Monthly Archives: November 2013
YESTERDAY early morning we heard from the BBC, and a number of pro-Tory daily newspapers, that Cameron had succeeded in trumping the Labour Party and Miliband on the energy price hike issue by dumping his old policy and embracing its opposite, negotiating an energy price freeze until after the...
STUDENTS across the country are planning marches, student strikes and occupations to support Tuesday’s nationwide lecturers strike over pay. At Sussex University in Falmouth near Brighton, students, following the lead of the recent Birmingham occupation, have re-occupied the Bramber House conference centre on their campus as part of the ongoing...
DEPRIVED areas across England and Scotland are seeing larger cuts to budgets, of around £100 per head, compared to affluent ones, according to a new report published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF). The interim report Coping with cuts? Local government and poorer communities is part of JRF’s programme of...
The Disability Benefits Consortium (DBC), a national coalition of over 50 charities, has written a letter to the Department for Work and Pensions calling on the Government to take immediate action to exempt disabled people, their families and carersfrom the ‘bedroom tax’. The letter reads: ‘Rt Hon Iain Duncan Smith MP ‘Dear...
LAST Monday the coalition government’s drive to privatise every single public service and completely smash up the welfare state took yet another grotesque turn with the selling off of £890m of student debt to a private debt collection agency, Erudio, for the paltry sum of £160 million. When he first...
IN THE early hours of yesterday morning, Birmingham students were forcibly evicted from their week-long occupation of their university. In a defiant statement they said their ‘demands now stand stronger than ever amongst students and staff’. They had occupied the university Senate Chamber since last Wednesday in protest at rising tuition...
HOUSE-BUILDING giant Baratt Homes’ share price crashed by ten per cent yesterday in an immediate response to Bank of England Governor Mark Carney’s announcement that the BofE is to scale back its scheme to boost mortgage loans. Instead, the money will go to the banks to boost their reserves, and...
THE Tamil people commemorated Heroes Day on November 27, in remembrance of all the thousands who fought and gave their lives in the struggle for Tamil independence, in defiance of Sri Lankan military oppression. Tamil Heroes Day is observed in unity among the Tamil Diaspora across the globe. In the Indian...
NINE million people across the UK are living with serious debt problems, according to a new report by the Money Advice Service (MAS). MAS points out that the problem is particularly acute in five English areas, where more than 40% of the population is struggling to repay debt. The figures that...
THOUSANDS of disabled people are cutting back on food and heating as a result of the Bedroom Tax, says a group of leading charities. The tax is having a ‘devastating impact’ on people with disabilities, say the chief executives of leading groups including Disability Rights UK, Scope, Carers UK, The...
THE occupation by University of Birmingham students of the Aston Webb building is continuing in defiance of the High Court Injunction secured by the management on Monday. And it has been joined by a resumed occupation of University of Sussex, to which it has sent its greetings. Hattie Craig, Birmingham’s Vice...
THE DRAFT Protest Law to regulate the right to peaceful assembly, issued by Egyptian Interim President Adly Mansour on Sunday, has been widely criticised as an attack on basic democratic rights, including the right to strike. Though President Mansour has the necessary legislative authority to amend the draft Protest Law...
THE Syrian people and their supporters worldwide must be on the alert to see that the victories the Syrian masses and their army have won on the battlefield, driving back the US-UK organised hordes of Islamic and Al Qaeda fighters, are not lost at the conference table, in particular...
OVER 100 firefighters picketed the Royal Courts of Justice yesterday against the decision to close ten fire stations in London and cut 552 jobs as well as 14 engines and two Fire Rescue Units. The courts were hearing a judicial review into London Mayor Boris Johnson’s decision to savagely cut...
AUSTERITY is being exploited to drive through budget cuts and reforms which are denying children their basic human rights, according to a major new report, backed by more than 60 organisations and experts, being released today. The State of Children’s Rights in England report from Children’s Rights Alliance for England...
THIS week yet another scandal has broken out concerning the practices of the banking system. The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is once again in the firing line over the activities of its business turnaround unit, the Global Restructuring Group (GRG). On paper, this group exists to weed out the bad...
BIRMINGHAM students have occupied their university, pre-empting yesterday’s announcement that Student Loans are to be sold off by the Tory coalition government to private debt collectors. The Tory coalition government announced to the London Stock Exchange yesterday that they have agreed a deal to privatise a £900m portfolio...
TUBE unions have reacted angrily to the announcement that all London Underground ticket offices will be shut by 2015 with the loss of nearly 1,000 jobs and a promise of 24-hour opening on five lines at weekends. RMT General Secretary Bob Crow said on Thursday: ‘No matter how this is...
PRESIDENT Obama made it crystal clear in his 11.45pm Saturday night address, over the just-signed six-month interim nuclear agreement with Iran, that he is prepared to plunge the world into a major war to prevent Iran from developing an independent nuclear capacity. This is despite the numerous declarations that have...
THE GMB union is calling for an immediate halt to the tendering process for the up to £1bn Cambridgeshire Elderly Care contract. The union plans to lobby the next meeting of the Cambridge and Peterborough NHS Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) meeting next Tuesday December 3rd at 1pm in Ely. The...
THE situation in Gaza has deteriorated to its worst ever level, just one year after a truce that ended fighting between Israel and Hamas in the Palestinian territory, UN officials confirmed on Thursday. James Rawley, the United Nations’ humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, said that ‘After 12 months the...
By Paddy O’Regan RAY ATHOW WAS a party member for 47 years and an organiser for over 30. In all that time, what distinguished him is that he put the party first before everything else. He fought for the Marxist dialectical materialist outlook, and that this outlook must guide the party’s...
MORE than 5,000 people a year are being made ‘homeless’ as a household debt crisis deepens, the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) warned yesterday. More than 26,000 UK households have been accepted by councils as homeless in the last five years because of rent and mortgage arrears, with 5,036 becoming...
THE TRADE UNIONS led by the TUC held a national Day of Action on Wednesday against the blacklisting companies who have prevented trade unionists working for years. The Day of Action included a mass lobby of parliament in which hundreds of workers participated. Pickets from GMB and Ucatt Eastern Region braved...
LAST night’s Panorama programme, entitled ‘Britain’s Secret Terror Force’, threw yet more light on the murderous activities of the British state in its war against the people of Ireland. Although this has been presented as a horrific episode consigned to the history of ‘the troubles’ back in the early 1970s,...
‘MEMBERS of the “Military Reaction Force”, who murdered unarmed Irish nationalists, must be identified and prosecuted for murder,’ WRP general secretary Frank Sweeney told News Line yesterday. He added, about the 1972 murders that took place in the same year as the Derry Bloody Sunday killings by paratroops: ‘Their chain...
TWO striking garment workers were shot dead by police in Bangladesh on Monday. Almost 140 Bangladeshi garment factories were shut as thousands of workers took strike action across the country on Monday, in support of their union’s fight for a new $100 a month minimum wage. The two were killed in...
Blacklisted construction workers and their supporters, 200 strong, lobbied Parliament yesterday, demanding those who operated and used blacklists in Britain be prosecuted. In 2009 the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) seized a Consulting Association database of 3,213 construction workers and environmental activists used by 44 companies to vet new recruits and...
THE US is set to leave Afghanistan with its tail between its legs like a beaten dog, after Afghan officials said yesterday that the US had offered to send a letter, signed by President Obama, admitting past American ‘mistakes’, ie the slaughter of thousands of Afghans in their homes...
QATAR'S construction sector is rife with abuse, with workers employed on multi-million dollar projects suffering serious exploitation in conditions akin to slave labour, Amnesty International reports. As construction begins on the FIFA World Cup 2022 stadiums, the report – The Dark Side of Migration: Spotlight on Qatar’s construction sector ahead...
GLOBAL growth for 2013 and 2014 has been downgraded ‘significantly’ by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), because of the crisis in the US and the dangers of a collapse in emerging markets such as Brazil and India. Global GDP this year is now expected to grow by...
THE TORY coalition Government’s announcement that they will publish NHS staffing levels on a website are a cover to ‘provide any level of nursing care on the wards that they see fit’, said BMA member Anna Athow yesterday. Christina McAnea, Unison Head of Health, said that the government ‘has missed...
‘WE ARE celebrating 44 years of the daily Trotskyist paper that fights for a revolutionary leadership that does not bend, capitulate or collapse at the first hurdle, like the trade union leaders do, but instead provides a clear lead for the entire working class and an entire generation of...
THE ages old reformist illusion that the worst excesses of capitalism can be curbed through a mixture of indignation and moral outrage received yet another body blow with the revelation that the pay for top executives is continuing to reach the stratosphere, paid for through the poverty of workers...
AS a result of the huge austerity rocking the Greek economy, this year’s march to commemorate the Athens Polytechnic student uprising was the biggest since the event started. Some 60,000 students, workers and unemployed marched on Sunday from the Athens city centre to the American Embassy in the annual demonstration...
A SECTION of uprooted Tamil families from Champoor, now staying at one of four so-called welfare centres in Trincomalee, staged a protest on Saturday. They carried slogans that demanded justice for genocide and urged global attention on the continued refusal by the Colombo government in allowing them to resettle in...
PRESIDENT Obama’s attempt to establish a cheaper insurance market that would provide full cover for up to 40 million poor Americans is under all-out attack from the Republicans, the insurance companies and from within his own Democratic Party. On Friday dozens of Obama’s Democratic allies backed a Republican bill which...
OVER 200 workers and youth marched to the 44th News Line anniversary rally yesterday afternoon with flags flying and slogans calling for the Tory-led coalition to be brought down by a general strike. As they marched off from Weavers Fields, Bethnal Green, their slogans electrified the watching crowds who applauded...
‘SAVE Chase Farm Occupy Now! Whose hospital? Our Hospital!’ More than 200 marchers chanted this slogan as they marched to Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield yesterday evening, determined to stop the closure of the Enfield Hospital. Enfield residents, trade unionists and Chase Farm Hospital workers were on the march, organised by...
ON Thursday evening hundreds of Enfield residents were led by the North East London Council of Action into Chase Farm hospital to protest at the closure of its Maternity Unit and the plan to close on December 9th its A&E, which treats over 230,000 people. The Council of Action has...
GPs in England will no longer have to offer appointments lasting at least 10 minutes under changes agreed with the government. It is one of a number of requirements being removed in the latest round of contract negotiations between the government and doctors’ leaders. NHS England says consultations last, on average,...
THERE were strong picket lines outside fire stations throughout England and Wales between 10am-2pm on Wednesday afternoon, as the Fire Brigades Union held its third strike against the Coalition’s vicious attacks on firefighters’ pensions. The FBU is fighting against attempts by the Coalition to smash up the firefighters’ pension scheme. The...
‘SAVE Chase Farm Occupy Now! Whose hospital? Our Hospital!’ More than 200 marchers chanted these slogans as they moved onto the Chase Farm Hospital site in Enfield yesterday evening, determined to stop the closure of the Enfield Hospital. The march, called by the North East London Council of Action, was led...
LAST week it was announced by BAE systems, the private defence company, that the shipbuilding industry was to be closed down in Portsmouth and slashed to ribbons on the Clyde with 1,776 full time jobs and 170 agency workers being laid off. At the time of this announcement, the company...
The RCN has launched a report which reveals there are nearly 20,000 nursing vacancies currently unfilled in England; a ‘hidden workforce crisis’ that could have serious consequences for the NHS. Figures from Running the Red Light show the scale of the problem of understaffing is far larger than the official...