Monthly Archives: September 2015
CHAIR of the British Medical Association Dr Mark Porter has declared the BMA’s full support for the junior doctors’ decision to ballot for industrial action. The junior doctors are balloting as part of their struggle against the Tory government’s attempts to impose a new contract on them, which cuts their...
‘A NEW, very large, very active council housing building programme is what we will launch,’ the new leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn announced during his inaugural speech to the Party conference in Brighton yesterday. During the speech Corbyn reiterated Labour’s opposition to the Tory Trade Union Bill...
ON Tuesday morning in New York President Putin said that determining the fate of Syria should be in the hands of the Syrians, adding: ‘I have a great respect for my colleagues – for the American and for the French. But they are, as far as I know,...
ANGRY at being snubbed by NHS Employers, over 3,000 junior doctors and medical students held an impromptu rally outside Westminster Central Halls in London on Monday evening. They had been invited to a meeting there to discuss the contract the government intends to impose upon junior doctors. The meeting was...
‘AT THE heart of Jeremy’s campaign on which he has received such a huge mandate, was the rejection of austerity politics’, Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell, said yesterday, referring to Corbyn’s election victory. In his first speech as shadow chancellor, addressing the Labour Party Conference in Brighton he underlined seven...
JOHN McDONNELL the newly appointed Labour shadow chancellor, made his first speech to the Labour Party conference yesterday outlining the ‘new economics’ that he and Jeremy Corbyn intend to fight for. McDonnell is undoubtedly the most ‘left’ of any previous holders of this office in the party and the policies...
ONE-HUNDRED-AND-FIFTY workers and youth attended the West London Council of Action/All Trades Unions Alliance Conference on Sunday, which was called to save Ealing Hospital and defend the NHS. The conference, in the Dominion Centre in Southall, west London, was attended by health workers from Ealing Hospital and other trade union...
JUNIOR doctors across England are to be balloted by the BMA over industrial action in response to the government’s plans to impose a new, vicious, longer hours, wage cutting contract on junior doctors from August 2016. The decision was taken on Saturday at a meeting of the BMA’s junior doctors...
THE decision by the Junior Doctors Committee (JDC) of the BMA to ballot for industrial action is a courageous stand against the government’s imposition of a new contract – as if the Junior Doctors were slave labour! This contract seeks to impose excessive unsocial hours working, to enable ‘seven-day working’,...
BAHRAIN’s ‘widespread and systematic’ abuse of human rights has been condemned by the entire trade union movement in the UK in launching a new campaign against the continued detention and torture of union leaders, students and opposition leaders. The UK trade unions call on the Tory government to investigate the...
MORE than 150 workers and youth attended the conference for strike action to defend Ealing Hospital and the NHS, in Southall yesterday. Moving the resolution, Bill Rogers chair of Chingford Aslef branch, said: ‘This conference expresses its great concern at the closure of the Maternity Department at Ealing Hospital and...
THE conference called tomorrow by the West London Council of Action and the All Trades Unions Alliance has come at a critical time. This week it has been announced that the NHS hospital Addenbrooke’s, renowned throughout the world for its medical excellence, has been placed in special measures due entirely...
HOMELESS youth are being given bus tickets and told to sleep on the back of night buses because all the hostels are full. The New Horizon Day Centre, which seeks to provide accommodation for homeless young people, has revealed its staff are regularly forced to give homeless youth bus tickets....
IN just three days last week, 1,644 doctors applied to work abroad, the General Medical Council confirmed yesterday. The surge in applications began last week after the Department of Health said it would impose a new contract on England’s 53,000 junior doctors. Changes to the contracts include a 40% cut...
HEALTH workers across Europe are fighting to defend their jobs, conditions of employment and the services they provide to millions of workers and their families, all coming under vicious attack from bankrupt capitalist governments. Thousands of doctors and nurses took to the streets of Berlin and other German cities on...
A GREEN MP, Caroline Lucas, and a peer, Baroness Jones, are challenging Tory PM Cameron over his policy of ‘targeted killings’ of UK citizens abroad. The High Court action follows Cameron’s announcement earlier this month that two British nationals were killed by a UK drone in Raqqah, Syria....
PALESTINIAN President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday called for the protection of Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and ensuring Palestinians’ freedom of worship in Jerusalem in line with the order that existed before the Israeli occupation of 1967. Abbas was taking part in the reopening of Moscow’s Central Mosque on Wednesday, alongside Russian...
THE housing crisis in the UK has reached explosion point. There is no new council housing being built, rents are being driven sky-high, while housing benefits are being slashed, and rogue landlords, latter-day Rachmans, are appearing onto the scene once again to make tenants’ lives a misery until they...
TORY PM Cameron yesterday called on European leaders to deport more refugees, describing them as ‘economic migrants’ who, he claimed, don’t have a genuine claim to asylum. Hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing bombings and terrorism in the Middle East and Africa have entered Europe in recent weeks. Cameron held...
THE National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) has served notice on behalf of a growing number of unions and their coalition to the National Economic Labour and Development Council (NEDLAC) of its plan to proceed with the union’s intention to embark on protest action on...
THE European Union was yesterday reeling, split and divided over the issue of taking quotas of refugees from the masses flooding into Europe. These masses are determined to settle in Europe and their determination is the product of four major imperialist wars. Prime Minister David Cameron has immediately recognised them...
THE prestigious and world famous NHS Addenbrooke’s Hospital has been placed into special measures. UNISON General Secretary Dave Prentis commented yesterday: ‘This is a shocking indictment of the government’s cavalier attitude towards the NHS, that a hospital like Addenbrooke’s – with its world class reputation – should find itself in...
SCHOOLS were shut once again on Monday morning for 1,500 students in Prospect Heights School District 23, in Chicago, Illinois. The increasingly combative teachers strike, the first in the northwest suburban district’s 100-year history, was called on September 16, after the school board and Prospect Heights Education Association failed...
LONDON Underground control staff working on the Waterloo and City line are on strike for three days, following a 100% ‘YES’ vote, for strike action, RMT announced yesterday. The three-day strike represents an escalation in a long running battle between control staff and London Underground as the management attempts to...
GP PRACTICES are facing a doubling of management charges, medical magazine Pulse reported yesterday. Those practices that cannot afford to pay will be subject to debt collectors, and, ultimately face closure. The charges are applied by NHS Property Services and have amounted in some cases to a staggering £70,000. Bedfordshire and...
SUNDAY’S general election in Greece saw the working class voting for Syriza, because of the lack of any revolutionary alternative, to keep the New Democracy out, while masses of youth did not vote at all, disgusted with Syriza’s betrayal of the huge 62% ‘No’ Austerity vote in the July...
HUNGER striking Palestinian prisoners have rejected an Israeli proposal to ‘free’ them, on condition that they are expelled, the Palestinian Detainees and Ex-Detainees Committee said yesterday. The committee explained that the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) put forwards the ‘offer’ as part of its efforts to force them to end...
SAUDI Arabia will work together with Russia to find a solution for the crisis in Syria and settle the issue of Syrian refugees, a top Saudi diplomat says. Saudi Deputy Foreign Minister Turki bin Mohammed bin Saud Al Kabeer Al Saud made the remarks in a Friday interview with Russia’s...
THE US and UK are stuck deep into the Syrian quagmire – a quagmire of their own making. They have achieved a situation where millions of refugees are flooding westwards bringing the EU to near breaking point; with IS getting stronger not weaker in the vacuum that has been created....
ISRAELI warplanes early Saturday carried out several air strikes targeting different locations in the Gaza Strip, injuring Palestinians and causing destruction to Palestinian properties. A WAFA correspondent reported that F16 Israeli warplanes fired at least one missile targeting the transmission tower of the civil administration’s building, east of Jabalia Refugee...
‘WE’VE been screwed for too long. It’s time to stand up for ourselves and call for the BMA to support industrial action.’ This defiant statement from the junior doctors came after over 29,000 people signed a petition on Change.org UK, calling on the BMA to support industrial action against the...
ON Thursday evening, the US Federal Reserve policy committee decided yet again that it did not dare to raise interest rates by a fraction of one per cent for fear of bringing down the entire world capitalist economy. For nearly a year now the Fed and its head, Janet Yellen,...
ON THURSDAY, members of Congress, led by Senator Patty Murray (Democrat-Washington) and Representative Bobby Scott (Democrat-Virginia), proposed the Workplace Action for a Growing Economy (WAGE) Act. The legislation is designed to strengthen protections for working people who join together to make positive change at work and make sure corporations that...
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said he is ‘shocked’ after Hungarian police fired tear gas and water cannon to force refugees – men, women, children and babies – back from its border. Ban said such treatment of asylum seekers was ‘unacceptable’. Hundreds of refugees were involved in clashes at...
THE TUC Congress in Brighton ended on Wednesday with a call on the TUC General Council to campaign for a state pension above the official poverty level and for universal access to a decent occupational pension for all workers. Delegates voted unanimously for Composite Motion 07 Pensions. Moving the motion...
FOR the first time ever, the serving director of MI5, Andrew Parker, yesterday gave a live BBC interview in a bid to push MPs into sanctioning draconian surveillance powers. These are contained in the Investigatory Powers Bill, which rights groups and trade unions have dubbed a ‘snoopers’ charter’, that...
JUNIOR DOCTORS are to be turned into slaves by Health Secretary Hunt who is carrying his threat out to impose a contract on them that will require them to work up to 90 hours a week! They will be forced to work under the imposed conditions from August 2016, the...
DELEGATES at the TUC conference in Brighton yesterday voted unanimously for Composite Motion 16, Blacklisting and Undercover Surveillance of Trade Unionists. The motion calls on the TUC General Council to campaign for a ‘full independent public inquiry into blacklisting’ and to ‘ensure that the inquiry being led by Lord Justice...
HEALTH Secretary Hunt has decided that Junior Doctors are to have a new contract imposed on them from August next year. The imposition follows on from a final decision by members of the British Medical Association’s Junior Doctors committee not to re-enter contract negotiations with NHS Employers. However, the BMA...
TUC delegates at their annual Congress in Brighton on Tuesday voted unanimously to defend public services and pay. Composite Motion 06 Campaigning for public services and against the pay cap was moved by Unison General Secretary Dave Prentis. He said: ‘I’m representing Unison’s 1.3m members who are keeping our public...
THE TUC Congress in Brighton on Monday passed motions calling for the public ownership of transport services, action on the housing crisis and to back a campaign for youth in the fast food industry. It also backed an emergency motion calling for the release of jailed trade unionists in...
DELEGATES at the Trade Union Congress in Brighton yesterday unanimously voted for motion 18 to defend the right to strike and political protest, and voted overwhelmingly for motion 64 on Anti-Trade Union Laws. It soon became clear that the TUC is not proposing a general strike to stop the Bill...