Monthly Archives: June 2011
TENS of thousands of workers and youth congregated early yesterday morning in Athens at three pre-arranged points to enforce an encirclement of the Vouli (Greek parliament) on Day Two of the 48-hour general strike. They had refused to be frightened off by the massive tear gas, truncheon and sound...
WORKERS and youth in Greece have spent the last two days outside the Vouli being bombarded and attacked by riot policemen, some on motorbikes and others on foot, using truncheons and firing tear gas, sound bombs and other projectiles. The endless state violence being used against them was so...
DOCTORS at the British Medical Association (BMA) Annual Representatives Meeting (ARM) on Tuesday made a bid to press forward their advantage, after passing Motion 689 reasserting their SRM demand that the Health and Social Care Bill be withdrawn. They forced a debate on Motion 658 that ‘calls on...
BMA representatives yesterday voted – against the advice of BMA Council Chairman Dr Hamish Meldrum – to ‘continue to call for the Health and Social Care Bill to be withdrawn’. They voted for Motion 689, which states: ‘That this meeting believes that the response of the government to the...
THE University and College Union (UCU) yesterday warned that the government was organising an ‘NHS-style crash’ pushing through ‘reforms’ to create an education commodity market. The comparison with the NHS is more than appropriate. The essence of the Tory-led coalition’s Health and Social Care Bill is in fact a...
Doctors at the British Medical Association (BMA) Annual Representative Meeting (ARM) in Cardiff expressed their serious concerns at the impact of cuts on healthcare. They voted almost unanimously, with just one or two abstentions, for Motion 132 from the ARM Agenda Committee, deploring ‘that current financial constraints and efficiency savings...
GREEK workers are staging an unprecedented two-day general strike today and tomorrow, called by the GSEE (Greek TUC) against Yiorghos Papandreou’s government’s Mid-Term Economic Plan Bill, which is to be discussed in the Vouli (Greek parliament) during these next two days. Workers and the Popular Assembly square protesters in...
DOCTORS at the British Medical Association’s Annual Representative Meeting in Cardiff yesterday passionately opposed the privatisation of the NHS. The first motion, Motion 20, opposed ‘market-based policies in NHS health care provision’. The motion stated that such policies are ‘not based on sufficient evidence that will improve the quality of care’...
Over the weekend the Tory Education Secretary Michael Gove issued a call for parents to volunteer to break Thursday’s strike by civil servants and teachers and keep schools open. At the same time that Gove was making his call for parents to cross picket lines and keep schools open, it...
ORGANISERS of the second Freedom Flotilla say that an administrative complaint has been filed against the US Boat to Gaza, claiming that the vessel is not seaworthy. This could delay or altogether prevent the ‘Audacity of Hope’ from leaving Athens. The harbour master received notification of the complaint on Thursday afternoon,...
THE Unison National Delegate Conference has rejected ‘critical engagement’ with the Histadrut, the Zionist trade union, which plays a central role in the Zionist occupation of Palestine. This was despite the fact that the resolution was backed by the NEC of the union and moved by a leading member...
BY ANNA ATHOW, BMA COUNCIL, IN A PERSONAL CAPACITY THE Tory-Lib Dem coalition government is determined to push through the Health and Social Care Bill to open up the provision and commissioning of NHS care to private companies. The NHS, as founded, redistributed public funding according to clinical need, through the...
FOLLOWING meetings on Thursday with the Troika (the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the European Central Bank), the Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos announced the government’s Mid-Term Economic Plan (2011-2015) Bill to be voted upon next week in the Vouli (Greek parliament). Venizelos announced that even the very...
Schools unions have reacted angrily to a letter to heads from education secretary Gove, advocating strike breaking during their June 30 pensions action. His letter says: ‘We all have a strong moral duty to pupils and parents to keep schools open and the government wants to help you to fulfil...
US CAPITALISM, the most powerful in the world, is teetering on the brink of collapse under a tidal wave of debt. This dire warning was handed out this week by the bi-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) as the US Congressional talks between Republicans and the Obama administration were failing. These talks...
TRIPOLI – On June 22 at 21.50 gmt, Libyan state-owned Al-Jamahiriyah TV broadcast Colonel Gadaffi’s speech condemning NATO’s bombardment of Lt-Gen Al-Khuwaylidi al-Humaydi’s Surman home and the heavy loss of life incurred by his family and neighbours. Gadaffi stated: ‘Dead or alive, Al-Humaydi is a hero.’ The Colonel expressed his grief...
The Unison national delegate conference in Manchester yesterday voted to step up the fight to save the NHS and to call a national demonstration. Delegates voted unanimously for Composite D, ‘Our NHS Our Future’, which warns the Health and Social Care Bill ‘will render the NHS unrecognisable’. It commits Unison to...
IN the light of President Obama’s determination to quit Afghanistan, and his acknowledgement that the US has been talking to the Taleban, the UK’s Foreign Secretary, Hague, has had little alternative but to admit – while on an unannounced trip to Afghanistan – that Britain is also talking to...
IN the international debate on Wednesday afternoon, delegates at the Unison National Delegate conference in Manchester said the best way to show solidarity with workers in other countries is to take action against the Cameron government. The session was opened with a speech from Irish trade union Impact general secretary...
UNISON members at their national delegate conference in Manchester yesterday voted unanimously to oppose the attack on their pensions with coordinated industrial action. Before debating Composite B: Defending Our Pensions, Jane Carolan made a statement on behalf of the National Executive Committee. She said: ‘I was asked to make a statement...
MEMBERS of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), National Union of Teachers (NUT), Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) and University and College Union (UCU) will be taking strike action on June 30th in defence of their jobs, their pensions and the public services. Unite, the biggest trade union...
A PALESTINIAN family of four was killed in a NATO airstrike on Monday in the Libyan capital Tripoli, according to the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The ministry explained in a statement published on Tuesday by the government news agency Wafa, that the International Red Crescent Association...
MATERNITY staff at Chase Farm Hospital joined the North East London Council of Action picket yesterday to demand paediatrics, A&E and maternity services are kept open by all means necessary. A barrage of hoots in support from cars continued all day, and there were flags and banners demanding to keep...
UNISON General Secretary Dave Prentis yesterday made a ‘call to arms’ at the union’s national delegate conference urging delegates to stand ready for ‘a campaign of strike action without precedent’. He said: ‘Today is my union’s call to arms. ‘When you get back to your branches, prepare for action.’ He...
ON MONDAY in the House of Commons, ex-Labour Home Secretary Jack Straw rounded on the government stating: ‘Instead of sheltering behind complacent language and weasel words that we should not speculate, the government should recognise that this Eurozone cannot last. It is the responsibility of the British government to...
‘THE murderous NATO child killers are continuing their terror raids on Libyan civilians’. Libyan government spokesman Musa Ibrahim, speaking in the city of Surman, west of Tripoli on Monday, condemned the latest terrorist attack. He said: ‘At dawn today the inhumane, hateful crusaders committed yet another one of their horrific massacres....
A major study by the Equality and Human Rights Commission into the quality of home care for the elderly in England has thrown the spotlight again on what privatisation means for the most vulnerable sections of society. The interim report of this just-published study is damning on the care delivered...
‘This is the period of the world revolution,’ All Trades Union Alliance National Secretary Dave Wiltshire told 150 delegates at the News Line-ATUA Conference in London on Sunday. Summing up the debate, he said: ‘What has emerged is this capitalist system has no time for the elderly and sick. ‘The...
UNISON members are gathering at the union’s national delegate conference in Manchester today, determined to defend their jobs, pay, pensions and public services. They will be demanding coordinated national strike action along with other public sector unions. The militant mood of members was clearly signalled at the union’s sectional local government...
Resolution from yesterday’s News Line-All Trades Union Alliance Conference THIS News Line-All Trades Union Alliance conference gives its complete support to the June 30th pensions strike and to the mass strikes over pensions that are going to erupt throughout the summer, into the autumn, and which even the trade union...
‘WE NEED a general strike to bring the government down and go forward to a workers government and socialism.’ This is what All Trades Union Alliance National Secretary Dave Wiltshire told the 150 delegates at the News Line-ATUA Conference in London yesterday. He said: ‘When the leader of the second biggest...
IN another night of terror, murder and horror NATO, allegedly making war on Libya to protect civilians from air attack, has been murdering defenceless men, women and children in Tripoli, the Libyan capital. Since it started the war NATO air forces have rapidly become the air arm of the...
POSTAL workers throughout the country face crunch time in defence of their jobs and the very existence of their union, the CWU. This was spelt out when the chief executive of Royal Mail, Moya Greene, casually let drop in an interview with the Daily Mail newspaper last Wednesday that in...
Trade unions yesterday reacted furiously to pension change threats by Treasury Secretary Douglas Alexander. He said that all public sector workers, bar the army, police and fire service, will see their retirement age, currently 60, linked to the state pension age in the future, which is due to rise to...
The News Line-All Trades Union Alliance is organising this conference this Sunday, 19 June, to build a leadership to lead a struggle inside the trade unions to defeat these brutal government cuts and to mobilise to bring this government down. Details are Sunday 19 July, 2pm at London Welsh Association...
THE massive united action of workers and youth in Greece, unleashed in the enormous one-day general strike last Wednesday, has toppled the hated government of Prime Minister Yiorghos Papandreou. This has destroyed the conspiracies of the ruling class for a ‘grand coalition’ government and has opened the way for...
THE fury of the Blairite Milburn over the changes to the Health Bill that have been forced on the Tory-led coalition by the massive opposition to NHS privatisation is a joy to behold. Milburn, who was forced out of the job of Health Minister in 2003, is railing that he...
KIRSAN Ilyumzhinov, president of the World Chess Federation, has spoken about his recent meeting with Colonel Gadaffi in Tripoli. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, head of the FIDE spent the weekend in Tripoli. In the Libyan capital he met Mu’ammar al-Gadaffi and played chess with him. When asked how did the meeting...
PUBLIC and Commercial Services Union leader Mark Serwotka said yesterday, just before the massive vote for strike action on June 30th by his PCS members was announced, that industrial action will grow over the coming months unless the government changes tack. Everybody knows that there is not the slightest chance...
Greek police fired teargas and attacked 200,000 workers and youth outside parliament yesterday who were seeking to prevent MPs entering parliament to vote on new austerity measures. The youth around Syntagma Square in Athens responded to the police attack by throwing yoghurt and stones. Hundreds of thousands took part in a...
THREE-QUARTERS of a million public sector workers will take strike action against government attacks on their pensions on Thursday 30th June, it was confirmed yesterday. The result of the PCS civil servants union strike ballot showed a massive two-to-one vote in favour. In its national strike ballot, 61.1 per cent of...
‘If the aim of the blockade policy was to weaken the Hamas administration, the public employment numbers suggest this has failed’ a UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) spokesman said on Tuesday as the UN marks Gaza’s fifth year under intense Israeli siege. Commenting on a report released by the...
THE NUT and ATL teachers unions announced overwhelming votes for strike action yesterday, against the coalition government’s massive attacks on their pensions. In the NUT strike ballot 92 per cent voted in favour of strike action, while in the first national strike ballot in its 127-year history, the Association...