahmud Barghouthi stated, ‘the suggestion of...
DAITHI McKay, Martina Anderson and Alex Maskey of Sinn Fein have just taken their seats on the Policing Board of the PSNI, the revamped version of the RUC, which is to police Northern Ireland for the UK government. Maskey described Sinn Fein’s participation as a significant step forward to...
Trade union officials were yesterday giving out mixed messages about a new staffing levels agreement with British Airways for the move to Terminal 5 but indicated there will be redundancies and changes in working conditions. A spokesman for the TGWU told News Line that an agreement had been made but...