Monthly Archives: March 2008

AROUND 150 people marched from Blackheath past Lewisham Hospital to a rally in Ladywell Park on Saturday, against plans to shut the south London...

One-in-three workers skip medical care because of the cost, a nationwide survey of more than 26,000 people carried out by the AFL-CIO union organisation...

SCHOOLS Secretary Ed Balls and his predecessor Alan Johnson have given the go-head to the sell-off of 19 school playing fields over the past...

HEALTH workers, trade unionists, pensioners and residents from the SE London boroughs of Lewisham, Greenwich, Bexley and Bromley are marching today against plans to...

AS Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s 72-hour amnesty deadline for militia fighters in Basra to hand over their weapons ran out yesterday, this leader of...

The Independent Asylum Commission (IAC) on Thursday issued its interim report on its nationwide citizens review of the UK asylum system. In 2006 the then...

AS IS to be expected the imperialists, with Britain in the lead, are engaging in an economic blockade, black propaganda, etc to get rid...

A ‘service reconfiguration’ for  Outer South East London Service is being proposed. Outer South East London comprises the boroughs of Greenwich, Lewisham, Bexley and Bromley....

The most comprehensive examination of the UK’s asylum system ever conducted has found it ‘marred by inhumanity’ and ‘not yet fit for purpose’. An interim...

IN the last days of the Bush presidency, the US military has unleashed the Iraqi puppet army, led by its Prime Minister Maliki, to...

TENANTS on demolition-threatened Aylesbury and Heygate council estates in Southwark, south-east London, are to march through the estates on Saturday April 5 to defend...

TAMILNET has reported the call from South Africa expressing deep concern over the escalating violence in Sri Lanka, and calling for renewed negotiations...

GORDON Brown says Labour MPs will have a free vote on three ‘controversial parts’ of his embryo research Bill, thus giving way to the...

Thousands of Hezbollah supporters made their way to southern Beirut on Monday in order to take part in a rally in the honour of...

THE National Union of Teachers Conference in Manchester yesterday voted overwhelmingly to oppose military recruitment activities in schools. Motion 48 on War, accused the Ministry...

DELEGATES at the National Union of Teachers (NUT) annual conference in Manchester have called for action over pay, privatisation and teachers’ workload. During...

BY IRISH POLITICAL JOURNALIST JOHN COULTER The Castlerock massacre in Co Derry in which four Catholic workmen were shot dead could have been stopped if...

LAST Wednesday’s general strike in Greece, against the government’s reactionary Pensions Bill, marks a most critical turning point in the fast developing revolutionary situation....

THE NUT conference has made it perfectly clear that teachers have had enough of the wage cutting and privatisation policies of the Brown government....

Workers participated in their millions last Wednesday in the biggest one-day general strike in Greece. It was called by the GSEE (Greek TUC) against the...

Teachers are heading for a conflict with the government over class sizes. The National Union of Teachers is to vote at its annual conference in...

THE major British banks want to be able to use a ‘wider range’ of collateral, meaning their very dodgy mortgage portfolios, for the billions...

MARCH 2008 sees the US and UK armed forces and governments irreparably damaged as a result of their failure to subdue the Iraqi people...

The Bank of England yesterday mortgaged £11 billion more of taxpayers’ money to shore up the big UK banks, as bank bosses held talks...

The European Union (EU) has expressed serious concern over Sri Lanka’s rights abuses, TamilNet reported yesterday. In a press release issued on Tuesday, the EU...

Five years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, the country is in disarray, the human rights situation is disastrous, a climate of impunity prevails,...

ROYAL MAIL managers have overwhelmingly rejected changes to their pensions in a ballot. Their union, Unite, revealed yesterday that there was an 85-per-cent vote...

Prime Minister Brown yesterday announced to MPs that ‘the security service is to double in size to 4,000 personnel’. In a statement to the House...

THIS year’s St Patrick’s Day celebrations on Monday, March 17 were overshadowed by the 20th anniversaries of two of the most televised bloody massacres...

THE OFFICIAL annual rate of inflation leapt in February, according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS). Figures published yesterday showed that the Consumer Prices...

The Unite trade union yesterday told Northern Rock that they will oppose any plans for compulsory redundancies at the publicly owned bank. Following the announcement...

THERE were picket lines outside Jobcentres and benefit offices in London and across the country yesterday, at the start of a two-day strike by...

Billions of dollars, euros, pounds and yen were wiped off the world’s stock markets yesterday, as they reacted to the emergency bail-out of US...

THE divided town of Mitrovica was in turmoil yesterday morning, after UNMIK police and KFOR troops, in a major provocation, stormed a local court...

THIS book shows that Independent Sector Treatment Centres (ISTCs) have been introduced to give contracts to private companies to provide care for NHS patients,...

ON SATURDAY more than 1,000 British Airways pilots marched on BA’s Heathrow headquarters over plans by BA to use non-BA pilots, in its new...

Up to 80,000 members of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), working for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), today begin a...

OVER 400 people attended the Chagos Islands Community Association rally in central London on Saturday evening, to demand the Chagossians’ right to return to...

US Republican presidential candidate John McCain, due in London next week to meet premier Gordon Brown, has said in advance of the visit that...

ON the fifth anniversary of the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, the working class and the young people of the UK and the US,...

‘We call on all trade unionists and anti-war campaigners to support this good cause, Chagos Islands Community Association chairwoman, Hengride Permal, said yesterday. ‘We need...

All District General Hospitals in the South East London area are to be ‘radically overhauled’ with their Accident & Emergency facilities closed, according to...

Disability charities yesterday expressed concerns over Labour’s plans to introduce harsh work tests and force almost two million people off incapacity benefit. In his Budget...

ON August 15 1971, the then president of the United States, Richard Nixon ended the gold backing for the US dollar, which up till...