Monthly Archives: July 2015
BRITAIN will not become a ‘safe haven’ for migrants, David Cameron warned yesterday, referring to the groups of migrants in Calais as ‘swarms’. Correctly the Refugee Council responded by attacking Cameron’s use of the word ‘swarm’ as ‘irresponsible, dehumanising language’ – used to make declaring them public...
NEW evidence showing that Israeli forces carried out war crimes in retaliation for the capture of an Israeli soldier was released on Wednesday in a joint report by Amnesty International and Forensic Architecture. The evidence, which includes detailed analysis of vast quantities of multimedia materials, suggests that the systematic and...
UNISON general secretary Dave Prentis has called on the labour movement to organise a ‘popular uprising’ against the Trade Union Bill. He delivered his call to arms in a speech at a public meeting on Wednesday night, organised by the Institute for Employment Rights. Introducing himself as ‘speaking on behalf of...
THE AFL-CIO US trade union federation stated yesterday that the Obama administration has made the deplorable decision to upgrade Malaysia – a major player in the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Free Trade Agreement – on its annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report. This clearly political decision undermines the credibility...
THE Greek Industry, Environment and Industry Minister Panos Skourletis stated on Tuesday that a general election could be called this autumn once the new austerity agreement, the third bail-out, between the Greek government and the EC-IMF-ECB troika has been signed. The Greek Prime Minister and SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras met...
The Court of Appeal has upheld a ruling declaring the ‘Detained Fast Track’ system for asylum seekers to be unlawful and ‘potentially disastrous’. In June, the High Court found that detaining asylum seekers and speeding through their appeals and expulsion was ‘wrong’. That decision has now been backed by...
‘THERE is strong evidence that Israeli forces committed war crimes in their relentless and massive bombardment of residential areas of Rafah in order to foil the capture of Lt Hadar Goldin, displaying a shocking disregard for civilian lives,’ said Amnesty director Philip Luther yesterday. Amnesty says that at least 135...
THE Public inquiry launched yesterday into the Police Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) ‘will expose both creditable and discreditable conduct, practice and management’, Justice Pitchford claimed in his opening remarks. The scope of the inquiry into the SDS, a police spy organisation which secretly infiltrated political groups, organisations and parties for...
DAMASCUS – President Bashar al-Assad said on Monday that any political idea for resolving the crisis in Syria that isn’t based on eliminating terrorism is a meaningless idea that has no chance of seeing the light; therefore the priority is eliminating terrorism wherever it is found in Syria. In a...
NATO held an emergency meeting in Brussels yesterday to support Turkey’s military campaign, nominally against the IS, but in fact against the Kurds and against Syria’s President Assad. Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced that the 28-member North Atlantic Council had gathered under Article 4 of the NATO provisions. Article 4 reads:...
‘THOSE who cannot afford to pay for a solicitor, and those who are denied legal aid, are suffering at the hands of the government’, Gemma Blythe from Young Legal Aid Lawyers warned yesterday. She was speaking as barristers began their strike in solidarity with criminal defence solicitors, who face cuts...
IN THE wake of the COSATU special congress, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) has declared: ‘The time has arrived to start with the building blocks of forming a new independent, democratic, worker controlled, militant, anti-imperialist trade union federation.’ NUMSA held its National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting,...
LAST week the right-wing of the Labour Party showed their desperation over the snowballing support for the Jeremy Corbyn leadership campaign by trotting out the discredited and reviled figure of Tony Blair to boost their ‘anyone but Corbyn’ campaign. Over the weekend this desperation plumbed new depths with ‘senior Labour...
A REPORT published in error on National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) website and quickly taken down, has revealed a secret plan for the deployment of 5,000 armed troops on the streets of the UK. The military contingency plan, codenamed Operation Temperer, is revealed in the minutes of a NPCC meeting...
‘THE truce has no meaning any more after these intense air strikes by the occupant Turkish army,’ the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) said on Saturday. This came after Turkish warplanes bombed Islamic State (IS) positions in Syria and Kurdish PKK militants in northern Iraq. The overnight air strikes in northern...
THE capitalist press over the weekend was full of ‘revelations’ concerning ‘Operation Temperer’ a plan drawn up by police chiefs to put Britain under Martial Law, with 5,000 armed troops ready and trained to support the police in massive operations against terrorists, or a terror attack that the...
PATIENTS and doctors still need answers on seven-day hospital services, Dr Mark Porter, the chairman of the British Medical Association (BMA), said yesterday. This follows the government’s response to a petition calling on Parliament to debate a vote of no confidence in health secretary Hunt. It responded that: ‘The government...
US president Barak Obama has issued his sternest warning yet to the Tory government of the dangers of Britain leaving the European Union. In an interview with the BBC, Obama started by stroking the inflated egos of the British bourgeoisie with sanctimonious words about the special relationship that both Tory...
UNISON members at London Metropolitan University took strike action yesterday in the latest round of their struggle against job cuts, as the employer included the branch secretary on the list of three people it wants to make redundant. And as the staff – including administrators, IT and media...
AT 4.30 am on Thursday the Greek Vouli (parliament) approved by 230 to 63 votes, with seven deputies abstaining or absent, a government austerity Bill dictated by the European Commission. The Bill would now allow the banks with express procedures to confiscate, through the courts, homes and businesses that...
RAIL unions ASLEF and RMT yesterday accused London Underground of putting safety at risk in its determination to push through changes in working practices, staff and ticket office cuts. Drivers’ union ASLEF said: ‘London Underground has threatened to take legal action against ASLEF after we gave them notice that...
‘THE UK government crackdown on trade union rights is reminiscent of former Chilean dictator Augustus Pinochet and an attack on democracy itself,’ UNI Global Union General Secretary Philip Jennings has said. ‘We have a new global paradox,’ he continued. ‘Across the world, the right to organise, the right to negotiate...
DEATHS in police custody are the ‘highest for five years’, the Independent Police Complaints Commission’s annual report on deaths during or following police contact states. There were 17 deaths in or following police custody in 2014-15, the highest number for five years, the IPCC says. The figure of 17 is...
BRITISH pilots have been flying drones from a US base responsible for covert strikes in Yemen and Pakistan, considered by many to violate international law, new documents have revealed. A ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ (MOU) between the UK and US governments, obtained under Freedom of Information by legal charity Reprieve, shows...
EAST London GPs have won an ‘extraordinary victory’, securing a write-off of hundreds of thousands of pounds of Tory cuts. Seventeen GP surgeries in east London had been at risk of closure from ‘nightmare’ cuts Save Our Surgeries campaigner Virginia Patania, a CCG (Clinical Commissioning Group) board member and managing partner...
THE anti-Corbyn candidates must be pretty desperate if they are prepared to allow ex-Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair to appear and give a speech supporting any candidate for the Labour leadership other than left-winger Jeremy Corbyn. Blair is the man who was determined to go to war with Iraq alongside...
ONE YEAR since unarmed American black man Eric Garner died at the hands of the police, hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets of New York last Saturday to demand justice. The threat of rain didn’t dampen the passion for justice at the Brooklyn rally, the event drew hundreds, including...
ACTING Labour Party leader Harriet Harman yesterday betrayed working people when she led over 100 Labour MPs in abstaining over the Welfare Bill which aims to slash welfare spending by £12bn. 48 Labour MPs voted against, along with the Scottish nationalists, the Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru and the Greens, resulting...
ONE hundred and fifty workers die each day in the United States as a result of injuries at work or occupational diseases. The American Federation of Labour and Congress of Industrial Organisations (AFL-CIO), the largest trade union federation in the US, makes this observation in the latest edition of Death...
A PETITION to remove Tory Health Secretary Hunt from his post is already heading towards the 100,000 mark. Some 80,000 people have signed a petition calling for a vote of no confidence in health secretary Jeremy Hunt, less than 24 hours after being launched. A separate petition launched via Change.org on...
THE AFTERMATH of the COSATU special national conference, held in Johannesburg on the 13th and 14th of July, has split the labour movement in South Africa. Expelled COSATU leader Zwelinzima Vavi made his analysis of the SNC in his speech at the opening of the National Union of Metalworkers of...
‘ELEVEN years of solitary confinement and isolation in ten different prisons has been an experience too profound to sum up in a few words here and now,’ Babar Ahmad said on Sunday. In his first statement following his release from his 12-year prison sentence in America last week, British citizen...
TORY Prime Minister Cameron yesterday stepped up his war against ‘extremism in all its forms’ both ‘violent and non-violent’, announcing measures to shut down organisations, facilities and even entire TV stations that do not share his system of ‘British values’. Speaking from a school in Birmingham he said: ‘Our values...
DAVID Cameron’s speech outlining his ‘five-year plan to fight extremism’ was in reality an outline of the Tory government’s war plans for both the working class at home and regime change in the Middle East. This keynote speech came hard on the heels of Cameron’s pledge to US imperialism, made...
THE Greek government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is presenting to the Vouli (Greek parliament) another austerity measures Bill. The vote is to be taken this Wednesday. The Bill almost doubles the farmers’ annual tax rate (from 13 to 23 per cent) and obliterates the cheap petrol rate for tractors....
‘PUBLIC opinion and anti-war mobilisation stopped Cameron’s last push to war on Syria and we need to stop the Tories again,’ a Stop the War Coalition spokesman told News Line yesterday. He was responding to Cameron’s interview with US TV network NBC. Cameron said Britain is committed to working with...
ISRAELI forces early on Friday detained three Palestinians, including a minor, from multiple West Bank districts, said security sources. Israeli forces raided Rummana, a village to the west of Jenin, where they proceeded to detain a Palestinian after breaking and wreaking havoc in his family’s house, sparking clashes...
TORY Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, announced on June 2nd that the NHS must ‘stop making excuses’ and deliver ‘its side of the bargain’ going on to proclaim that the ‘time for a debate’ about NHS funding was over. The reason for his desperate demand that all discussion of NHS finances...
THE ‘sovereign will’ of parliament was shown to be a complete fiction with the exposure of the participation of British pilots in bombing raids conducted in Syria. A Freedom of Information request submitted by the human rights group, Reprieve, reveals that Tory ministers, the Ministry of Defence and the military...
THE Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) is a ‘ticking bomb’ waiting to explode, National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) deputy general secretary Karl Cloete has warned. He was speaking last Wednesday following the COSATU special national congress last Monday and Tuesday that confirmed the expulsion of...
BRITISH personnel have already conducted air strikes in Syria, despite the government’s assurance that there would be a vote in Parliament before any such action took place, human rights organisation Reprieve revealed yesterday. Labour said it will ask the Ministry of Defence to make a statement in the House of...
THE publication of the newly proposed Tory strike-ban laws have brought a response from all trade unions. Some union leaders call for action but the leaders of the major trade unions are keeping quiet about what has to be done. Commenting on the Bill, Jon Skewes Director for Policy, Employment...
FIRST they came for the working poor and the youth with their massive and continuing austerity cuts; then they came for the trade unions with their programme calculated to make legal strike actions impossible, that would see principled trade unionists put behind bars; and now they have come for...
IN THE early hours of Thursday the Vouli (Greek parliament) voted by 229 to 64 with six abstentions on the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government’s Bill of new austerity measures as dictated by the EC-IMF-ECB troika. Outside the Vouli the armed riot police viciously attacked with noise and tear-gas grenades the 15,000...