Monthly Archives: December 2013

ON Tuesday night, the chairs of the US House and Senate budget committee, Paul Ryan (Republican) and Patty Murray (Democrat), held a joint press conference at which they announced a bipartisan deal on the huge US debt crisis. The background to Tuesday’s show of unity between the two bourgeois parties...

AHEAD of today’s and tomorrow’s four-hour national fire strikes in England and Wales, leading firefighters told News Line they want general strike action across the public sector. Firefighters in England and Wales will strike for the fifth and sixth times this weekend, between 6.00pm and 10.00pm on both Friday 13...

TODAY, Thursday 12 December 2013, will mark 25 years since the Clapham Junction Rail Crash that left 35 people dead and hundreds injured. The accident happened in 1988 when the crowded 06:14 train from Poole to London Waterloo crashed at 08.10 into the back of the stationary 07.18 Basingstoke service,...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has told his military leadership they should build up their forces in the Arctic as a priority. Commending the recent restoration of an airfield in the region, he said Russia needed to use every means to protect its national interests in the region. He was speaking after...

OVER 2,000 students demonstrated outside the University of London Student Union yesterday to express their anger at the attack by the university management on students’ right to protest, and against police brutality. In speeches outside the university, students demanded the dropping of all charges against colleagues arrested last week. They...

THE presence of all of the capitalist world’s leaders could not keep the South African masses quiet about their real feelings for the ANC leader, and South African President, Jacob Zuma. He was remorselessly booed, and prevented from speaking for some time by tens of thousands of African workers...

‘DURING the long years of my own struggle, I had the occasion to think many times of you, dear Nelson Mandela. ‘Even more since my arrest in 2002. I think of a man who spent 27 years in a prison cell, only to demonstrate that freedom was within him before...

THE CWU trade union has agreed a ‘landmark’ agreement with Royal Mail. CWU deputy general secretary Dave Ward said: ‘The agreement breaks new ground in the UK by incorporating extensive legally binding protections for employees alongside a commitment to improve industrial stability.’ The agreement includes a pay deal for three years...

UCU and Unison have condemned the police and management attacks on students and staff at the University of London Union (ULU) which is being shut down by the management. A day of action has been called at ULU today, with a demonstration at 2pm, against the privatisation of...

MONDAY’s Day of Action – a day when parents, students, educators and community leaders held events in more than 30 cities throughout America to support public schools – got an early start in Austin, Texas, last Friday with a rally outside the state Capitol building, said the National Education...

Last week it was revealed that the number of people forced onto the new scheme by the end of next year is now estimated to be only 400,000 instead of the 4.5 million Duncan Smith had originally predicted, at present just over 2,000 people are involved in the...

UNIONS warned yesterday that savage cuts to ambulance services and staffing levels are causing the A&E crisis to ‘spiral out of control’ and ‘will cost lives’. Patients are waiting as long as six hours in an ambulances outside A&E departments before they are admitted. Figures for ambulance services in England, Scotland...

TWO-HUNDRED marchers – local residents, trade unionists and youth – expressed enormous anger on Saturday as they demonstrated through Enfield in north London against the closure of the Accident and Emergency Department of Chase Farm Hospital. The A&E department was set to close at 3am this morning, following the closure...

MEMBERS of Parliament will receive an 11% pay rise following the publication of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority recommendations later on this week The rise will take place after the 2015 general election and will take pay to £74,000 a year, with parliamentary expenses to be added on. The pay...

THOUSANDS of Greek school and university students took part in militant anti-government and anti-police marches in all the major cities last Friday to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the killing in Athens of 15-year-old school student Alexis Grigoropoulos by police, which led to a youth uprising that lasted over...

THE MPs’ pay rise plan shows a political class ‘wildly out of touch’, said Public and Commercial Services union general secretary Mark Serwotka yesterday. Commenting on news that the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) is set to announce an 11 per cent pay rise for MPs, he said: ‘That an...

TRADE unions responded angrily to the Tory Chancellor Osborne’s Autumn Budget Statement in which he announced permanent austerity, raising the state pension age to 69 and further attacks on workers, unemployed youth and students. Martin Freedman, director of economic strategy at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), said: ‘For...

NELSON Mandela, one of the great heroes of the anti-Apartheid struggle who was jailed for 27 years on Robben Island for his opposition to the Apartheid regime, has died aged 95, and is being mourned by millions of South African workers and youth for his role in standing up...

THE Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has announced that its members in England and Wales will take strike action again next weekend, Friday 13 and Saturday 14 December, both from 18:00 to 22:00. These will be the fifth and sixth strikes since the end of September. ‘This further action is entirely...

YESTERDAY’S 60-strong mass picket to save Chase Farm Hospital drew big support from patients and local residents who all said they would join today’s march to occupy the closure-threatened A&E. There were flags and banners waved as chants of ‘Defend the NHS, save Chase Farm’ rang out. Pickets also shouted ‘Save...

NUMSA has issued a National Office Bearer’s statement on the SACP augmented Central Committee statement of 1 December. It reads: ‘It has now become absolutely necessary to publicly repeat the essential historic relationship that has, hitherto, traditionally existed between the SACP and NUMSA. ‘Many NUMSA members just like many activists in...

CHANCELLOR OSBORNE underlined the precarious nature of his ‘recovery’ when he told the House of Commons yesterday ‘the job is not done…we don’t squander the gains we’ve made but go on taking the difficult decisions…but this time spot the debt bubbles before they threaten financial stability’. Truly, you can’t have...

OVER 200 students from London universities and supporters from other universities demonstrating yesterday against police violence, were themselves confronted by Police. They marched from ULU Malet Street to Russell Square and were confronted by half a dozen riot vans. The police confronted the protesters and marched them back to the...

TORY Chancellor Osborne, in his Autumn Statement delivered to parliament yesterday, launched war on the unemployed, students, youth and the state pension. Rather than announcing any relief to the barrage of cuts that the working class has suffered in the last three years, the Chancellor announced a stepping up of...

THOUSANDS of striking university and college lecturers, along with other workers in higher education, were solidly on 24-hour strike on Tuesday. Four unions – University and College Union (UCU), Unison, Unite, and EIS – were taking the action. They received great backing from their students including in Sheffield and at Goldsmith’s...

ON Wednesday, a cabinet level task force set up by Cameron last June to consider proposals for new laws aimed at combating ‘extremism’ published its recommendations. ON Wednesday, a cabinet level task force set up by Cameron last June to consider proposals for new laws aimed at combating ‘extremism’ published...

FOOD poverty in the UK has now become a ‘public health emergency’, a group of health experts said yesterday. In a letter to the British Medical Journal, six leading public health figures warned poor nutrition could lead to a host of problems. Citing research from the Institute for Fiscal...

Australian-based manufacturer of medical gloves and condoms, Ansell, is attacking workers in its supply chain, suspending 800 striking trade union members in Sri Lanka and replacing them with contracted scabs. IndustriALL Global Union is mobilising solidarity behind its Sri Lankan affiliate, the Free Trade Zones & General Services Employees Union...

FOLLOWING the Black Friday strike action at 1,500 WalMart stores throughout the US, fast-food workers in over 100 cities will walk off the job tomorrow, to mark another huge push for higher pay and a minimum wage, currently at $7.25 an hour, to be raised to $15 an hour. $7.25...

TUESDAY’S strikes by staff in colleges and universities closed institutions and key learning facilities with hundreds of classes cancelled, the UCU said yesterday. The action, which involves members from Unison, Unite, UCU and EIS, sent a clear message to employers that staff deserve fair pay.  The University of the West of Scotland...

THE Greek coalition government of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras is in a crisis following disagreements over more barbaric economic measures demanded by the EC-IMF-ECB creditors. Last week the OECD’s Director-General Angel Gurria visited Athens and also demanded that the government introduces legislation for additional taxes on property and the sequestration...

THE refusal at the last minute by the Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovich, to sign up to a ‘partnership’ deal with the EU has led immediately to a coup attempt by the imperialist nations determined to seize control of the Ukraine and exploit both its strategic importance and its use...

UNIVERSITY and college workers are holding the most widespread strike action in Higher and Further Education (HE & FE) for years. Staff in universities have been offered just a 1% pay rise this year, despite their pay plummeting 13% in real terms in last four years, while lecturers in FE...

TORY Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s claims that ‘we can truly be the generation that beats dementia’ is a smokescreen for promoting the big drug companies. Furthermore, Hunt is keen to use dementia sufferers to promote home care as opposed to hospital care, and volunteers, friends and families as unpaid carers...

THOUSANDS of protesters participated in large demonstrations in Haifa, Jerusalem and in the Negev on Saturday against the Israeli Prawer Plan to drive the Bedouin people out of their villages in the Negev. Palestinian members of the Israeli Knesset, Ahmed al-Tibi and Jamal Zahalka, participated in the protest which...

ISRAEL must immediately lift its blockade on the Gaza Strip, allowing the delivery of fuel and other essential supplies into the territory without restrictions, said Amnesty International yesterday. For the last month, all of Gaza’s 1.7 million residents have been living without power for most of the time and in...