Monthly Archives: January 2014
THE NHS Support Federation yesterday revealed that almost 70% of contracts for NHS services in England between April-December 2013 were awarded to private companies. THE NHS privatisation reforms mean ‘qualified providers’ can be chosen to provide clinical services. The NHS Support Federation, which opposes a competitive market in...
CHANCELLOR Osborne has called for an all-out EU-wide War on Welfare, demanding yesterday that the European Union must ‘do more’ to ensure economic competitiveness with ‘rivals’ like India and China. Addressing a joint meeting of the right-wing Open Europe ‘think tank’ and the Fresh Start group of Tory MPs in...
‘RIGHT TO BUY ‘is nothing short of Whitehall-sanctioned robbery of the taxpayer,’ Tom Copley, London Assembly Labour Housing spokesperson, said yesterday. Copley added that the policy has ‘played a central role in causing and exacerbating the current housing crisis’ His report using data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act,...
TEACHERS at Copland School in Wembley, who took part in their fifth one day strike against being forced into academy status yesterday, must be congratulated and given overwhelmingly support by every parent and worker for their stand against the destruction of free state education. The entire drive to force every...
COPLAND Community School workers took an unprecedented fifth day of strike action yesterday to stop the ARK academy chain taking over their school in Wembley. ATL Executive member and Joint NUT Brent Branch Secretary Jean Roberts told News Line: ‘It’s been another very successful strike and picket. ‘Lots of letters have...
PCS members held a lively protest outside HM Revenue and Customs Whitehall headquarters yesterday opposing the closure of 281 tax advice centres. Chris Baugh, PCS Assistant General Secretary, told News Line: ‘We hope our protest will influence the board meeting today. ‘There is a proposal to close 281 HMRC Enquiry Centres...
RESIDENTS of Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, on Saturday celebrated the death of Israeli former general and prime minister ‘Butcher Sharon’. Sharon is held responsible for the massacre of unarmed Palestinian women, children and old men in the camp in September 1982, when Israeli...
THE Tory Party is in an energy crisis. In 1993 in the person of Michael Heseltine it completely shut down the mining industry putting 100,000 miners out of work, just to get rid of the National Union of Mineworkers, that fought it in a year-long strike to stop all pit...
PROTESTERS from across the UK gathered outside the offices of the production company behind Channel 4’s cynical ‘Benefits Street’ at 3pm yesterday, to protest against the show’s misrepresentation of poverty in modern Britain. The protesters included people from the area of Birmingham where the programme was filmed. They accused Love...
‘KEEPING a child in a cell overnight is not only inappropriate and distressing for the child concerned, but is a breach of their fundamental rights,’ Mark Gettleson, spokesman for the Howard League for Penal Reform, told News Line yesterday. He was commenting on the revelation from a senior police...
‘POLICE are the murderers! No justice, no peace!’ chanted the crowd of workers and youth at a 2,000-strong mass vigil for Mark Duggan outside Tottenham police station, north London on Saturday. There were trade union banners present from the NUT, with one commemorating Blair Peach, and from the RMT. Police had...
TEACHERS will have to be re-licensed every few years or face the sack under a future Labour government. This is the just unveilled position of Labour’s shadow education secretary, Tristram Hunt, that will put enormous pressure and strain onto teachers, and continues the Gove-style attacks on the profession. At...
A COMPLAINT has been launched to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court regarding the responsibility of UK officials for war crimes in Iraq. The complaint deals with ‘The Responsibility of UK Officials for War Crimes Involving Systematic Detainee Abuse in Iraq from 2003-2008.’ Public Interest...
THE AUSTRALIAN Manufacturing Workers’ Union (AMWU) has rallied with other Australian unions to increase worldwide pressure on the South Korean government to cease its brutal attacks on rail workers’ human rights. Major Australian unions pledged solidarity with the Korean Railway Workers Union (KRWU) and the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions...
WASHINGTON has expressed concern about a plan by the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai to release scores of prisoners considered by the US to be dangerous, and currently imprisoned in what was the US’ Afghan version of the Guantanamo Bay concentration camp. The Karzai regime now states that there...
COUNCILS in England have been forced to cut almost £11 billion from their budgets in the first two years of the Tory coalition government, it was revealed yesterday. This is according to data published by the Department for Communities and Local Government on local authority spending. Unison, the union which represents...
YESTERDAY’S closure of ten London fire stations, with the loss of 552 firefighter jobs and the axing of 14 fire engines, shows how little this Tory-led coalition and its London Mayor, Boris Johnson, care about the lives of ordinary people. Despite all the bluster about these cuts having no effect...
‘BY STANDING together to campaign and defeat ultra-Conservative politicians and their corporate-only agenda, Canadians can make things better,’ UFCW National President Paul Meinema said in his New Year address. He continued: ‘The momentum to turn the tide against Boss Harper and other ultra-Conservatives is building. ‘In a recent national survey,...
THE FAMILY of Mark Duggan, who was shot dead by police in August 2011, said yesterday that the family will fight the inquest decision ‘through the courts’. The police killing of Duggan sparked a youth uprising in Tottenham, that quickly spread around London and then nationwide as anger against the...
HOSPITAL workers in Northern Ireland are prepared to take industrial action against hospital closures, Unison said yesterday, after a ‘major incident’ occurred at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast on Wednesday night as a backlog of 42 people waited on trolleys in the A&E. Additional staff had to be called...
AT the end of 2013, an emergency unemployment compensation extension programme that started in 2008 under President George W. Bush expired, meaning 1.3 million jobless workers lost benefits that helped them house and feed their families. President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats have made it clear they want the programme...
COUNCILS all over the UK are poised to make the most savage cuts ever that will wreck and destroy local communities by destroying all of their amenities, returning them to the early 20th century. One of them is the Labour-run Wolverhampton City Council which has said that it will be...
‘POLICE MURDERERS’ was the cry that greeted the Jury’s verdict yesterday afternoon at the conclusion of the inquest into the police killing of Mark Duggan. The Duggan family was extremely angry at the finding as were those listening in the hall to the verdict. Outside the court, the family lawyer said:...
OVER 200 barristers, solicitors, law students, probation officers and trade union supporters demonstrated outside Westminster Magistrates Court in defence of legal aid on Monday morning. They carried placards saying ‘No Legal Aid no Justice’, ‘Be afraid without Legal Aid’, and ‘Long live Legal Aid’. A banner read ‘Save UK Justice.’ There were...
‘WE HAVE consistently called for the entire prison estate to be brought back into the public sector,’ Peter McParlin, National Chairman of the Prison Officers Association, told News Line yesterday. ‘It is morally repugnant to make a profit out of the misery of others, this has been our consistent message. ‘We...
The disarray, confusion and splits within the Tory/LibDem coalition government were brought out sharply over Monday’s announcement by Tory chancellor, George Osborne, that he intends to cut £25 billion from welfare spending if the Tories are elected at the next general election. First out of the traps with condemnation was...
AL-QAEDA-linked militiamen have been driven out of Iraq’s Fallujah and it is now in the hands of local tribesmen, a senior tribal sheikh said on Monday. ‘There is no ISIL in the city,’ Sheikh Ali al-Hammad said, referring to Al-Qaeda-linked group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. ‘They...
ISRAELI settlers on Sunday began levelling a large tract of land in central Hebron in preparation for the construction of a new Jewish settlement outpost in the beleaguered southern West Bank city. Israeli settlers escorted a bulldozer which uprooted fifty-year-old trees in the Tel Rumeida neighbourhood near the city centre,...
IN A speech last November, Cameron declared a permanent ‘austerity war’ against the working class, singling out the unemployed and young people as the main enemy of capitalist recovery. This declaration of war was reinforced in December when the Tory chancellor, George Osborne, announced in parliament that a further £3...
OVER 200 barristers, solicitors, law students, probation officers and trade union supporters yesterday morning demonstrated outside Westminster Magistrates Court in defence of legal aid. Russell Fraser of the Justice Alliance told News Line: ‘We’ve organised this demonstration to coincide with the Day of Action by criminal solicitors and barristers in...
AN INDEPENDENT think tank has warned that when the next flu pandemic hits Britain, because the NHS has lost 10,000 staff, the results would be ‘more deadly’ as the NHS would not cope. The report entitled ‘Getting behind the Curve? Is the new NHS ready for Pandemic Flu?’ is produced...
TENANTS receiving housing benefit have been issued with eviction notices by the largest ‘buy-to-let’ private landlord in the country. Fergus Wilson, who owns 1,000 properties in Kent, has sent out these notices to every benefit claimant whether or not they are in rent arrears and instructed letting agents that he...
‘Save Legal Aid!’ barristers and solicitors are demanding as they take historic strike action today, starting with a 9.30-10.30am demonstration outside Westminster Magistrates Court, 181 Marylebone Road, NW1 in central London. Today’s Day of Action has been called by the Justice Alliance in protest against Justice Secretary Chris Grayling’s attempt...
THE government papers released under the 30-year rule concerning the 1984-85 miners strike confirm that Thatcher and the Tories, despite their considerable preparations over four years, faced defeat on a number of occasions during the strike, particularly when the dockers came out briefly in July 1984 and the NACODS...
FEARFUL Britain was going to run out of food and grind to a halt due to a docks strike at the height of the 1984/85 miners’ strike, then-prime minister Thatcher was secretly preparing to use troops and declare a state of emergency, papers released under the 30-year rule reveal. The...
HOUSING and homeless charity Shelter produced a report yesterday warning that one in eleven families are facing eviction this January. Shelter said: ‘One in eleven people in Britain fear they won’t be able to afford their rent or mortgage at the end of this month. ‘The research, based on a YouGov...
ISRAEL has been organising with the US behind the Palestinians’ backs, over a ‘land swap’ deal, the Israeli media revealed last Wednesday. Israel has asked the United States to ok a land swap deal that would give Palestine a section of land in the Triangle area adjacent to the Green...
THE six-hour strike by firefighters on New Year’s Eve was a demonstration of the solidarity and determination of FBU members across the country to defend and preserve what is the most vital public service. Every day of the week, 52 weeks of the year, firefighters place their lives on the...
RAIL ticket price hikes of up to 5.1% came into force yesterday with the RMT, Unite and campaign groups calling for the re-nationalisation of the railways. A TUC analysis published yesterday has shown that UK commuters spend over three times more of their salary on rail fares than most European...
THE leaders of 10 NHS organisations have called in an open letter for a ‘new page to be turned’ in 2014. Powerful organisations including the BMA, the RCN, the RCM, and Royal College of GPs signed the letter and said that there should be a ‘balance’ between recognising strengths...
ISRAEL killed 27 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank in 2013, making it the deadliest year for Palestinian fatalities since 2008, Israeli rights group B’Tselem has reported. According to data compiled by the group, three times as many Palestinians were killed in the West Bank in 2013 compared to 2012. By...
‘FOOD BANKS, zero hours and pay cuts for the many – tax cuts and pay growth for the few,’ that’s what ‘recovery’ means to most people in Tory-LibDem Britain, TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady commented in her New Year Message. A TUC-commissioned YouGov poll published yesterday shows that just two...
FIREFIGHTERS marched out on a six-hour strike at 6.30pm throughout England and Wales on New Year’s Eve, seeing the New Year in on the picket line, finishing this latest strike in defence of their pensions at half-past midnight. Striking firefighters spoke to News Line around the country and called for...