Monthly Archives: September 2017
A REPORT issued yesterday by the highly respected and influential Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) has bluntly warned that the drive to war by US imperialism against North Korea has reached such a high stage that a war is now a ‘real possibility’. Its analysis of the conflict being stoked...
‘THE FREE market economy,’ in other words capitalism, ‘is unquestionably the best, and indeed the only sustainable, means of increasing the living standards of everyone in a country’, Tory PM Theresa May insisted yesterday, defending capitalism after ten years of falling living standards, and after Labour leader Corbyn attacked...
HEALTH and care providers must examine whether they have enough nursing staff to provide safe patient care this winter, the Royal College of Nursing urged yesterday as it revealed the concerns of 30,000 front-line staff. More than half (55%) said shifts did not have the level of nurses planned and...
THE Russian Defence Ministry have released footage showing military forces building a bridge across the Euphrates River close to Syria’s eastern Deir Ezzor province. ‘A panel bridge was erected in less than two days, despite constant shelling,’ said the head of the road service of the Russian Defence Ministry, Vladimir...
PM May is said to be ‘bitterly disappointed’ that the US Department of Commerce and her friend President Trump have opted to impose a 220% import tariff on the C-Series jet made by Bombardier, one of Northern Ireland’s biggest employers with 4,100 workers. May said the UK would work with...
KENYA’S Nurses have vowed to continue with their strike until the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) they signed with the Council of Governors is honoured. The nurses have been on strike since June 5 after the Council failed to register in court a CBA they signed on May 26. Kenya National...
‘THE CAPITALIST system still faces a crisis of legitimacy stemming from the crash,’ Jeremy Corbyn told the Labour Party Conference in Brighton yesterday. In a speech lasting nearly one-and-a-half hours, frequently interrupted by lengthy standing ovations, Corbyn declared: ‘Now is the time for the government to take a more...
THIS Labour Party conference has been different in that the members of the Party and the trade unions have taken it over, and turned it from the Blair-Brown model of a conference where resolutions were banned and at the centre was a parade of allegedly ‘great leaders’ with their...
THE Labour Party is making detailed plans for government, including ‘war-game-type scenario-planning’ for events such as ‘a run on the pound,’ Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell said yesterday. He said, at a Labour Party conference fringe meeting, that the party is preparing ‘detailed implementation manuals’ and drafting legislation so it...
JANET DAVIES the Chief Executive and General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has responded to the Labour Party call for a £500 million winter bailout fund for the NHS. Davies said: ‘Any bailout money this winter should be used to bolster frontline staff and help ensure safe patient...
‘THIS YEAR marks 100 years since the Balfour Declaration when a British Foreign Secretary promised the land of Palestine to the Jewish people, my people,’ Labour activist Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, who campaigns in Chingford and Woodford Green constituency, told the Labour Party conference yesterday. She said: ‘I am here today because...
WITH the Labour right-wing openly organising at the party conference in Brighton this week to bind the party firmly to a campaign to remain in the EU, that same EU is collapsing with traditional bourgeois parties that have dominated for decades being shredded by the working class. he latest is the...
IRAN has closed its airspace to all flights to and from the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq at the request of the country’s federal government, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) says. ‘At the request of the central government of Iraq, all flights from Iran to Sulaymaniyah and Erbil airports...
LABOUR right-wingers were resoundly beaten yesterday in their attempt to reject Brexit and push the Labour Party conference to accept that Britain should remain in the European Union, a position which they pushed very aggressively. In a show of hands, the right wingers’ attempt to ‘reference back’ Labour’s position...
RIGHT WING Labour threw its bomb into the Labour Party conference yesterday when it penned an open letter suggesting that the UK should remain in the EU Customs Union and the EU Single Market indefinitely. This will mean binning the 2016 referendum, in order to remain subject to the...
LABOUR leader Jeremy Corbyn yesterday refused to back or oppose the Tory plan for a two-year transition period after the March 2019 withdrawal from the EU, saying that under Labour the ‘transition’ would last ‘as long as necessary’. An Open Letter from more than 40 senior party figures appeared in...
MEMBERS of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Palestine (DPAL) Friday urged the European Union to suspend association agreements with Israel due to Israel’s persistent violations of international law. We express our sincere solidarity with the Palestinian people and their decades-long struggle for freedom, justice and equality. We support...
IN her speech in Florence, Tory PM May called for a two-year implementation period, after Britain leaves the EU in March 2019. Up to that date, the UK will hand over billions in taxpayers’ money as it is obliged to by its continuing membership, and also agree to a divorce...
THE AFL-CIO, America’s trade union body, released a statement on September 20th giving its position on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and how it wants to go forward. The written statement said: ‘Finally, after nearly a quarter of a century, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is...
THE GRENFELL Tower disaster triggered a mental health crisis of an ‘unprecedented’ scale, a leading doctor has said 100 days on from the fire. NHS data shows 457 adults have been flagged as being in ‘urgent need’ of treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, while 39 children are also receiving specialist...
ON Wednesday, it was announced that the lengthy negotiations between Tata Steel and the German steel conglomerate, Thyssen-Krupp, have been concluded and that a ‘memorandum of understanding’ between the two companies had been signed. This tie-up between the Indian owned Tata Steel and Thyssen-Krupp was welcomed by Roy Rickhuss, chairman...
FOUR Palestinian human rights organisations on Wednesday submitted their fourth substantive communication to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), alleging that high-level Israeli civilian and military officials have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in the occupied West Bank including East Jerusalem. The director of Al-Haq, Shawan...
PRESIDENT TRUMP began his speech at the UN by immediately patting himself on the back, stating that ‘Fortunately, the United States has done very well since Election Day last November 8th. The stock market is at an all-time high – a record. Unemployment is at its lowest level...
WAR Child UK has accused UK weapons manufacturer BAE Systems of ‘profiteering from the deaths of innocent children’ by selling missiles and fighter planes to the Saudi-led coalition. The Saudi regime has been accused of committing war crimes and killing thousands of civilians with its bombing campaign against...
‘WE HAVE been appalled about the way in which the numbers of those who have died have been publicised all the way along,’ Yvette Williams, Campaign coordinator for the Justice for Grenfell group told News Line yesterday. She was responding to the claims by Detective Superintendent Fiona McCormack on Tuesday...
THE UNITE union yesterday called on Birmingham city Labour council to honour the ACAS agreement and resolve the Birmingham bin dispute after the High Court ruled in the union’s favour and ordered the council to withdraw redundancy notices it had served on 113 refuse workers. s part of the...
AMBULANCE drivers are so overworked and underpaid that thousands are forced to take time off because of severe stress. Their union the GMB is demanding that paramedics are allowed to retire at 60 like firefighters and police. Meanwhile, the severe shortage of ambulances and ambulance staff has resulted in the...
LENIN, in his work ‘Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism’, wrote about one of the most important connections between the imperialist drive for colonies to super-exploit millions of colonial slaves and the class struggle in the UK. He quotes the leading imperialist Cecil Rhodes. ‘And Cecil Rhodes, we are informed...
GMB, the union for taxi and professional drivers, on Monday joined forces with global consumer group SumOfUs to hand in a 100,000-strong mass petition to City Hall calling on Transport for London (TfL) to force Uber to respect workers’ rights or get out of London. The £51 billion San-Francisco...
THE SWISS based Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the ‘central bank for central banks’, has issued a new warning about the global ‘debt trap’ but like all its previous warnings it has no solution to a crisis that will bring the capitalist financial system crashing down. The BIS latest report...
THE AUSTRALIAN Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) has released a new report that shows Australia is at risk of becoming an ‘Americanised society’ of working poor if people are not given a pay rise. Rising inequality is forcing working people into poverty, with the number of workers who are now...
ON Friday 15th September 14 trade unions representing over a million nurses and NHS staff wrote to Tory Chancellor Hammond, to demand a 3.9% pay rise and an extra £800 to help make up for the savage wage cutting of the last 10 years. The unions made the point that...
TEAMSTERS General Secretary Treasurer, Ken Hall, has testified at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on self-driving technology, urging for the exemption of commercial vehicles from pending legislation and the need for further analysis of the safety, jobs and cybersecurity impact of developing technologies. ‘It is incumbent upon the members...
TWO THOUSAND Birmingham binmen and their supporters from all over the country demonstrated yesterday in a Unite national rally in Victoria Square in front of the council offices. There were banners and flags from Unite, Unison, BFAWU, PCS Midland Region, UCU, the West Midlands Pensioners Convention. There was also a...
UNIONS representing NHS workers have written directly to the Tory government over their pay. The fourteen unions represent over a million NHS workers. The fact they have approached the government directly, by-passing the pay review body, is a new development in the class struggle. They rightly insist the Tories have...
THE TORY government suffered two defeats in Parliament on Wednesday after the £1 billion bribe paid out by Theresa May to the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to keep her minority government in office, turned out to be inadequate for the task. The DUP refused to support the Tories on two...
COLOMBIAN trade union leader, Huber Ballesteros, was finally able to address the TUC Congress in Brighton on Wednesday. Weeks before he was due to fly from Colombia to Britain in 2013 and speak from the platform at Brighton, the strife-torn South American country’s most celebrated trade unionist and best-known opposition...
AS the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration nears, the Israeli government, its armed forces and its legions of settlers are intensifying their programme of home and school demolitions in the occupied Palestinian territories, vowing that Gaza will be the Palestinian state. Israeli bulldozers demolished a Palestinian home in the...
TUC DELEGATES in Brighton gave a standing ovation to Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn on Tuesday afternoon despite the fact that he failed to mention Socialism or call for the Tory government to be brought down. In his address to Congress, Corbyn said that ‘the trade union movement represents...