Monthly Archives: March 2016
IN advance of the Tory budget on Wednesday, where chancellor Osborne is due to announce even more savage austerity cuts, the charity Oxfam has released a report showing that Britain’s ‘privileged minority’ have been steadily amassing billions at the expense of the working class. The report, ‘Ending the Era of...
‘JOIN us in Palm Beach today as the Workers’ Voice Tour wraps up in Nelson Peltz’s hometown,’ said the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) on Saturday after winning a lawsuit and overturning an attempt to ban a march through the Florida city. Pelz is the billionaire hedge fund founder and...
LECTURERS at further education colleges across Scotland are to begin an indefinite series of strikes, taking three days of strike action every single week until their demands are met. Members of the EIS Further Education Lecturers’ Association were already set to go on strike on Thursday next week. The union...
LAST November 25th in his Autumn Statement Chancellor Osborne was full of praise for the way that allegedly the UK was now full set on the road to recovery and boasting that the worst was over. He said: ‘Since the Summer Budget new economic data has been published which confirm...
HANDS off our Homes! Kill the Bill! Homes for People! Not for Profit!’ chanted protesters yesterday on a 10,000-strong march through central London against the Tory Housing Bill. There were lively Unite, Unison, GMB, NUT trade union contingents along with community organisations and delegations as the march proceeded to Parliament...
THOUSANDS of junior doctors marched through the City of London from Whitechapel to St Paul’s on Thursday evening in a show of force and determination on the second day of their 48-hour nationwide strike. The junior doctors have called two more 48-hour strikes next month. • 48-hour strike from 8am Wednesday...
ON Thursday afternoon Mario Draghi, head of the European Central Bank (ECB), announced that the bank has cut its benchmark interest rate from 0.5% to zero. The other measure Draghi sprang on the financial world was a cut in the deposit rate facility to minus 0.4% – an increase in...
CHIEF Inspector of Schools Michael Wilshaw has criticised the heads of some academy chains for being paid vast salaries, up to £225,000 a year, while their pupils are left to get poor results. His concerns are written in a hard-hitting letter to the Tory education secretary Nicky Morgan. Wilshaw...
‘THE strike is going extremely well. Pickets have been well-attended and junior doctors remain united in their struggle against contract imposition.’ Speaking on the second day of the junior doctors’ 48-hour strike, BMA Junior Doctors Committee deputy chair Dr David Rouse continued: ‘The next strike on April 6 and 7...
WITH the Tory party split and divided, the ruling class in the UK – Cameron, big business and the bankers – are relying on the union leaders and the Labour Party right wing to deliver the working class vote in the EU referendum. This will tip the balance and allow...
TENS OF THOUSANDS of junior doctors struck yesterday and many told News Line just how determined they were to stop the imposed contracts and to beat the Tory government. At the closure-threatened Ealing Hospital bus driver and Unite member Kuga Kuna brought his dhol drum to support the doctors and...
TENS of thousands of junior doctors struck yesterday and made it very clear that they are not a protest movement, and that their first two-day strike action, to be repeated on Wednesday 6th April and Tuesday April 26th, is part of the struggle to defend workers rights, to stop...
THE University of Sheffield has been granted a court order to remove 19 students who have been occupying a lecture theatre for more than a week. The ‘Free University of Sheffield’ began the sit-in at the Richard Roberts Auditorium in protest at paid-for education. A possession order was granted by...
THE peers of the House of Lords on Monday night capitulated to the Tory government over cuts to disabled people’s benefits to ‘encourage them to return to work’. The government had been twice defeated in the Lords over reducing Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) for certain claimants from £103 a...
AN emergency meeting between Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) members, teachers, and the Palestinian teachers’ union ended on Sunday without reaching a solution to end the teachers’ strike. The meeting ended in teachers rejecting the terms laid out by the PLC. ‘One of the reasons no solution was reached, is the...
BRITAIN is sending ‘vital military assets’ (in Cameron’s words) to be part of the NATO force that will be intercepting refugee boats seeking to cross the Med to safety, and returning the refugees to Turkey, whose government has killed thousands of Kurds, has been engaging in an oil trade...
CAMPAIGNERS will be protesting outside Jobcentres in over 70 towns and cities across the UK on Wednesday (9 March 2016) as part of a national day of action against the government’s cruel benefit sanctions regime. The day of action organised by members of Unite Community section will also...
THE Syrian army’s units and air force continue targeting the positions and hideouts of the terrorist organisations, inflicting heavy losses upon them. An army unit destroyed positions for Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist organisation and killed 11 of its members in Abu al-Duhour town, 50 km south east of Idleb city, an...
THE US and its South Korean puppets are set to begin their largest ever joint military exercises amid the high tensions that they have created on the Korean peninsula. A massive army supported by nuclear armed naval and air forces, including 300,000 South Korean and 15,000 US troops are massed...
EMPLOYEES working for Turkey’s Feza Media Group were allowed to enter the Zaman newspaper building in Istanbul at 8am Saturday after an ID check by police, who have been standing guard inside and outside the building since Friday night when trustees took control of the group. ‘This is how we,...
LEADING stars, joined crowds at a rally and march yesterday morning, led by two generations of the historic suffragette Pankhurst family in London on Mother’s Day. Crowds joined CARE International’s Walk In Her Shoes event led by Helen Pankhurst, her 21-year old daughter Laura Pankhurst, music legend Annie Lennox, Bianca...
BANKS and speculators are attempting to offload mortgage default risk onto unsuspecting taxpayers and pension funds amid fears of a looming property crash in London, ethical finance campaigners have warned. Last week, it emerged that the Greater London Authority (GLA) is seeking to use residential mortgage backed securities (RMBS) to...
A TOTAL of 46 Palestinian detainees began an open-ended hunger strike on Thursday in protest against their improper living conditions, said a lawyer representing the Palestine Prisoner’s Society (PPS). Jacqueline Fararjeh said the detainees at Etzion jail were starting an open-ended hunger strike in protest of the quality and quantity...
THIS week, the president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, threatened that the EU would deport the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing imperialist war in the Middle East and Afghanistan. Tusk delivered his threat in Athens after a meeting with the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, where he promised...
THE number of refugees seeking asylum in Europe has doubled to 1,255,600 during 2015, figures released yesterday show. Imperialist wars in Iraq Afghanistan and Libya as well as the war in Syria have driven over a million refugees and their families from their homes, with even more fleeing...
THE cessation of hostilities agreed last week is ‘a glimmer of hope for all Syrians,’ President Bashar al-Assad has said. n an interview with ARD German television, President Assad cautioned: ‘But usually, when you have a ceasefire or cessation of hostilities or any such agreement, which is bilateral, it’s going...
THE police officer involved in an alleged plot to spy on the parents of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence should have faced disciplinary charges rather than be allowed to retire, his parents said. The Met Police allowed the former Met Police commander Richard Walton to retire from his post as...
THE giant German car maker, BMW, has written to every one of its 8,000 employees in Britain making the thinly veiled threat that in the event of Britain voting to leave the EU they will lose their jobs. An email to all staff from BMW bosses lays it on the...
THE spectacle of the Tory party tearing itself apart over the EU referendum will most certainly gladden the hearts of workers across the country. Last week, the split between the pro Yes-ministers led by Cameron and the six pro-Brexit ministers in his government, including his old friend Michael Gove who...
‘IT beggars belief that the government is blundering on with its snooping power-grab completely disregarding the concerns being raised from all sides,’ said Kate Allen, Amnesty International UK’s Director on Tuesday. She was responding to the surprise publication of the government’s Investigatory Powers Bill. She said those opposed include ‘no...
YESTERDAY the Tory home secretary, Theresa May, unveiled in parliament her latest ‘revised’ snooper’s charter that she intends to rush into law by the end of the year. The initial Investigatory Powers Bill was first published last year to a chorus of outrage from civil liberties groups and even the...
SAMEH Ashour, the head of Egypt’s Lawyers Syndicate, has called a lawyers strike against the Ministry of Interior after the disappearance of lawyer Ibrahim Abo Gamos in the governorate of Sharqeya. Prompted by what the syndicate contends is the enforced disappearance of Abo Gamos, Ashour called on Sunday for a...
‘SHUT down Harmondsworth immigration centre!’ demanded the Movement for Justice yesterday, in response to a damning report which exposed the centre as being filthy and insect-ridden with a ‘desolate’ atmosphere. The privately-run detention facility is situated in West Drayton, west London where as many as 661 male refugees are...
AT THE end of last week the Tory chancellor, George Osborne, announced that all his stated austerity plans in last autumn’s budget statement were not enough. Speaking at the G20 meeting in China, Osborne admitted that his predictions about the economic revival of British capitalism were basically a pack of...
REFUGEES broke down the barbed wire fence on the Greek border with Macedonia yesterday, using a steel pole as a battering ram. The protesters shouted: ‘Open the border!’ and threw stones at the Macedonian police. Macedonian police then charged the refugees, firing volleys of tear gas and causing chaos...
THE trajectory of the 2016 Budget delivered by Pravin Gordhan continued to sing to the tune of international and local finance capital, white monopoly capital and credit rating agencies, said National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) General Secretary Irvin Jim last Friday. There were some passing references to...