Monthly Archives: November 2015
THE last few days has seen an acceleration in terrorist activity of all types. The first terrorist attack was last Thursday when the US announced that it had executed a British citizen in Syria, with the support of the British PM Cameron, who said that the state organised murder...
THE economy of the Eurozone countries is sinking even deeper into crisis making a mockery of all the talk about an economic ‘recovery’. This was revealed yesterday in the release of statistics by the official statistical office of the EU showing that the gross domestic product (GDP) across the whole...
VERMONT Senator Bernie Sanders secured the 200,000-member American Postal Workers Union endorsement to be the Democratic Party presidential candidate on Thursday. The union’s decision gives Sanders a big boost heading into the second Democratic debate in Iowa on Saturday and comes as the Vermont senator has sought to halt a...
AS junior doctors are preparing for strike action for three days next month, there is mounting fury at the Tory government’s attacks on the NHS. These attacks by the government and its attempt to force a new working contract on young doctors, greatly endangering patient care, is driving many...
CUTS to adult mental health services in England are damaging the quality of care given to patients, a report by the King’s Fund said yesterday. The King’s Fund think tank added that its researchers were convinced that this damage was linked to the use of unproven, cheaper services in...
PLANS reported yesterday morning to close all but a handful of HM Revenue and Customs’ (HMRC’s) 160 remaining UK offices would be ‘devastating’ and must be reviewed by MPs, the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union says. The department had said it would make an announcement to staff at lunchtime...
MORE than 1,000 low-wage workers from the fast food, retail, healthcare and delivery industries marched to McDonald’s at 82 Court Street in Downtown Brooklyn before dawn on Tuesday morning. Chanting in the spitting rain for a $15 minimum wage and union representation, they insisted they were fighting not just for...
THE BMA has today confirmed the dates and details of possible industrial action by junior doctors, following a decision by BMA Council, the body which represents doctors from across the profession. Junior doctors in England are currently being balloted for industrial action after the government’s threat to impose a new...
YESTERDAY morning, the TUC commented on the vote in the House of Commons on the third reading of the Trade Union Bill, which is now going to the House of Lords. There was no TUC-organised demonstration outside the House of Commons at the decisive third reading. The TUC general council...
‘THIS anti-union legislation has to be answered by unified, generalised strike action from the entire trade union movement.’ Bakers Union leader Ronnie Draper was responding to the Third Reading of the Trade Union Bill 2015-16 which was passed in the House of Commons on Tuesday evening by 305 votes...
CAMERON yesterday launched his campaign for a ‘Yes’ vote in an EU referendum – which has been pencilled in for June 2016 – telling his audience: ‘When you look at the challenges facing European leaders today, the changes that Britain is seeking do not fall in the box marked...
‘THIS is a national one-day pay strike. We haven’t had a pay rise for six years – which represents a 17 per cent pay cut,’ UCU Islington College committee member Richard Warren told News Line yesterday. Every college in the country was shut down yesterday as the lecturers engaged in...
UNIVERSITY and College Union (UCU) members were taking strike action against massive Tory attacks on their pay yesterday. Pickets declared themselves angry that the employers’ representatives, the Association of Colleges, have recommended a pay freeze, despite staff suffering a real-terms pay cut of 17.1 per cent in the last five...
‘THE hardworking families of the AFL-CIO will join with our allies to defeat the TPP,’ says Trumka. After the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was released, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka made the following statement: ‘After six long years, the secrecy is over. The public finally has a chance to scrutinise...
‘WE HAVE to take strike action where and when we can and as much as we can,’ Sharon Hutchinson, northwest regional organiser and equalities officer for Unite, told News Line yesterday. She was responding to Tory Chancellor Osborne’s announcement of 30% cuts to government departments. Four government departments have confirmed...
YESTERDAY the Tory chancellor, George Osborne, proudly announced that four government departments have agreed to make cuts in their budgets of 8% a year for the next four years –just over 30% of cuts that Osborne is insisting must come off all government expenditure. The four departments that have fallen...
THE Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) said on Thursday it had successfully secured the reinstatement of 579 of its members dismissed in 2013 for refusing to work on a Saturday. The Labour Court last Tuesday ruling in favour of 579 workers at AngloGold Ashanti’s Vaal Reef Shaft was...
THE meeting of the Great Yarmouth and Waveney Clinical Commissioning Group (Health East) last Friday was met by angry protesters organised by Lowestoft Against the Cuts as they met to confirm that two community hospitals were to be closed. The hospitals are to be replaced by an ‘out of hospital...
YESTERDAY saw General Sir Nicholas Houghton, the Chief of the Defence Staff openly entering politics and fighting for Tory Party policy, telling SKY TV that the UK is ‘letting down’ its allies because its parliament has refused to authorise air strikes on Syria. Generally speaking, after the role that...
LABOUR leader Jeremy Corbyn yesterday called for disciplinary action to be taken against Britain’s top military commander, General Sir Nicholas Houghton, over political interference. Corbyn said: ‘It is a matter of serious concern that the Chief of the Defence Staff has today intervened directly in issues of political dispute. ‘It...
WORKERS for Carillion in Qatar sleep ten to a room in lodging reminiscent of tenement slums in Victorian London and nothing has changed despite claims to the contrary, says a GMB officer who visited the labour camp this week. GMB is calling on UK construction companies like Carillion operating in...
THE tragic loss of the Russian airliner flying out of the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh killing 224 people, is being used by the Tories as a weapon in its determined push to send British planes to bomb Syria and join US imperialism’s drive to remove the government of...
ATI management recently mailed a letter to the homes of all of locked-out Steelworkers who are currently covered under the company’s programme of insurance benefits stating that they will terminate our health insurance coverage effective November 30, 2015. The USW said it is ‘disappointed that ATI is choosing to further...
THE government’s new national minimum wage (NMW) rates risk leaving young people even further behind, the TUC warned yesterday. The new rates only apply to workers over 25, and the TUC is calling for that rate to be extended to all workers aged 21 and above. Rates for workers under...
THE Israeli terror against the people of Occupied Palestine is being stepped up remorselessly. The Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations (UN), Riyad Mansour says the Tel Aviv regime is now harvesting the organs of Palestinians killed in clashes with Israeli forces in the occupied territories. Riyad Mansour said in a...
‘EVERYONE, all of the country, must get organised to take rent strike action, we have shown that rent strikes work,’ Angus O’Brien, the student Halls rep for UCL, said on Wednesday. He was speaking on the demonstration of over 10,000 students, who were marching through central London on Wednesday to...
THE Cameron government is being driven forward by the intensifying crisis of the capitalist system to have it out with the working class and the majority of the middle class and their trade unions, and to seek to drive both back to some new dark ages. Yesterday, the would-be great...
‘STUDENTS and lecturers must go out on strike, in fact, I am for an all-out strike, to ensure education is free,’ said Dalia Giuaballa, a UEL (University of East London) student on the 5,000-strong march to end all university fees and bring back student grants yesterday. Students from universities all...
JUNIOR doctors told News Line yesterday that they were definitely voting for strike action and are very confident of winning the ballot which begins today. Junior doctor Roshana Mehdian said: ‘I call on colleagues to turn out and vote. Just read what Jeremy Hunt said and they will see for...
ISRAELI forces on Tuesday morning stormed the offices of a Palestinian radio station in Hebron, where they destroyed equipment and ordered the station’s closure, in the latest violation of press freedoms in the occupied Palestinian territory. Manbar al-Hurriyya (Freedom Tribune) radio station, which is reportedly affiliated with Fatah, wrote on...
‘WE recommend that the government does not bring to the House a motion seeking the extension of British military action to Syria,’ the Foreign Affairs Committee told Tory PM Cameron yesterday, throwing his war plans into disarray. It also raised concerns about the legal basis for any UK action. In...
THE Government has received another slap in the face for its plan to cement relations with the US by pushing a resolution through the House of Commons to commit British forces to bombing Syria and overthrowing President Assad, a task which it says is essential if ISIL is...
‘I’M CALLING for a general strike to smash this bill,’ Bakers Union leader Ian Hodson told News Line on Monday afternoon in Westminster, where more than 5,000 trade unionists were holding a rally and lobby of parliament against the Tory government’s Trade Union Bill. Hodson, National President of the BFAWU...
VOLUNTEERS from Calais Action yesterday loaded a truck to take aid for refugees to the Greek island of Samos. Calais Action founder Libby Freeman told News Line before the truck arrived: ‘We have a lorry coming down to take 20 pallets to Samos. There are tents, toiletries, nappies and...
YESTERDAY thousands of trade union members attended a rally and mass lobby of parliament called by the TUC in an attempt to – in the words of a TUC statement on their website – ‘convince Conservative MPs to vote against the bill’. The bill is the Tory Trade Union Bill...
A PALESTINIAN was shot and left to bleed to death by the Israeli army at Beit Anoun junction to the east of Hebron on Sunday, according to witnesses. Following the funeral procession of Ra’ed Jaradat, 22, and Mahmoud Ghnemat, 20, both shot dead by the Israeli army last week, Palestinians...
‘A GENERAL strike is the only way to defeat the Tory Trade Union Bill,’ Colin Knowles, Unison conveyor said yesterday. He spoke to News Line on a more than five thousand-strong demonstration made up of trade unionists from all over the country who descended on Parliament yesterday. The demonstration was...
THE Scottish Labour Party conference yesterday voted overwhelmingly against the renewal of the UK’s Trident nuclear missile system. After a heated debate, delegates voted by 70%-30% for a motion supported by UK leader Jeremy Corbyn on the last day of the Scottish party’s conference in Perth. Labour as a whole...
‘SHUT down Guantánamo Bay!’ demanded human rights organisations on the day that Shaker Aamer was finally freed. After 13 years of languishing in Guantánamo Bay concentration camp, at 12.58pm on Friday October 30th a plane with Shaker Aamer on board touched down at Biggin Hill Air field in Kent. He was...
SCOTTISH Labour yesterday struck a blow at the war plans of British imperialism when its Perth conference decided to call for the Trident nuclear missile system to be scrapped by a massive 70%-30% vote, and for the tens of billions that will be saved to be spent on developing...