Monthly Archives: June 2016
‘THERE are massive fights ahead as political and economic turmoil rages,’ the leader of the RMT railway workers’ union Mick Cash warned his union’s Annual General Meeting in Cardiff on Tuesday. At the AGM, General Secretary Cash warned that ‘we can only win through the maximum solidarity and unity the...
ON June 23, the masses of the working class rose up and crushed the Cameron leadership of the Tory party by voting to leave the EU. The Tory leader Cameron has quit as an acting Prime Minister. He is now a caretaker, while the arrogant Osborne is now resigned to...
‘TRADE unions must act – save our children’s services!’ rang out as the three hundred-strong march from Southall to Ealing Hospital proceeded yesterday afternoon. The West London Council of Action called the march and is holding a mass picket of the hospital from 7am to 9am this morning against...
CAMBRIDGE University lecturers are striking tomorrow in the increasingly bitter tidal wave of strikes being waged nationally by the University and College Union (UCU) over pay and conditions. UCU members at University of Cambridge are timing their strike action to coincide with the Open Day for prospective students...
ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has lauded last Sunday’s deal to restore ties with Turkey, six years after a deadly raid on an aid flotilla soured relations between the two countries. Netanyahu, speaking on Monday after meeting US Secretary of State John Kerry in Rome, said the agreement would...
THE United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon yesterday condemned the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip, stating the obvious that the siege inflicts pain on people and damages the economy of the Palestinian coastal enclave. The UN chief further highlighted the UN support for the people of Gaza, saying that...
WORKERS in the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, the National Transport Movement and the SA Transport and Allied Workers Union, on Monday 20 June, began a protected strike against LSG Sky Chefs, a company which provides catering services to international airlines. The workers’ main demand to the...
‘I AM absolutely 100% behind Jeremy Corbyn,’ BFAWU Bakers Union General Secretary Ronnie Draper told News Line yesterday, as the attempted coup by a group of right wing Labour MPs got underway. While the Bakers Union, RMT, FBU, Aslef, PCS and GMB, all spoke out angrily against the coup...
THE DECISIVE move of the working class to vote to leave the EU has not only upset the bankers and bosses of the EU, and smashed the Cameron premiership, it has moved Labour’s right wing into a frenzied action to split the Labour Party, with practically the entire shadow...
THE family of Freddie Gray is frustrated and disappointed with the acquittal Thursday of Baltimore Police Officer Caesar Goodson Jr. on all charges related to Gray’s death, family attorney William H. ‘Billy’ Murphy said. He said they feel that many people in the city share their frustration with the...
THE ‘Leave’ victory in the just-held referendum constitutes a huge revolutionary victory for the working class and the poor of the UK who voted in their millions to quit the anti-working class bankers and bosses dictatorship that is the European Union. Their vote delivered a huge blow at the Tories,...
SEVEN right wing Labour shadow cabinet members quit yesterday, with more resignations expected, as a coup attempt got underway to remove Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader. Labour MPs Heidi Alexander, Ian Murray, Gloria de Piero, Lillian Greenwood, Lucy Powell, Seema Malhotra and Kerry McCarthy have all resigned. This came after...
TEN THOUSAND nurses began strikes this week, in the states of Minnesota, California and Massachusetts. The strikes were called by National Nurses United (NNU) over concerns with patient safety and the commitment of the corporate healthcare privateers to the safety of their patients. The strikes in Minnesota affect hospitals run...
DOCKWORKERS of the two main Greek ports of Piraeus and Thessaloniki have completed one month of strike action against privatisation and consequent dramatic change in labour conditions. Next week the SYRIZA-ANEL Greek coalition government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is to verify in the Vouli (Greek parliament) the selling off...
YESTERDAY British capitalism was rocked to its core as the consequences of the massive Brexit vote to leave the EU emerged. Tory leader Cameron visited the Queen to confirm his decision to resign as prime minister after his defeat in the EU referendum. Earlier, in a statement to reporters...
THE working class has delivered a crushing blow not just to Tory leaders Cameron and his chancellor Osborne but to the bankers and capitalists who dominate the EU. It is a victory reverberating around Europe and giving inspiration to the millions of workers and youth fighting the savage austerity measures...
THE NUT has announced that members in England have voted overwhelmingly in favour of strike action to protect pay and working conditions. In the NUT’s ballot, 91.7% voted in favour of strike action. The NUT is calling the first day of strike action on 5 July. The strike demands are:...
THE firing of the head nurse at London Health Sciences Centre illustrates a larger systemic problem of hospital bosses trying to muzzle their staff, declared the president of the Ontario Nurses Association on Tuesday. Vanessa Burkoski, chief nursing executive at London Health Sciences was fired earlier this month after the...
JOHAN Malawana, the Chair of the Junior Doctors Committee, addressing the BMA annual conference in Belfast, told delegates that: ‘This was the year when we were all put to the test. Our motives, our determination and our unity, all placed under the harshest possible spotlight. ‘There were many times when...
VERIZON union workers represented by the CWA and IBEW ‘overwhelmingly’ ratified a new four-year pact set to run through to August 2019. Verizon Communications and tens of thousands of union employees officially ended a tense stand-off following the official ratification of a new labour contract agreed to late last month....
THE mass of the working class and the majority of the middle class must vote to ‘Leave’ the EU today to strike a body blow at the plan to create a European imperialist superstate capable of making war on the working class at home and making war on Russia...
TURKEY and Israel are to announce an agreement on the normalisation of bilateral ties, ending six years of a freeze in relations, after a series of talks in Switzerland. eporting on Tuesday, Turkey’s Hurriyet daily said the two sides would make the announcement during final talks on the issue on...
RMT General Secretary Mick Cash joined the Southern Rail picket line in Eastbourne yesterday morning, declaring the strike ‘rock solid’. ‘Our members on Southern are rock solid in support of the action this morning in the fight to stop the basket-case GTR franchise from ripping apart the safety culture on...
THE lecturers strikewave across UK universities is reaching tidal proportions this week, as thousands of University and College Union (UCU) members fight for their jobs, pay and conditions. The dispute has exploded following the derisory pay offer of just 1.1% from the employers, the Universities and Colleges Employers Association...
THE Israeli government is expected to approve the allocation of an additional 60 million shekels (about $15.5 million) to settlements in the occupied West Bank due to the ‘worsening security situation’ in the territory, according to Israeli media. The 60 million shekels in funds to illegal settlement communities will include...
THE Tory drive to impose capitalist ‘business models’ on the NHS with the constant demand for cuts and financial stability at the cost of patient lives has taken on a new bizarre form. Hospitals, from being places of healing, are to be transformed into energy producers whose function will be...
‘WITH our aid, let us through! Refugees are human too!’ hundreds of angry protesters demanded after their 250-vehicle strong Convoy to Calais was blocked by UK police from boarding the ferry at the port of Dover, at the bequest of the French state. Weyman Bennett, National Organiser of Stand up...
OVER 700 trade unionists, former miners and determined supporters, demonstrated on Saturday in Sheffield to back the Orgreave Justice Campaign’s call for a full official inquiry into the police attack on thousands of striking miners at the Orgreave site 32 years ago. The large turnout followed this year’s court finding...
LED by the RCN, a coalition of over 20 health care trade unions, charities and professional colleges yesterday called on the government to halt its ‘reckless’ plans to reform student funding for nursing, midwifery and allied health professions (AHPs). In an open letter to the Prime Minister, experts warned:...
TWO very important NHS trade union conferences are currently taking place this week, the RCN, nurses union, and the BMA doctors. Already the RCN supported by over 20 other organisations, including the BMA, Unison and Unite have put out an appeal to the government to ditch its plans to get...
THE vast majority of the public are worried about the future of the NHS and a majority believe it is heading in the wrong direction, warns the British Medical Association (BMA). A survey of 1,240 people in England carried out ahead of the BMA’s annual representative meeting, which begins in...
FRANCE’S trade unions are calling for a nationwide port strike on June 23 and June 28 as part of ongoing strikes and protests against the government’s labour reform bill, the unions said in a joint statement on Wednesday. Port workers have been taking part in rolling nationwide strikes in recent...
THE News Line and Workers Revolutionary Party extend our condolences to the family of Labour MP Jo Cox who was murdered in her West Yorkshire constituency on Thursday. The man alleged to have committed the crime has been identified in the bourgeois press as a 54-year-old with a history of...
THE US and Israel have been engaged in intense negotiations for many months to outline America’s military aid to Israel for the next decade. Washington has been providing the Israeli regime with $3.1 billion annually since 2007. Tel Aviv has indicated that it wants $4 billion to $4.5 billion in...
RAMZY BAHROUD is an internationally-syndicated columnist, author and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. He has just written his latest book: ‘My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story’. He writes: ‘(At dawn) … I will resist ... (Since) upon the wall there is still a white sheet … And my...
JUNIOR Doctors must vote from tomorrow to throw out the junior doctor contract agreed by the BMA and the Department of Health on 27 May since it abolishes the three main pillars of the current contract 2000 New Deal. • 1 Annual pay progression has been removed. The new contract only...
THE General Medical Council (GMC) has threatened to close North Middlesex District General Hospital including its Accident & Emergency Department. The GMC, which regulates doctors, issued its threat after warning that North Mid A&E has been overwhelmed since the closure of Chase Farm Hospital A&E in December 2013 and that...
MEMBERS of the University and College Union (UCU) at the University of Bath and the University of Bristol are joining the latest wave of nationwide strikes when they walk out in a row over pay and conditions tomorrow, Friday 17 June. Staff at the universities have timed their action to...
SPEAKING with Labour’s former Chancellor Lord Darling by his side, in full support, the Tory Chancellor Osborne yesterday pledged violent retribution against the electorate if it should vote to break from the European Union in the June 23 Referendum. Osborne threatened that leaving the EU would be an ‘irreversible’ step...