Monthly Archives: May 2016
PALESTINIAN President Mahmoud Abbas announced during a meeting in Cairo on Saturday that the focus of the Paris International Peace Conference would be centred on international resolutions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Arab Peace Initiative, the Roadmap for Peace, and previously signed agreements between the two parties. The conference is...
THE National Union of Students has welcomed the decision by Cambridge University students to remain in the NUS after they rejected a motion to leave. Cambridge is one of several universities to hold disaffiliation votes after Malia Bouattia, who the Zionist lobby accused of anti-semitism, was elected as NUS president....
LAST week the Republican presidential candidate and multi-billionaire property speculator, Donald Trump, unveiled his plan for saving US capitalism from economic catastrophe. During a lengthy interview on CNBC Trump blurted out what no other presidential candidate has ever admitted, that America is effectively bankrupt and not capable of paying her...
IT would be a ‘very dangerous experiment’ for the UK to give Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn power, Tony Blair has told the BBC’s This Week’s World. During the interview Blair said: ‘There are people who disagree with me for reasons that they say are to do with, say, Iraq, but...
THE Israeli Minister of Environmental Protection, Avi Gabay, has officially resigned in protest at the appointment of extremist politician Avigdor Lieberman as the regime’s new minister for military affairs. Gabbay, founding member of the Kulanu party resigned from his position in the government, saying: ‘I see the recent political moves...
SIPTU members will join the march by the National Homeless and Housing Coalition (NHHC) which is taking place today, Saturday 28th May, in Dublin to highlight the need for government action to end the housing crisis. The march which is being supported by a broad range of organisations, political parties...
YESTERDAY, David Cameron formally announced that the Tory government would be sending a Royal Navy warship to the coast of Libya as part of the escalating military intervention by the EU and US imperialism into a country already smashed up by previous ‘interventions’. Speaking at the G7 summit in Japan,...
JUNIOR doctors urged their colleagues yesterday to vote ‘NO’ and reject the so-called ‘deal’ struck by Tory health secretary Hunt and the BMA leadership. Chairman of the BMA Junior Doctors Committee (JDC) Johann Malawana, who is calling for junior doctors to vote ‘YES’ to the deal fears that...
GREEK dockworkers at the two main Greek ports of Piraeus and Thessaloniki began 48-hour ‘rolling’ strikes on Thursday against the privatisation of the ports. Athens and Piraeus Metro and bus workers staged a 5-hour stoppage on Thursday also against privatisation. On Thursday, dockworkers and their supporters marched through Piraeus to...
‘SAVE Our Steel!’ shouted over one thousand steel workers as they marched through central London from the Embankment to Parliament yesterday afternoon. They were joined by TUC leader Frances O’Grady and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, as well as the leaders of the Unite and Community unions. Corbyn told reporters afterwards:...
THE TORY government is on the brink of a savage attack on Tata Steel workers’ pensions, and after four weeks of consultation will be seeking to bring in legislation that will cut steel workers’ pensions and hand their pension fund over to the government’s Pensions Protection Fund (PPF). The...
TORY Business Secretary Sajid Javid in his opening statement to parliament yesterday outlined the assault that he is organising on Tata steel workers’ pensions, to provide a ‘sweetener’ for any proposed buyer. The British Steel pension scheme has 130,000 members and a black hole deficit of £485m. The option...
‘SAVE Our Steel!’ shouted over one thousand steel workers as they marched through central London from the Embankment to Parliament yesterday afternoon. They were joined by TUC leader Frances O’Grady and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, as well as the leaders of the Unite and Community unions. As marchers assembled at...
YESTERDAY, steelworkers were marching for their jobs to parliament, defending an industry that is being deliberately destroyed, while university lecturers were taking the first day of a two day national strike action over an insulting 1.1% pay offer. At the same time, student nurses were at Westminster Hall, demanding that...
STUDENT nurses, midwives and other NHS students lobbied parliament yesterday to demand that the Tories’ plan to abolish the student bursary and replace it with a loans system does not go ahead. The government are in the process of a three month consultation over the issue, and students lobbied their...
THE EU IS IN DESPERATE CRISIS with the established political order breaking apart in country after country, from Ireland and the UK to Austria, Greece and southern Europe as the world crisis of capitalism drives forward slumps, financial crashes, wars, revolutions and with them a mass migration of peoples. n the...
THE Syrian Cabinet has condemned the terrorist blasts which hit the cities of Jableh, Tartous, and al-Qamishli last Monday. It also condemned terrorist mortar attacks on some areas in Aleppo, Nubbul, al-Zahraa and Daraa which killed and injured dozens of innocent civilians. Islamic State claimed responsibility for attacking the cities...
STUDENT nurses and midwives are lobbying parliament today in opposition to Tory plans to end the student bursaries by August 2017. And a national march on Westminster has also been called on Saturday June 4th in protest against scrapping the bursaries. The march is being organised by the student-led Bursary...
ELEVEN thousand steel workers, whose jobs hang in the balance, were watching like hawks as the deadline for ‘interested parties’ to enter bids to take over Tata Steel passed yesterday. Tomorrow, up to a thousand steel workers from plants across the country are marching on parliament to demand that the...
IT is rapidly becoming crystal clear how important it is to vote ‘Leave’ in the June 23rd referendum on the EU. A ‘Leave’ vote will bring down Cameron and his split and divided government and create the conditions for the working class and its trade unions to drive forward to...
ISRAELI occupation forces on Sunday detained five Palestinians from the West Bank districts of Ramallah and Hebron, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS). The PPS said three Palestinians were detained in al-Bireh/Ramallah district. They were identified as Rami Hamayel, 28, Mohammed Abu Marra, 24, and Ihsan Abu Rabe’e, 24. In...
NHS England Chief Executive Simon Stevens has intervened in the referendum debate to declare that leaving the EU could damage the NHS. Citing Bank of England governor Carney’s warning of ‘Brexit’ leading to a ‘technical recession’, Stevens told the Andrew Marr Show: ‘If Mark Carney is right, then that is...
SHADOW Chancellor John McDonnell made it perfectly clear at Labour’s Conference on the Economy that the Labour Party was now for ‘transforming capitalism’, and not for replacing it with Socialism – he did not mention the S word once! In our radicalism, said McDonnell: ‘I want us to surpass even...
‘SAVE Charlie Chaplin ward – Don’t let it close! Save Ealing Hospital – Trade unions must act! Defend children’s services – Occupy now!’ demanded over 200 workers and youth on Saturday. They were taking part in a march led by ‘Charlie Chaplin’, drummer, Harbinder Singh, and young children from Southall...
THE resignation yesterday of the Israeli defence minister, Moshe Yaalon, signals a sharp turn to the right by the government of Binyamin Netanyahu. Yaalon announced his resignation on Twitter saying: ‘I informed the PM (Netanyahu) that after his conduct and recent developments, and given the lack of faith in him,...
THE owner of a northwest Chicago suburban construction company, Schaumburg, has been charged with fraud for allegedly underpaying union employees and underfunding their pensions. Joseph Lampignano, 43, of Itasca, is charged with one count of mail fraud, according to a statement from the US attorney’s office. Prosecutors said Lampignano, co-owner...
‘THE government can’t afford another battle with doctors, so let’s put down a marker,’ Tower Hamlets GP Dr Jackie Applebee urged the BMA Local Medical Committees conference in London yesterday. She was moving motion S-20 that calls on the BMA ‘to ballot the profession on their willingness to take industrial...
‘EXTENDING NHS charging for migrants will create a discriminatory two-tier health system and increase costs,’ the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) warned in response to the Queen’s Speech on Wednesday. The JCWI warned: • New proposals to extend charging to GP services, emergency care, ambulances etc. are unworkable...
THE BMA leadership have allowed themselves to be taken for a ride by Health Secretary Hunt! The government that imposed provocation after provocation onto the junior doctors, pledging that it could do no other because it was bound by a 7-day NHS pledge contained in its General Election Manifesto, has...
GREEK civil servants employed at Inland Revenue offices picketed a Finance Ministry building in Athens on Thursday morning against a government ‘multi-Bill’ which scraps altogether the state’s Department of Revenue and Income. By order of the EC-IMF overlords of Greece, a new ‘Independent Public Revenue Authority’ is to be set...
‘FOUR months ago in this very hall the profession declared that General Practice is in a state of emergency,’ BMA GPs Committee (GPC) Chair Dr Chaand Nagpaul told the conference of Local Medical Committees (LMCs) yesterday. He added: ‘We gave the government six months to negotiate a plan to rescue...
DUBLIN’S Luas tram drivers are taking their 12th day of strike action tomorrow (Friday), with their union SIPTU accusing management of being ‘out of control’. In a provocative letter to SIPTU, management has declared that Luas drivers will lose a full day’s pay if they engage in planned four-hour stoppages...
WEDNESDAY’S Queen’s Speech began with an evasion that her government would continue to seek a ‘high-wage low-welfare economy’. This was said at a time when millions of public sector workers have had their wages held down by the state for well over four years, while a vicious assault...
TORY class war legislation to be brought in for use against the working class over the coming year was unveiled in the Queen’s Speech yesterday. She confirmed that Health Secretary Hunt’s dictatorial planned August imposition of the unsafe, unfair and illegal contract on junior doctors is to continue, saying: ‘My...
ONE in three people in the country have ‘experienced poverty’ in the past four years. According to figures produced by the Office for National Statistics, between 2011 and 2014 32.5% of the population were thrust below the official poverty line at least once. The official poverty line is set at...
FRENCH lorry drivers blocked motorways yesterday as a strike wave gripped France bringing sections of the country to a virtual standstill. The entire country is rising up against President François Hollande’s new labour laws, and French workers have planned a second strike tomorrow. Transport, including ports, trains and airports...
‘ONE DAY longer, one day stronger,’ striking Verizon workers chant on their picket lines as their fight proceeds into its second month. More than 40,000 Verizon communication workers across America, began their strike in defence of jobs and conditions on April 13th. The Communications Workers of America (CWA) reported in...
ON Sunday a mass movement of workers led by young people took to the streets of cities across Europe in a powerful demonstration of the anti-austerity movement that is gripping the continent. Thousands of workers and youth answered the call issued by the French youth-led ‘Nuit Debout’ movement to protest...
‘MONOPOLY capitalism is plunging the country into a catastrophic crisis, which will inflict misery upon millions of workers and the poor,’ the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) declared in a statement issued last week. NUMSA said it is ‘appalled’ by the employment figures for the first three...
STUDENTS will be ‘outraged’ at Tory proposals to raise tuition fees even higher and privatise education, the NUS said yesterday. Tory Universities Minister Jo Johnson announced the proposals which have been put forward in a White Paper published yesterday. The White Paper proposes that universities will be able to increase...
ON the occasion of the commemoration of the anniversary of the Nakba, Ambassador Manuel Hassassian said: ‘The Nakba is ongoing as long as the occupation continues and as long as the Right of Return is not implemented according to UN Resolution 194 which enshrines the right of return and compensation...
THE decision last week by Tory Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and agreed by the BMA to extend the ‘talks’ over imposing new contracts on junior doctors until this Wednesday, was a device to gag Saturday’s annual conference of junior doctors. Originally Hunt agreed to talk with the BMA for a...
Turning the Tide – The 1966 seamen’s strike and the making of modern maritime trade unionism. An RMT pamphlet, available free from RMT head office, 39 Chalton Street, NW1 15D, London (Tel: 0207 387 4771) PUBLISHED to mark the 50th anniversary of the then longest official strike since the first...