Monthly Archives: November 2008
THIS Sunday’s rally marks the 68th anniversary of the assasination of Leon Trotsky, and the 39 years of the Trotskyist daily paper, first published on September 27th 1969 as the Workers Press and from May 1 1975 as the News Line. Leon Trotsky was the co-leader of the Russian Revolution...
Enfield Council leaders have decided to mount a legal challenge to Health Secretary Johnson’s decision to close Chase Farm Hospital’s A&E and consultant-led Maternity departments. The closures would ‘strike a serious blow to the health and well-being of our borough’, the council stressed. Council leader Mike Rye said: ‘We have decided...
ISRAELI Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Thursday ordered Israeli forces to shut down the Gaza Strip’s borders again, turning away a truck convoy bearing food. Two so-called Qassam rockets, small homemade projectiles of metal tubing packed with explosives, hit an empty field near the Israeli town of Sderot. No injuries...
Today’s nursing students face many challenges – which may be financial, personal or relate to their studies, says a just-published Royal College of Nursing survey. Over 4,500 nursing students across the UK responded to an online survey between August and October 2008. Nursing students are from across all age groups. Half of...
THERE is nothing like the crisis of the capitalist system to bring out the essence of the Labour and trade union leaders, as labour lieutenants of capitalism, as Lenin put it so succinctly. Nowhere is this clearer than in the UK, where the Labour Party Premier Brown, ridiculed by the...
THE government of Sri Lanka led by President Rajapakse is currently fighting a war on two fronts, on behalf of US and UK imperialism. On the one hand it is fighting a bloody war against the Tamil people, and their right to self-determination, while with the other it has declared...
US consumer spending fell by one per cent in October, the largest decline since September 2001, in a further sign of the deepening slump, official figures revealed yesterday. Consumer spending makes up about two-thirds of economic activity in the US. New orders of durable goods, goods intended to...
The North East London Council of Action held another successful picket of the Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield on Tuesday, with passing cars tooting their horns as members and supporters set up their flags and banners at 7am. News Line spoke to staff, patients and local residents, who all supported...
ON Monday Chancellor Darling opened his pre-budget report with a piece of cheerful idiocy, saying that he was ‘confident that the UK, as an adaptable and open economy, will be well positioned to benefit from a return to growth in the world economy’, and then went on to hazard...
THE newspaper Filastin has posted a feature on its website titled ‘Through Their Worst Phase of the Israeli Siege on Gaza’ exposing the sufferings that are being imposed on Gazans by the Israeli blockade. It reads: ‘Mahmud al-Luh tossed a few shekels into the hand of a man selling...
‘WE ARE having a successful picket again today,’ North-East London Council of Action secretary, Bill Rogers, told News Line outside Chase Farm Hospital yesterday. ‘Everyone is opposed to the closure, there’s enormous feeling to keep this hospital open, and people are buying tickets for the News Line Anniversary Rally. They...
WORKERS are occupying the Calcast car parts factory in Campsie, just outside Derry in the north of Ireland. The plant, a subsidiary of the French manufacturer Montupet, makes cylinder heads for the Ford Explorer. On Monday management announced that the plant was to close ‘as a result of current market...
Now is not the time to introduce legislation that will punish those parents who fail to make their way in a tough jobs market, warned One Parent Families/Gingerbread in a briefing titled ‘New work requirements for single parents’. In Summary it says: • From November 24th, for the first time single...
AS is his way, the Prime Minister addressed the CBI bosses organisation yesterday, just hours before his Chancellor was due to declare to the House of Commons the emergency fiscal stimulus in his pre-Budget report, whose contents had been leaked to the entire media during the previous 24...
Chancellor Darling yesterday handed more billions to business in his pre-budget report, while making it clear the working class will be expected to pay for massive government borrowing. He stressed the government had made a ‘deliberate choice to support businesses through this crisis’. Referring to the tens of thousands of jobs...
LAST week a Tory MP had to apologise to the House of Commons because he had said that the government should ‘let the recession take its course’. What is extraordinary is that he had to apologise for stating what has always been the position of the bourgeoisie and its political...
Over sixty workers and youth marched through Brixton, southwest London, on Saturday to demand Justice for Ricky Bishop. Ricky Bishop was a young black father and volunteer fitness trainer who died in 2001 after being detained at Brixton police station. Under Operation Clean Sweep, he was stopped and searched while a...
The TUC and single parent charity Gingerbread yesterday condemned the Work and Pensions Secretary Purnell’s decision to press ahead with ‘welfare to work’ plans for single parents with children aged 12 years and over, as well as the disabled, youth and long-term unemployed. This was despite an appeal from the...
British Banks have been recapitalised by the working class, who were not consulted by the government before the Prime Minister took the decision to hand over tens of billions of pounds to institutions that had bankrupted themselves by treating trillions of pounds of iou’s as cash. The banks have...
‘The appalling failures in the health care of children in detention centres, which are the ultimate responsibility of the UK Home Office’, are condemned in the lead Editorial in this week’s Lancet. About 2,000 children up to the age of 18 years are held in UK detention centres every year. Many...
THE government of Pakistan yesterday summoned the US ambassador to Islamabad to protest at yet another US drone missile attack on Pakistani civilians. The attack, deep into Pakistan’s Bannu district, last Wednesday, killed five local people, Pakistani officials confirmed yesterday. The continuing US missile attacks inside Pakistan have evoked...
‘WE want Tamil Eelam!’, ‘Don’t kill Tamil people!’ shouted more than 1,500 people demonstrating opposite the Houses of Parliament in Westminster on Wednesday evening. It was the second mass rally in London to demand an end to all British support for the Sri Lankan government and its military assault on...
FIREFIGHTERS joined members of Unison and GMB trade unions yesterday in an angry lobby of a London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (LFEPA) meeting at City Hall. A draft budget was to be presented to the meeting making ‘15 per cent savings’. LFEPA workers are also angry that over 60 jobs...
‘THE forces of law and order should massacre the demonstrators without pity’ was the ruling class response from former Italian Prime Minister and president Francesco Cossiga to the revolutionary eruption of millions of students and workers that for over a month have held general strikes, mass demonstrations and occupations...
US and European car employers yesterday warned that ‘their’ industry faced wipeout, ‘victims’ of the slump in the motor car industry and the financial crisis of world capitalism. They were unanimous in their demand for bail-out. In the US the Big Three: GM, Ford and Chrysler were demanding $25bn to...
‘We continue to believe that stock transfer is fraught with financial hazards,’ Unite said yesterday after it was announced that Plymouth council tenants have voted to transfer their tenancies to a new housing association. Unite warned that it will be watching to ensure that promises made to the tenants by...
Hundreds of Unite members working for the Dover Harbour Board began a 48-hour strike at 7am yesterday morning. Speaking from the picket line yesterday afternoon, Unite Regional Industrial Organiser Jane Jeffery told News Line: ‘The strike is going incredibly well. ‘About 330 of our members are on strike against 190 ...
US WORKERS will be asking themselves what the recent presidential election campaign was all about when Obama was fighting for change and saying that a vote for McCain was a vote for George Bush, while at the same time having to fight off a vicious Clinton challenge. In fact, today...
AN IRANIAN cleric has criticised the letter written by the country’s president, Mahmud Ahmadinezhad, to the newly-elected American president, Barack Obama. ‘It appears that our president was a little too hasty; the policies of America are not going to change with one person,’ said Ayatollah Reza Ostadi. Ayatollah Ostadi continued: ‘With...
The British Medical Association (BMA) yesterday expressed concern over the threat of closure hanging over a number of NHS hospitals. This followed data published yesterday by Dr Foster, a private health care information company, which showed that more than a third of NHS hospital trusts in England suffered a fall...
FACED with the crash of the pound and the enormous 182,000 leap in the number of unemployed in the three months to October, the CBI bosses organisation has been forced to revise its perspectives. It now says that by the end of 2009 the bosses will have put another 1.1...
OVer the past year, Muhanad Omar al-Helo has twice petitioned the Israeli government to leave Gaza in order to study in Europe for a master’s degree, writes Eva Bartlett. He has also contacted Israeli lawyers and human rights groups about his case. On November 2, aboard the SS Dignity, the third...
The GMB trade union yesterday condemned the huge profits being made out of the poorest customers by gas and electricity companies. New watchdog Consumer Focus, said on Saturday that it estimates that gas and electricity companies make around half a billion pounds a year in extra charges from prepayment meters. A...
THE White House has finally endorsed the text of the US-Iraq unequal treaty that will allow the US to keep 150,000 troops in Iraq until the end of 2011 and then maintain a series of giant military bases in the country afterwards. The agreement has been approved by the Iraqi...
OVER 300 postal workers, their families and supporters defiantly marched in defence of their jobs from the Milton Keynes Mail Centre and on to Bletchley town centre on Saturday, November 15. The closure of the mail centre was announced on Wednesday, November 12 and is part of a cost-cutting closure...
Hundreds of postal workers and their families are today joining the business community, politicians and members of the public in a march through Bletchley, Milton Keynes against the closure of the mail centre, culminating in a rally. They are marching under the slogan: ‘Save Milton Keynes Mail Centre, Our Jobs,...
The economy of the 15-nations eurozone has slumped into recession for the first time ever, EU data released yesterday revealed, with GDP falling 0.2% in the second and third quarters. The announcement in Brussels confirmed widely held fears that the eurozone had fallen into recession for the first time since...
JCB has announced 400 more redundancies, blaming a ‘significant’ reduction in incoming orders. The redundancies are made up of 297 shop floor jobs and 101 staff posts. Last month JCB, based in Rocester, Staffordshire, said it needed to reduce its UK shop floor workforce by 510, but that figure was cut...
MERVYN KING, the Governor of the Bank of England (BoE), said on Wednesday that Britain was already in a recession. He added that he expected the British economy to shrink by two per cent over the next year. The Governor was introducing the BoE’s quarterly inflation report, just after it was...
The Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) yesterday said that job cuts in BT ‘must not be met through compulsion’ and pledged it will ‘oppose any compulsory redundancies by whatever means necessary’. The union was responding to an announcement by telecoms giant BT that it expects to have cut 10,000 jobs by...