Monthly Archives: April 2009
‘WE ARE deeply insulted and more determined than ever to carry on the fight,’ Enfield Visteon factory Unite convenor Kevin Nolan told News Line yesterday. He was referring to the ‘offer’ from Visteon management at talks on Wednesday of approximately £8,000 before tax in lieu of pay to the sacked...
WORKERS, local residents and patients yesterday expressed their determination to keep all the departments at Chase Farm Hospital open. They gave their support to the North-East London Council of Action’s monthly mass picket and said they were ready to take part and support an occupation to save the hospital. Mary Mackie,...
THE inventor of the genetic technology behind the national DNA database has said that the database’s unlimited expansion to include millions of people who have never been found guilty of any crime, or have not even been charged with committing a crime, has left him shocked. At present...
The National Union of Teachers (NUT) annual conference on Monday voted to demand a pay rise of ten per cent or at least £3,000, whichever is greater. NUT delegates at the Cardiff conference backed the call despite warnings it would be unseemly when people are being made redundant. In the debate,...
PRIME Minister Brown on Sunday promised that bringing in a compulsory community service programme for youth will be a part of his next general election manifesto. Last week he also let it be known that a government review will recommend more state school pupils be ‘encouraged’ to sign up...
‘I’M THE best friend of Parameswaran Subramaniyan,’ 22-year-old Tharmini Tharmaraja told News Line on the edge of Westminster Green yesterday. Hundreds were demonstrating opposite the House of Commons, keeping up loud chants of ‘Ceasefire Now!’ and ‘Tamil Tigers Freedom Fighters!’, while the brave young hunger striker was lying under canvas...
SACKED Visteon workers yesterday said that they had stopped 17 employees of the liquidator, KPMG, entering the plant in the morning who were seeking to work to get out much needed Jaguar and Land Rover parts. Stephen Parenti, former Unite chair at the Enfield plant, told News Line, ‘Visteon...
Sacked Visteon workers from Enfield, north London, and Belfast were picketing Ford showrooms yesterday on the eve of today’s talks with management. Meanwhile, on the round the clock picket line at the Enfield plant, Unite member Harry Heeroo told News Line: ‘We are fighting for our rights. We’ve been...
THE Prime Minister revealed once again on BBC Radio 2 just what his priorities are and just what he is working night, noon and day for. He said that he had ‘assured’ the future of the capitalist system by investing tens, even hundreds of billions of pounds into bankrupt banks. The...
LAST month the Healthcare Commission (HCC) published a report following an investigation into Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust. It found that the care of emergency patients was ‘appalling’. There was an excess of deaths over that expected, of between 400 and 1200 patients, between 2005 and 2008. The trust achieved Foundation Trust (FT)...
THE News Line gives its full support to the workers at the Belfast, Enfield and Basildon Visteon plants who are fighting Visteon’s decision to sack them on the very cheap, and to ignore the official assurances given at the time that Ford sold off the plants, that they would...
TAMILNET reports that the Canadian government has called for an immediate ceasefire in Sri Lanka. ‘We’ve asked the United Nations for an immediate ceasefire. ‘We’re very worried, of course, by the hostilities that are taking place, but we are particularly worried for the civilians that are in the combat zone in...
THE Enfield Visteon plant convenor Kevin Nolan told News Line yesterday: ‘We have had a meeting with the company in New York. They are back at the table now. ‘I went out with our general secretary, Derek Simpson. I gave him all the information that myself and (Belfast convenor) John...
‘TWO of our brothers are on a hunger strike to death,’ Janani Paramsothy of the British Tamil students told News Line at Parliament Square yesterday. The hunger-striking students Sivatharsan Sivakumaravel and Parameswaran Subramaniyan told News Line that their condition was ‘not bad’. Sivatharsan said: ‘We are here for our people to...
Over fifty Stead McAlpin sacked textile workers held a 24-hour picket and demonstration outside the factory in Cummersdale near Carlisle on Wednesday and are planning to lobby former owners John Lewis Partnership in London. Workers are angry that they were ‘more or less sacked on the spot’ and given 20...
The Unite trade union yesterday carried out its obligation to the capitalist court and at noon ended the occupation of the Visteon factory in Enfield. Occupying workers at the sister factory in Belfast however said they are determined to stay until they get the plant reopened. Unite regional secretary for London...
British Tamil Students Suratharsan Sarakumaraval aged 21 and Praranesuraran Subramanian aged 28, lie in a weakened state outside the Houses of Parliament vowing ‘Hunger strike till we breathe our last breath’, in an attempt to force British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to broker an immediate and permanent ceasefire and...
IAN TOMLINSON, a 47-year-old news vendor in the City of London, collapsed at 7.25pm on April 1 on his way home from work during ‘anti-capitalist’ protests. It appears that he had been pushed, hit with batons and knocked to the ground by police officers, shortly before he collapsed and...
the repercussions of the Second Lebanon War – in which the Israeli occupation army suffered a severe blow by the Lebanese resistance fighters and from the steadfastness of the Lebanese people who supported the resistance against Israeli aggression in July 2006 – are still the subject of heated...
IN A third attempt within six months to save bankrupt Irish capitalism, Taoiseach Brian Cowen’s Fianna Fail government unveiled a draconian budget on Tuesday, raising taxes, imposing financial levies, cutting public works and services, and slashing welfare benefits. This austerity budget is reminiscent of measures imposed in the Depression during...
OVER 50 sacked workers launched a 24-hour picket and demonstration yesterday morning outside the Stead McAlpin factory in Cummersdale, near Carlisle. Workers are angry that they were ‘more or less sacked on the spot’. This came after the owners, John Lewis Partnership, sold the company on to Apex Textiles in late...
THE Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) yesterday afternoon announced a ‘criminal investigation’ into the death of Ian Tomlinson. Home Secretary Jaqui Smith had conceded earlier in the day that this was a possibility. A video made public yesterday showed the 47-year-old man, with his hands in his pockets and his back...
‘Thousands of our people have been murdered with chemical weapons just an hour ago’, Tamil protester Shiva said on Monday evening. He was speaking from the sit-down demonstration by thousands of Tamils on Westminster Bridge. He declared: ‘We will sit here until we get the cease-fire and Gordon Brown comes down...
THOUSANDS of Tamils demonstrated on Westminster Bridge on Monday evening against the failure of the Brown government to lift a finger to save the lives of tens of thousands of Tamil people, children, women and men, who are being massacred by the Sri Lankan army in the north of...
‘The Visteon sit-in at Belfast is continuing,’ Unite regional industrial organiser Davy McMurray told News Line yesterday. He added: ‘The convenor John McGuire and six shop stewards are going to London today. ‘They are meeting the other convenors from the Enfield and Basildon sites. ‘The stewards are planning to go to Enfield...
Hundreds of Tamils demonstrated in Parliament Square yesterday after a sit-in of thousands on Westminster Bridge was broken up by riot police. The protesters alleged that men, women and young children were punched and dragged off the bridge. Several people were arrested. Lines of riot police stood around Parliament Square with riot...
KEVIN Nolan and Piers Hood, the Unite convenor and deputy-convenor at the Visteon plant in Enfield, appeared in the High Court in the Strand yesterday. There was a demonstration outside the court. Miles Hubbard, the senior regional organiser of Unite, for London and East Anglia, told News Line: ‘The Visteon workers...
THE corruption investigation into Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is likely to produce charges of money laundering, fraud and breach of trust, Israeli police officials said Saturday, adding that questioning of the Yisrael Beiteinu leader was nearing an end. Unless additional testimony is needed, the police will submit their...
THE Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) says that if there is a capitalist government in office in 2016 it will have to find an extra £39bn a year to finance government debt, since the government has underestimated its indebtedness. This extra £39bn is on top of the £38bn...
TAMILNET reports that Pararajasingam Kanagalingam, president of the Vanni People Welfare Organisation (VPWO), last Wednesday sent it a recorded affidavit on the civil situation in Vanni. In the affidavit, Pararajasingam told Tamilnet: ‘The right to live is the most fundamental right guaranteed by the UN. ‘How can a people trust a...
PRESIDENT Obama, now in eastern Europe, has announced his vision of a world free of nuclear weapons, but has added that he does not think that this will happen in his lifetime. This moral is rich indeed. The United States is the only state that has used nuclear bombs...
Save the Children has declared a ‘crisis for families’ in the UK, as today it partners UK charity Family Action to distribute cash grants to around a thousand of the families who are struggling in the recession. Rising unemployment, rising food prices and a housing crisis are contributing to a...
Defiant Visteon workers are still occupying three factories in Enfield, Basildon and Belfast. Over 250 trade unionists and youth rallied in support of the workers occupying the factory in Enfield on Saturday. The defiant Unite trade union convenor at the plant, Kevin Nolan, said he was prepared to go to...
TENS of thousands of Greek workers from all industries and services took part last Thursday in the rallies and demonstrations staged in the capital Athens and in every city and town as part of the 24-hour general strike called by the GSEE (Greek TUC) against the policies of the...
the occupied Visteon factories received massive support from workers in their areas yesterday, as workers in Belfast, Enfield and Basildon struggled to defend their jobs and refused to quit their plants. Seventy workers at the Visteon car parts factory in Enfield were occupying yesterday. News Line spoke to the...
SPEAKING before the NATO summit President Obama made clear that his business in Europe was to raise a war party for Afghanistan, when he announced that Al-Qaeda was much closer to Europe and therefore was a greater threat to Europe than it was to the US. Mocking the European...
SEVEN thousand mainly young people from London and across the country marched to demand the withdrawal of British and American troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and to support the Palestinian people, as new US President Barack Obama arrived in London on Wednesday. At the same time, tens of thousands of...
LEADERS of the major capitalist states, and the leaders of Russia and China, who have linked their fate to the future of the crisis ridden capitalist system met this week, in the only possible way that they could meet, with mass unemployment and war erupting all over the world. They...
Around 200 G20 protesters yesterday lunchtime mounted a vigil-assembly at the Bank of England demanding an independent public inquiry into the death of a man during Wednesday’s demonstrations. Called in solidarity against police repression, protesters alleged that the man was part of a group being chased by police...
THE Visteon car parts plant, in Enfield, once owned by Ford, is still occupied by over 100 workers who are defending their jobs and demanding that their terms and conditions of service agreed by the Ford motor company be adhered to. They were sacked by four liqidators from KMPG ten...
TENS of thousands of people demonstrated from mid-day yesterday outside the Bank of England against bankers,capitalism and the G20 summit. They arrived via four feeder marches led by mocked-up Horsemen of the Apocalypse from Liverpool St, London Bridge, Cannon Street and Moorgate stations. The lead banner on...
THE Visteon plants in Belfast, Enfield, and Basildon, formerly owned by the Ford Motor Company, but now supplying parts to the motor car industry, have been occupied, after up to 900 workers were sacked by KPMG liquidators. These informed the workers that they would have to apply to the government...
A report published on Monday, March 30 by Amnesty International reveals a pattern of serious human rights violations by Greek police and other law enforcement officials. The report highlights allegations of excessive use of force and firearms, torture and ill-treatment, arbitrary detention and denial of prompt access to lawyers. Allegations...
Selvaraja Pathmanathan, the LTTE plenipotentiary for international relations, gave an interview to TamilNet on Monday. TamilNet: How do you view the response of the International Community to the humanitarian catastrophe caused by the intense war in Vanni? Mr. Pathmanathan: It is apparent that the international community has been observing...