Monthly Archives: October 2010
‘WE’RE calling on everyone to join our march from Manchester to London for jobs for youth, and for the smashing of all tuition fees and the restoration of free university education.’ This is what march leader Jonty Leff told News Line yesterday. He added: ‘Firefighters, postal workers, teachers, nurses, all those...
WHEN the Tory Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, starts accusing his coalition government of ‘Kosovo-style social cleansing’ in the capital over the plans to smash up social housing, then it is clear that a huge crisis is developing. What motivates Johnson, and his fellow London Tories, is fear of losing...
‘THE gloves are off on deregulation of staff pay and conditions,’ said teachers union NASUWT yesterday. NASUWT General Secretary Chris Keates slammed the announcement by Education Secretary Gove of the abolition of the School Support Staff Negotiating Body (SSSNB). Keates said: ‘This was not unexpected but is nevertheless an appalling decision...
‘THE recession has. . . certainly presented us with plenty of puzzles,’ says the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, Charles Bean. Addressing the Royal Statistical Society, he said: ‘In the aftermath of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the subsequent near-seizure of the global financial system in early...
THE Iranian Ambassador to the UN urged the UN Security Council (UNSC) to address international demands that Israel be condemned for its nuclear weapons, it was reported on Wednesday. The ambassador, Mohammad Khazaei said: ‘The adoption of a resolution at the committees of the UN General Assembly in condemnation of...
THE London Firefighters one day strike last Saturday has drawn a swift response from the capitalist state, via their mouthpieces in the bourgeois press. Commenting on the strike and the use of the private contractor AssetCo in providing a scab force to operate 27 strike breaking fire appliances, the Tory...
The weekend’s release by Wikileaks of the Iraq War Logs reveals, for the first time, horrendous detail of the torture and ill-treatment of Iraqis whilst in detention with the Iraqi authorities including the Iraqi National Guard (ING) and Iraqi Police Service (IPS). A statement issued on Tuesday by Public...
‘The strikes on November 1st and November 5th will go ahead,’ Fire Brigades Union (FBU) London Region Official Paul Embery told News Line yesterday. He was speaking after talks aimed at averting a 47-hour strike commencing on Bonfire Night had broken down. Embery said: ‘We arrived at London Fire Brigade HQ...
FBU General Secretary Matt Wrack has announced further London-wide strike action. The strike, which will take place from 10.00am on November 5th to 9.00am on November 7th, incorporates Bonfire Night – the fire service’s busiest period. Wrack said: ‘We do not want to take this action but we have no choice. ‘The...
UK security chiefs have ordered an acceleration in police heavy weapons training so that they can hold the line against Mumbai-style attacks in UK city centres, until the SAS can be brought up to go in for the kill. A series of counter-terrorism exercises are already being held...
HE pledged to ditch Blairism when elected as the new Labour Party leader, but Ed Miliband made it clear on Monday that he intends to continue the New Labour partnership with business for years ahead. In his speech to the CBI bosses organisation annual conference in London’s West End,...
ON May 31 this year, Israeli commandos abseiled onto the deck of the ‘Mavi Marmara’, which was sailing in international waters on its way to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza. The Israelis sprayed the ship’s unarmed crew and passengers with over 300 bullets, killing nine of them and...
THERE was a ‘bloodbath on every corner’ in Iraq, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange told a press conference in London on Saturday. Website Wikileaks has revealed 391,831 secret US military logs, known as Significant Actions (‘Sigacts’) on the war in Iraq. The documents confirm that, despite the worldwide outrage caused by the...
‘Welfare changes starting today will see up to 111,000 single parents set up to fail as they are forced to seek work – or risk a benefit cut – without availability of jobs, adequate job-search support or childcare help’, single parents charity Gingerbread warned yesterday. It added: ‘Today’s reforms mean...
‘THIS conflict could be resolved very easily. Lift the sackings and we can all go back to work,’ declared Fire Brigades Union (FBU) general secretary Matt Wrack on Saturday. He was speaking before leading London firefighters out on the first of two eight-hour strikes at Euston fire station at 10am. The...
THERE was a ‘bloodbath on every corner’ in Iraq, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange told a press conference in London on Saturday. Website Wikileaks has revealed 391,831 secret US military logs, known as Significant Actions (‘Sigacts’) on the war in Iraq. The documents confirm that, despite the worldwide outrage caused by the...
LAST Friday night, Wikileaks published the secret US field reports and war logs from the battlefield that is Iraq, detailing recorded civilian deaths, torture of detainees and summary executions by pro-US Iraqi puppet forces, all of which the US and UK command was aware of under Order 242 issued...
Workers, patients and visitors at Chase Farm Hospital on Thursday made it clear they are determined to fight any attempt to close their hospital. There was a lively picket of both gates at the Enfield site in the morning by the North-East London Council of Action, demonstrating to stop the...
Today, the London FBU are staging the first of two eight hour strikes against the plans to sack the entire workforce of over 5,000 and only re-employ them if they accept new imposed terms and conditions of service. The stakes involved in this strike are enormous. The employer, backed to the...
London’s 5,600 firefighters go on strike at 10am this morning, and will stay out until 6pm, after the London Fire Brigade sent them all letters of dismissal on 11 August. ‘It is a terrible step to have to take,’ said Fire Brigades Union general secretary Matt Wrack yesterday, who is...
THOUSANDS of workers and students marched to Downing Street on Wednesday evening, in angry protest against the savage assault on jobs, public services and benefits announced by the coalition government. Speakers addressing the 3,500-strong demonstration warned that this was only the beginning of what would be an uncompromising struggle to...
Lecturers and students unions yesterday warned that increased fees will see even more youth denied higher education, as new figures confirmed that a record 209,253 missed out on a university place this summer. The figures, from the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS), revealed that one in three who applied...
THERE was a lively picket of both gates at Chase Farm Hospital yesterday morning by the North-East London Council of Action, demonstrating to stop the hospital’s closure. The picket took place in the wake of an announcement that there will be 250 redundancies at Barnet and Chase Farm and that...
EVERYONE has had the chance to work out what the Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition government’s Comprehensive Spending Review means, with £81bn in cuts hitting jobs and public services, and the destruction of the Welfare State. More than 500,000 public sector jobs are to be axed in the next period and a...
THERE was an angry and determined mood among the 10,000 trade unionists and youth who travelled from all over the country on Tuesday to attend the TUC lobby of parliament against public sector cuts. Kevin Hardiman, chairman of the Unite Construction Industry Section South West, and a shop steward in...
OSBORNE began his spending review speech yesterday by saying that: ‘Today’s the day when Britain steps back from the brink’. In fact, his speech represented the day when class war was officially declared in the UK, with 500,000 public sector workers to lose their jobs, along with hundreds of thousands...
TORY Chancellor Osborne confirmed yesterday that the coalition government was pressing ahead with the most savage attack on the working class since the Second World War. In his statement on the coalition’s Comprehensive Spending Review, Osborne confirmed plans first announced in the Emergency Budget in June to eliminate the ‘structural...
UP TO 10,000 workers and youth supported the TUC lobby of Parliament yesterday. Many told News Line that they want trade union action to put the coalition out as soon as possible to defeat the savage cuts to be announced today by Chancellor Osborne. Paula Black, Unison Convenor East Sussex Local...
THE ‘social housing’ budget in England is to be slashed by more than 50 per cent. Up to 90 per cent of the market rent is to be charged to council tenants, and a flexible tenancy introduced to allow tenants to be evicted for such crimes as having one bedroom...
PLANS by royal mail management to close all but one of London’s Mail Centres is set to put them on a collision course with postal workers in the capital. According to a statement from the London Divisional Committe (LDC) of the CWU entitled: The Capital’s Punishment by Royal Mail, management...
‘The coalition has got it wrong. By only having a strategy for cuts, it has no plans for growth and recovery.’ So warned Unison general secretary Dave Prentis ahead of today’s protest against cuts expected in the Comprehensive Spending Review. He was commenting as the unions released research which showed that...
LAST Friday the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) announced that it would kick off its defence of jobs and conditions with two days of strike action in London. London firefighters have faced a long and determined fight by the Brigade authorities to smash up their conditions and impose changes to work...
Trade unions have reacted angrily to Tory peer Lord Young’s review of health and safety. The RMT transport union said that his report ‘is a hatchet-job based on prejudice that will do nothing to reduce workplace injuries, deaths and industrial disease’. An RMT statement at the weekend added: ‘Under cover...
THE bankers coalition has set the scene for next Wednesday’s cuts announcements in true Bullingham Club style, by declaring that ‘welfare cheats’ equal muggers, who are to be ruthlessly hunted down by 200 extra inspectors to be hired specifically for this purpose. The ‘hit squads’ are to be sent where...
FRANCE is fast approaching a revolutionary upheaval. In Paris the social crisis increases as the school youth begin to hit the streets in often impromptu demonstrations and blockages of lycées. Alongside these actions, becoming more widespread with workers taking the initiative, launching strikes and blockages especially in the fuel sector. The...
Rights group Liberty has warned the government against draft police guidance that would allow race to be a basis for stop and search operations ‘without suspicion’. Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 allows for a police officer to stop and search without suspicion in a...
‘AssetCo have taken 27 fire engines off station,’ London FBU official Ian Leahair told News Line. The private company AssetCo was awarded a 5-year contract in July 2009 by the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (LFEPA) for the provision of an Emergency Fire Crew Capability Service to the...
THE death of a 46-year-old family man being deported from Heathrow has thrown the spotlight on the entire racist immigration policy and its private enforcers. Jimmy Mubenga was being deported to Angola and in the custody of three guards employed by the security firm G4S. According to a press release issued...
BUS workers were in high spirits yesterday on the second Friday out of four consecutive Fridays of strike action over low pay and management victimisation at the CT Plus bus garage in Hackney. Motorists and passing buses tooted their horns in support to the cheers of the 50-strong lively picket. Branch...
London firefighters have voted overwhelmingly for strike action in a dispute over changes to shift patterns, and have decided to begin their campaign with two eight hour strikes. The first action will begin on 10am on Saturday 23 October and the second will be from 10am on Monday 1...
Trade union leaders have been shocked by the latest jobless figures which saw a leap in part-time working and female and youth unemployment. Commenting on the latest unemployment figures published on Wednesday by the Office for National Statistics, TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: ‘Today’s figures show the labour market...
GREEK riot police fired tear gas and beat Ministry of Culture workers yesterday morning after the workers had occupied the Acropolis in Athens demanding that they be paid two years wages that they are owed, and that the sacking of 320 staff be cancelled. Greece has seen waves of strikes...
‘More than 30 maternity and A&E units have been shut down, downgraded or threatened with closure since May’s general election, despite the government’s promise to protect NHS frontline services.’ This is the stark observation in the latest Royal College of Midwives members’ magazine. ‘Midwives’ adds: ‘The maternity unit in High Wycombe,...
Postal workers called for action to defend their jobs and Royal Mail as a public service in response to yesterday’s publication of the government’s Postal Services Bill. ‘The government has wasted no time in flogging off the country’s state assets without exploring other options,’ declared Communication Workers Union...