Monthly Archives: March 2016
THE decision by the bosses to sell off Tata Steel is one that will lead not just to poverty for 19,000 workers and their families at its 14 sites. It will establish that Britain is to be deindustrialised and its working class and middle class driven backwards into...
‘BRITAIN will be judged by history for its failure to support the Palestinian people,’ Palestinian Ambassador to the UK, Manuel Hassassian, said yesterday. ‘For how long will the UK Government continue to exonerate itself from its political and moral responsibilities towards the Palestinians by using a language couched in ambiguity...
TATA Steel announced yesterday that it is getting out of Britain at once, threatening the jobs of 19,000 steelworkers in Port Talbot, Rotherham, Corby, Shotton and elsewhere along with many thousands more in servicing industries. Tata Steel said it would not give an ‘open ended’ commitment to keep plants...
SECRETARY General of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), Saeb Erekat, has requested the United Nations initiates an official investigation into Israeli extrajudicial killings of Palestinians. This followed a meeting with the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nickolay Mladenov, in the West Bank city of Jericho on...
THE Academy of Medical Royal Colleges yesterday issued a statement saying: ‘This is a time of unprecedented crisis for the NHS. With this in mind and in the spirit of placing patient welfare first and foremost we are writing in response to the escalation of the junior doctors’ dispute...
THE new Tory Housing and Planning Bill will ‘kill social housing’ a leading West Midlands councillor Frank Allen warned yesterday. All over the country council housing is being flogged off through the Tory ‘Right-to-Buy’ scheme, forcing desperate families with nowhere to live to either rent privately, live in a hostel...
ISRAELI forces yesterday made preparations for the punitive demolition of the family houses of three Palestinians suspected of carrying out a fatal attack outside Damascus Gate entrance to Jerusalem’s Old City in early February, families said. Israeli forces stormed and took measurements of the family houses of Ahmad Zakarneh, Muhammad...
THE National Union of Teachers (NUT) annual conference in Brighton yesterday voted unanimously for the scrapping of the Tory ‘Prevent Strategy’. Delegates condemned the government’s ‘anti-extremism’ policy, saying it creates ‘suspicion and confusion’, stops teachers discussing ‘challenging ideas’ with pupils and encourages a ‘climate of over-reaction’ in which pupils are...
THE bourgeois media has been awash this weekend with coverage of the centenary celebrations of the 1916 Easter Uprising in Dublin, with reports on the re-enactments of events 100 years ago and of wreath-laying ceremonies commemorating ‘the courage and ideals’ of the 15 revolutionary leaders who were executed. What was...
TEACHERS have voted to ballot for a one-day strike as part of a campaign against Tory plans to force every school in England to become an academy. National Union of Teachers leaders and delegates at the annual NUT conference in Brighton on Saturday stressed that there is no evidence to...
This Easter is the centenary of the Easter Rising in Dublin of 1916.. In Britain’s first, and indeed its last, imperialist dominion the flag of nationalist insurgency was raised and heroically fought for five days in that April week, followed by the bloody retribution of British imperialism. The background to the...
THE agreement between the EU and Turkey on dealing with the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing imperialist-inspired wars in the Middle East has quickly revealed itself to be nothing less than a blueprint for concentration camps in Greece and the forcible ‘repatriation’ of refugees back to the killing...
REFUGEES staged protests shouting ‘freedom’, in English, last Wednesday and Thursday, at the main gate of the Moria village ‘Detention Centre,’ that is, concentration camp, on the island of Lesbos. Greek riot police prevented them from leaving the camp. Outside of the Moria camp’s main gate villagers and aid volunteers...
VIDEO footage has emerged showing a Palestinian being shot in the head by an Israeli soldier at point-blank range despite lying motionless and severely injured after being shot to the ground. A UN official yesterday condemned in the strongest terms the brutal ‘extrajudicial execution’ of the wounded Palestinian by an...
‘THE Charlie Chaplin Children’s Ward must not close!’ Jaswinder Pannu exclaimed yesterday morning. She spoke to News Line during the 50-strong mass picket of Ealing Hospital, where residents, local workers and supporters shouted: ‘Hands off Charlie Chaplin Ward! Save Ealing Hospital!’ to the rhythm of a traditional Indian Dhol drum. Charlie...
370,000 council and housing association homes will be sold off in England by 2020, the head of the Chartered Institute of Housing has warned. Terrie Alafat blamed the government’s Housing Bill which was focused on home ownership. Alafat said there ‘has been a huge decrease over a period of time...
YESTERDAY the BMA junior doctors’ leader Dr Johann Malawana said, referring to the forthcoming strike actions: ‘No junior doctor wants to take this action, but the government has left us with no choice.’ He was referring to the full withdrawal of labour that is due to take place between 8am...
OVER 5,000 angry teachers marched in London on Wednesday night against the government’s plan to force state schools to become academies. Teachers chanted ‘Nicky Morgan on your bike. What we need is a teachers’ strike!’ and ‘Doctors and teachers unite and strike!’ Teachers assembling for the march outside Westminster Cathedral...
The BMA yesterday confirmed an escalation of the junior doctors industrial action scheduled for April. This follows the continued refusal by the government to step back from its decision to impose a new contract on junior doctors from August this year and resolve the dispute by re-entering talks. The industrial action...
‘MARCH 21 marks the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, a day to reflect on racism in our communities and redouble our efforts to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination,’ said the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) on Monday. ‘Although the Syrian refugee crisis had been building since 2011...
THE Fars news agency has reported that ‘At approximately 11:45pm (Damascus Time) on Tuesday night, the Syrian Army’s “Tiger Forces”, backed by Hezbollah, the Desert Hawks Brigade, Iraqi militia forces of Liwa Imam Ali, and the Syrian Marines, imposed full control over the Palmyra (Tadmur) Triangle after advancing Eastward...
MANY people were killed or seriously injured in terrorist attacks at Brussels international airport and a city metro station on Tuesday morning. Two explosions hit Zaventem airport at about 07:00 GMT, and another struck Maelbeek metro station an hour later. Brussels transport officials say 15 died at Maelbeek and the...
A STRIKE wave is sweeping Australia as Liberal PM Malcolm Turnbull declares war on the unions and threatens to dissolve both houses of parliament and call early elections if the Senate fails to pass two anti-union bills. Turnbull is demanding the passing of the bills attacking the construction unions, claiming...
‘LET me say to him (Tory chancellor Osborne) I certainly think for the sake of this country that it is time for him to go,’ shadow chancellor John McDonnell said yesterday in Parliament. McDonnell called for Osborne’s resignation during a heated debate after he was granted an urgent question regarding...
PRESIDENT Bashar al-Assad said on Saturday the victory of the Syrian people and their allies in the war against terrorism would contribute to establishing a more balanced and just world. ‘Such a world would stand up to the attempts of the imperialist West and its agents in the region...
TORY Chancellor Osborne refused to appear in parliament yesterday to answer an urgent question on the crisis surrounding last Wednesday’s budget, which cut disabled people’s money to pay for tax cuts for the rich. Ducking his responsibilities, Osborne sent David Gauke, financial secretary to the Treasury, to face the music...
LAST Wednesday Chancellor Osborne, with all the arrogance of a Tory millionaire born to rule, stood up in parliament and announced that he was pushing ahead with cuts calculated to save £4.4 billion through disability benefit cuts in order to pay for tax cuts for the well-off and rich. Yesterday...
AS MANY as 200 cleaners and domestic workers at four south London hospitals took strike action yesterday demanding their wages are increased to £10 an hour. The South London and Maudsley Hospital Trust outsourced the cleaners and domestic work to Aramark, who only pay their workforce just over £7 an...
‘OPEN the doors, let them in!’ shouted trade unionists and youth and their families taking part in Saturday’s 8,000-strong Refugees Welcome, Anti-Racism national demonstration in central London. There were banners from Unison, Unite, NUT, PCS unions as well as anti-racism groups. News Line spoke to several participants before they set off...
THE Tory government risks dividing society, Iain Duncan Smith warned yesterday in his first interview since resigning as Work and Pensions Secretary. He attacked the ‘desperate search for savings’ focused on benefit payments to people who ‘don’t vote for us’. And he told Andrew Marr his ‘painful’ decision to resign...
IT is an expression of the depth of the crisis of British capitalism, that Duncan Smith, the ex-Tory leader, the would-be Puritan workhouse master – whose mission is to discipline the working class, the youth and the disabled into ‘becoming one nation’ – who will always...
TORY PM Cameron has been accused of ‘gun boat diplomacy,’ after the announcement that Royal Navy vessels will be deployed this summer to turn refugees back to Libya and then destroy their boats. UK officials confirmed that people-smuggling boats will be turned back to the Libyan shore for ‘destruction’. They...
‘THE government’s priorities are simply wrong. They are wrong for education, wrong for teachers and wrong for children and young people,’ teachers union NUT said on Thursday. The NUT was responding to a Tory White Paper just published entitled: ‘Educational Excellence Everywhere’. Christine Blower, General Secretary of the National Union...
DAVID Cameron dramatically escalated the British government’s war against refugees fleeing imperialist war in the Middle East and North Africa when he announced on Thursday that the Royal Navy will be deployed off the coast of Libya this summer to prevent a flood of refugees crossing over to...
TEACHERS’ unions and the BMA led the condemnation of Tory Chancellor Osborne’s Budget on Wednesday, in which he announced the forced academisation of every school in the country. Dr Mark Porter, BMA Council Chair, said: ‘It is disgraceful given the crisis facing the NHS that there was no promise of...
CHANCELLOR Osborne’s just-declared Budget has touched off such anger that he is already being counselled to abandon his masterplan to make savage cuts on the disabled so that he can make big handouts to the already well-off and rich. Heading the revolt is a disabled campaigner and Conservative party member...
A TORY disability campaigner has handed in his party membership and sabotaged a Tory Party website in protest over brutal disability benefit cuts. Graeme Ellis, a 66-year-old wheelchair user who has voted Tory since he was old enough to vote, quit and then closed the Conservative Disability Group (CDG) website,...
CHANCELLOR Osborne made it clear in his Budget statement yesterday that he is not the master of the situation, and is completely dominated by the worldwide capitalist crisis. He told the House of Commons: ‘I must tell the House that we face such a challenge now. Financial markets are turbulent....
STRIKING 6th Form College National Union of Teachers (NUT) members from around England took part in a national demonstration on Tuesday to defend their colleges, jobs and teenagers’ education in the face of cuts and the threat of privatisation. On Monday, the NUT had successfully rebuffed in the High Court...
TORY Chancellor Osborne delivered a class war Budget yesterday offering whole swathes of new tax breaks for the rich, while hammering benefits, public services, and in particular, education. He announced that by 2020 it will be every region for itself, with the abolition of central government...
AN estimated 3.7 million Syrian children – 1 in 3 of all Syrian children – have been born since the conflict began five years ago, their lives shaped by violence, fear and displacement, according to a UNICEF report published on Monday. This figure includes 306,000 children born as refugees since...
THE decision of President Putin to begin withdrawal of Russian forces from Syria, after giving President Assad just a few hours notice, constitutes a clear message to Assad to settle for what he can get in the just-begun peace talks in Geneva, and, that as far as the Russian...
NUT SIXTH form teachers walked out on strike yesterday morning at colleges across the country against Tory funding cuts that are driving up class sizes, cutting courses, cutting pay and staff and even forcing entire colleges to close. On Monday the Tory education secretary Nicky Morgan took the union...
TODAY’S NUT 6th form college strike is on! The Tory government took the NUT to the High Court yesterday in an attempt to rule out the strike as ‘illegal’. The government’s High Court challenge, which the NUT rightly said threatened the fundamental right to strike, has been defeated! Winning the court...