Monthly Archives: May 2009
‘Our members are really angry,’ Bow, east London Communication Workers Union (CWU) E3 Unit Rep Vince Micaleff told News Line yesterday. He was responding to Royal Mail’s announcement of almost double annual profits, as all four parts of the business went into the black for the first time in 20...
‘We have to do everything to save this hospital,’ out-patient Farzaeh Yegan told News Line at the North East London Council of Action monthly mass picket of Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield on Tuesday. Passing motorists hooted their horns and hospital workers, patients and visitors said they will be taking...
IN its latest report the Bank of England monetary committee has rejected the line put forward in the budget by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that ‘the recovery’ will begin next year. The bank predicts that there will be a huge 4.5 per cent year on year decline in the...
TAMILNET reports that the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) have fired artillery shells into the makeshift hospital in Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal East, killing at least 38 patients who were waiting for treatment at the hospital. ‘There are many more killed inside the hospital premises, but I can only confirm...
The Communication Workers Union (CWU) yesterday said that its 16,000-strong Royal Mail membership in London, covering 159 workplaces in the Greater London area, are likely to strike next month. The London membership is being balloted over Royal Mail’s cuts in services to the public and their jobs,...
‘Gordon Brown is supporting Rajapakse and his genocide and murder of the Tamil people’, Loganathan said outside the Houses of Parliament on Monday, where thousands of Tamils were sitting in the road, blocking traffic. Thousands of Tamils have been demonstrating continully, day and night, for 36 days. Five young students have...
THE decaying and gangrenous state of bourgeois democracy and its parliamentary system has been more than revealed by the expenses scandals that are racking the main bourgeois parties, whether Labour, Tory or Liberal. Whether it is Tory grandees claiming expenses for their moats or employing their families, or the Labourites...
PROFESSOR Bren Neale yesterday condemned private treatment centres as dangerous and demanded that they be brought back into the NHS. This follows on from the death of her partner Dr John Hubley as a result of ‘appalling’ and ‘lamentable’ treatment at an Independent Sector Treatment Centre. She is demanding a professional...
THE University and College Union (UCU) yesterday called for a public enquiry into the failings of London Metropolitan University (LMU) as students from the university staged an occupation of the institution’s Commercial Road building. The students began their occupation of London’s biggest university at 5.00pm Monday evening. The university...
IN MARCH, the Healthcare Commission reported that emergency care at Mid Staffordshire Hospital was ‘appalling’. It’s in-depth investigation discovered excess patient deaths of 400 to 1200 patients between 2005 and 2008. The reason why was that the trust board cut 150 staff in order to save £10m, so...
THE Sri Lanka Army yesterday stepped up its murderous shelling of its so-called ‘safety zone’ in the Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal and Vadduvaakal areas of north-east Sri Lanka. Lawrence Christy, the head of Tamils Rehabilitation Organisation (TRO) Field Office on Monday put the death toll of civilians at more than 3,200 killed...
JUST a week ago General Petraeus, the US commander, declared that ‘We have two weeks to save Pakistan!’ We are now witnessing just how the US with the support of the UK is ‘saving’ Pakistan. The Pakistani army has launched a massive attack on the people of Swat, causing over 200,000...
MORE than 300 parents, teachers, students and schoolchildren marched through the centre of Lewisham, south-east London, on Saturday to save Lewisham Bridge Primary School. The school has been occupied since last month, when stunned parents were told by Lewisham Council that it was closing and their children would have to...
THE IRAQI authorities executed 12 people last Sunday according to information received by Amnesty International, which has called for all death sentences to be commuted. The 12 are believed to be among 128 people on death row, and fears are growing that more executions will follow in the coming days...
OVER the past week, lecturers have been on strike against sackings, parents are occupying schools to stop their closure, and students, angry at high tuition fees and the threat of even bigger ones, have joined lecturers in opposing the axing of courses. They find themselves fighting against the Labour government,...
Steel union, Community, yesterday expressed ‘outrage’ at the announcement to ‘mothball’ Teesside Cast Products with a threat to 2,000 jobs. The union said that move came as a result of Corus’s consortium partners (Marcegaglia, Dongkuk, Ternium and Duferco) terminating a ten-year steel slab offtake deal after just five years. Community General...
TamilNet reported on Wednesday a press conference of Canadian Academics for Tamil Rights in Toronto. The academics stressed recognition of the self-determination of Tamils as the basis for any solution to the crisis in the island of Sri Lanka, and said that the proscription of the LTTE had affected peace...
‘We will stand firm and if necessary we will escalate the fight because we will not let this university go under!’ This was the message that Amanda Sackur, a rep from the UCU lecturers’ union, told the 300-strong mass strike rally outside London Metropolitan University yesterday. The strike and rally was...
A DECADE ago, on May 7, 1999, Chancellor Gordon Brown announced plans to sell off a large part of Britain’s gold reserves. This was heralded as forward-thinking economics, breaking with an old-fashioned practice of central banks having substantial holdings of gold bullion. At the time, gold was selling on the...
Titled ‘The Milan Declaration’, the final communiqué of the Seventh Palestinians in Europe Conference, convened under the theme ‘Return is a right, no Consent and no Concession’, was issued on Tuesday. The conference concluded on 2nd May 2009 in Milan, Italy. Thousands of Palestinians from all over the continent participated...
THE British capitalist economy and government finances are in a worse state than Chancellor Alistair Darling led everyone to believe when he delivered his Budget on April 30. This is the view of both the House of Commons Treasury Committee, which issued its report on the Budget yesterday, and the...
Hundreds of workers at the Birmingham-based LDV van plant were yesterday warned there is no guarantee they will have a job after a last-minute ‘rescue’ was announced. A judge held off from putting the failed company into administration after being told a Malaysian firm, Webstar had agreed to buy...
ON THE eve of a meeting between US President Barack Obama, the President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, and Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari in Washington today, the Pakistani Army is organising a military offensive against anti-imperialist Taleban fighters in the country’s North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). Yesterday, government officials were calling...
ANGRY parents occupying the roof of Lewisham Bridge Primary School and students from Goldsmiths College demonstrated against Prime Minister Brown when he arrived at Prendergast Secondary School to deliver his speech on ‘parent power’ yesterday. Brown’s speech at the south London school was described by the National Union of...
Spain’s National Court plans to proceed with an investigation of Israeli officials for possible war crimes against humanity over the 2002 killing of a Hamas fighter and 14 civilians. Judge Fernando Andreu announced on Monday that the inquiry would continue over the head of recommendations of prosecutors, who called on...
FIAT, the multinational car monopoly based in Italy, is in talks with the German government and the Works Council at Opel, the subsidiary of the American car giant General Motors (GM), about taking over its European factories. GM Europe employs 26,000 workers at Opel and 5,000 workers at Vauxhall in...
TamilNet said that the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) during the weekend has reportedly been engaged in heavy deployment of its troops poised for a major onslaught, reports from Vanni said citing sources close to the LTTE on Sunday. All kinds of heavy weapons, including prohibited ones, are ready for deployment...
‘Vauxhall workers should occupy to defend their jobs’, Belfast Visteon convenor John McGuire told News Line yesterday. He was responding to news that Fiat Group SpA is in talks to buy most of General Motors Europe, which includes Opel in Germany and Vauxhall Ellesmere Port and GM Luton in...
Greek workers, youth and students in their thousands demonstrated in every city on May Day celebrating historic past struggles and showing their determination to fight against the current right-wing Karamanlis government, as the economic collapse is creating havoc and an unprecedented political crisis. Last week the Greek Finance Ministry announced...
v‘We are meeting under the greatest ever crisis of the capitalist system,’ Chair of Chingford ASLEF Bill Rogers told 150 workers and youth at the Workers Revolutionary Party and Young Socialists May Day meeting in central London on Friday. Opening the meeting, he continued: ‘Imperialism is being pushed back all...
MILLIONS of workers took to the streets on May Day in countries throughout the world, from Los Angeles to London, Havana to Harare. Several May Day demonstrations took place in Los Angeles, with 2,000 workers joining the MIWON (MultiEthnic Immigrant Workers Organising Network) march under the slogan: ‘Workers First’. They...
‘WHAT happened to us could have happened to anyone!’ This is what Visteon shop steward Raymond Dixon told the crowd in Trafalgar Square at the end of yesterday’s 6,000-strong May Day march. He added: ‘The system has failed us and continues to fail us. We have to do something. There are...
TWO ex-Labour government leaders Clarke and Blunkett have now spoken up, true to form, to stab Prime Minister Brown in the back, just as the Labour ship is sinking. The present disintegration of the Brown government could be seen in semblance in the contradictions that were there right at...
UNEXPLODED bombs and the uncontrolled dumping of rubbish pose the greatest environmental and public health risks to residents of the Gaza Strip, according to the UN Development Programme (UNDP). In addition, Gazans face health risks due to increased discharges of raw sewage, the contamination of ground and drinking water,...
THE Editorial Board of the News Line sends its May Day greetings to the working people of the world. Under the conditions of the greatest ever crash of the capitalist system you are battling to defend your jobs, wages, homes and basic rights against bankers’ and bosses’ governments who are...
TamilNet reports that Professor Francis Boyle, professor of International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law, has said Britain is obliged to call on the UN Security Council to act over the ‘civil war’ in Sri Lanka. Pointing to the latest statement during the visit to Sri Lanka...