Monthly Archives: May 2018

The South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) has come out in full support of the rejection of the latest offer from the employers to the striking bus workers’ unions. ‘SAFTU urges all workers to continue and intensify their solidarity action in support of their fellow workers who are in...

ISRAEL celebrated the moving of the US embassy to Jerusalem on Monday, recognising the city as the ‘the capital of Israel’ by massacring 60 Palestinians in Gaza and wounding up to 2,700, as well as carrying out a number of air attacks on the Strip. There was an air of...

ON 21st March 2018, Jeremy Hunt announced the government was offering NHS staff on Agenda For Change (AfC) a new pay offer. ON 21st March 2018, Jeremy Hunt announced the government was offering NHS staff on Agenda For Change (AfC) a new pay offer. Newspapers ran headlines about...

SYRIAN President Bashar al-Assad said that France, Britain, and the US, along with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey are responsible for the war in Syria due to their support of terrorism. He described the Western allegations about the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian Arab Army...

NEWS LINE salutes the heroic determination of the Palestinian people in their struggle against the illegal and brutal Israeli occupation of their land. Yesterday, hundreds of thousands of unarmed Palestinians marched on the barbed wire fence, erected by Israel around Gaza turning it into an open air prison camp for...

MARKING eleven months since the tragic Grenfell Tower fire disaster, which claimed the lives of so many men, women and children, the community turned out for a silent march demanding justice for the survivors and their families and the truth. Since the fire the truth has started to emerge. ...

PALESTINE erupted yesterday into furious protests throughout Gaza and the West Bank as the US opened its embassy in Jerusalem. While the embassy opened, Israeli snipers opened fire killing over 50 Palestinians on the Gaza border, with Palestinian officials described the killing as a bloody massacre. The Palestine Liberation ...

‘OUR MESSAGE to May and the Tories is: We are going to hound you out! Justice for Grenfell!’ Lucy Masood, FBU, said, to the biggest cheer of all the speeches in Hyde Park at the end of the 25,000-strong TUC march from Embankment through central London on Saturday afternoon. There...

THE DAILY Telegraph has been speculating on: ‘What would a 21st century British coup look like?’ in an opinion piece written by Paul Carter, a political commentator who is writing a book about Harold Wilson and the part played by Louis Mountbatten in a coup that secured his...

UNDER HEAVY FIRE, PM May yesterday was reduced to pleading with fellow ministers and MPs to ‘trust me to deliver’ over Brexit. Writing in the Sunday Times, May said that she would ensure the UK left the customs union without imposing a hard border in Ireland. She warned: ‘There...

Peter was a member of the Workers Revolutionary Party for nearly 40 years. He was out in front in every campaign and even in his latter years, with failing health, he never gave up. In his early life he was a window cleaner. He married Shirley in 1963 who remained...

THE WINDRUSH scandal, missiles launched at Syria without even seeking permission from Parliament, the Grenfell fire disaster, the winter NHS meltdown, homelessness and rough sleeping soaring, sky-high university fees … each of these is big enough to warrant bringing down Tory PM Theresa May and her split and divided...

ONE Palestinian was killed and 167 others injured by Israeli forces on Friday as hundreds of protesters gathered at the eastern border of the Gaza Strip for the seventh consecutive Friday to demand their right of return to their pre-1948 homes in historical Palestine. Jabr Salem Mustafa, 40, was...

‘WE ARE extremely pleased, we are relieved, but we are disappointed that we had to go through all of this to get the Prime Minister to listen,’ said Karim Mussilhy from Grenfell United Community. He was responding to the news yesterday afternoon that Tory PM May had given way...

Members of the University and College Union (UCU) at ten colleges will take strike action throughout May and June as part of a row over pay. Staff at nine London colleges and Sandwell College in the West Midlands will walk out for up to seven days. The colleges affected and...

THE children of immigrant families are being deliberately starved by the Tories as part of their ‘hostile environment’ policy towards immigrant workers. Headteachers and campaigners are furious that these children are being denied free school meals under rules brought in by the Tories in 2012. School kids in year 3...

THE SYRIAN army intercepted tens of incoming Israeli missiles and reciprocated the assault with a barrage of rocket attacks on Israeli military centres in occupied Golan, the first such response in decades. Syria’s state news agency, SANA, reported on Wednesday night that the Syrian army’s air defence systems intercepted Israel’s...

JUNIOR DOCTORS have defended their protected pay banding after a year-long struggle. The BMA supported 15 foundation doctors at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Trust after employers tried to cut their banding – protected for four years under the terms of the 2016 contract – from 1A to 1B. They...

THE METROPOLITAN Police is using a ‘racially discriminatory’ Gangs Matrix database, says Amnesty International in its new report. Amnesty International UK’s Director, Kate Allen, told a press conference at the organisation’s HQ in Shoreditch east London on Tuesday: ‘Our research raises concern on every level – our young people...

TRUMP’S decision to withdraw the United States from Iran’s nuclear deal with the imperialist powers (JCPOA) and re-impose sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran is fracturing the ‘Western alliance’, with America clearly putting itself first, and putting war with Iran right at the top of the US agenda. The...

KENSINGTON and Chelsea council turned down a proposal to clad Grenfell Tower in fire resistant material and instead opted for a cheaper option, allowing the tower to be clad in flammable material, experts have shown. Construction company Leadbitter quoted the council £3.3m to fit fireproof cladding to the tower. The...

THE Palestinian Authority intends to file a legal case against Israel at the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Friday for its crimes against the Palestinian prisoners, according to Issa Qaraqe, head of the Prisoners Commission. He told Voice of Palestine radio on Monday in reaction to an attack by Israeli...

A £10,000 PAYMENT should be given to the young, while pensioners are taxed more, a new report by the Resolution Foundation into inter-generational fairness in the UK suggests. Under the banner of ‘be fair to the youth’ the Foundation is simply raising from the dead, and further developing, the...

THE METROPOLITAN Police are using a ‘racially discriminatory’ Gangs Matrix database, Amnesty International accuses in its new report launched yesterday. Amnesty’s UK Director Kate Allen told a press conference at the organisation’s HQ in Shoreditch east London yesterday: ‘Our research raises concern on every level – our young people...

INSECTS and rats have infested UCL students’ halls of residence sparking a new rent strike against the terrible conditions students are expected to live and study in. Over 50 UCL students at Max Rayne and Ifor Evans halls are now withholding their rent in protest against the poor conditions, and...

AMCU president Joseph Mathunjwa has criticised the Mineral Resources Department after the deaths of seven mineworkers at Sibanye-Stillwater’s mine in Driefontein. He said on Saturday that the department is failing in its role as the regulator of the mining industry. The workers were trapped underground at the Maskhane shaft after...

This is a treacherous abdication of all responsibility by the trade union leaders for this crisis of poverty. They have not lifted a single finger to fight Tory austerity cuts to benefits, just as they have led no struggle on behalf of their members for decent wage increases. NEW research...

THE MAY government is caught up in another deportation scandal! This time it is accused of wrongly using a section of the Immigration Act to threaten to deport at least 1,000 ‘highly skilled migrants’ who are seeking indefinite leave to remain (ILR) in the UK. A range of...

UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) says children in the besieged Gaza Strip are the main victims of Israeli atrocities in the Palestinian territory, amid an escalation of violence perpetrated by the Tel Aviv regime against some 1.8 million inhabitants of the coastal enclave. ‘The escalating violence in Gaza has exacerbated...

THE North Korean government has rejected claims by President Trump that a combination of threats and sanctions have brought Pyongyang to the negotiating table. A spokesman for the North Korean Foreign Ministry said on Sunday that recent remarks by US President Donald Trump crediting a massive US pressure campaign...

JUNIOR doctors and their union have responded angrily after 1,500 third year trainees were told they have to re-apply for their jobs as registrars which had only just been confirmed. Dr Chaand Nagpaul, BMA council chair and Dr Jeeves Wijesuriya, BMA junior doctors committee chair, said in a joint statement...

THE CANCER breast screening scandal has been exacerbated by news that the call handlers on the hotline set up by health secretary Jeremy Hunt and run by private contractor Serco had an hour’s training and were required to tick off a check list of symptoms. Hunt announced the hotline...

THE PCS (Public and Commercial Services Union) is holding a rally in parliament from 6.30pm next Wednesday, 9 May, to highlight how jobs and services at our national museums and galleries are being impacted by government cuts and privatisation. PCS said on Thursday: ‘Privatisation in our culture sector isn’t working....

LABOUR’S hopes crashed to earth in the just-concluded council elections. The eve of poll predictions of the Tories losing Wandsworth, Westminster and then Kensington and Chelsea failed to materialise, as did the forecast that this rout for the Tories would end the May leadership, and bring about a general...

AT LEAST 37 Palestinian protesters and three journalists were injured by live shots or suffocated from tear-gas inhalation on Friday as Israeli forces attacked the protests of the ongoing Great March of Return at many encampments on the Gaza-Israel border. Journalist Abdul-Rahman al-Khatib was intensely suffocated from tear-gas inhalation, and...

LABOUR failed to take targeted councils from the Tories in Thursday’s elections, including Wandsworth, Kensington & Chelsea, Swindon and Westminster. However it won back Plymouth and became the largest party in Trafford. UKIP were wiped out losing almost all of the seats they were defending and the Tories...

Sarah Algherbawi The Electronic Intifada IN JIHAD ABU Jamous’ family, he was seen as the lucky one. The 31-year-old, who gathered gravel to sell to workshops and construction workers for a few dollars a day, was from Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. He escaped a hereditary condition...

LAST WEDNESDAY, Tory health secretary Jeremy Hunt apologised ‘wholeheartedly and unreservedly for the suffering caused’ to the hundreds of thousands of women who were not invited to breast cancer screening due to the failure of a computer algorithm that dated back to 2009. In his statement, Hunt admitted that between...

PATIENTS living in the north west have had their lives put into jeopardy, the GMB union warned, as the ambulance transport service announced it is to pull out of its contract leaving locals high and dry. The ambulance transport service covers Cheshire, Wirral and Warrington. West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS) won...

THE LONDON May Day Rally of over 5,000 workers, trade unionists, students and youth marched from Clerkenwell Green to Trafalgar Square in central London on Tuesday. Zeta Holborn, PCS National President, told the Trafalgar Square rally: ‘There are three key things I want to say. After frozen pay followed by...

THE FALSE claims of the Ministry of Defence that there were no civilian casualties in UK air strikes on Iraq, namely on Mosul, have been blown to smithereens by ‘informers’ from inside the US-UK-dominated coalition who have assured the BBC, what everybody else already knows, that many civilians have...

TORY Health Secretary Hunt yesterday apologised ‘wholeheartedly and unreservedly for the suffering caused’ when he admitted that up to 270 women may have had their ‘lives shortened’ while he has been Health Secretary, after the NHS failed to invite them to breast screenings. Hunt said the government will order an...

FOLLOWING national strikes on October 10, 2017 and March 22, 2018, this coming May 22 will be the third day of general strike in France’s Public Service against the Macron government’s mass sackings, pensions cuts and privatisation. It has been called by nine major trade unions: CGT, CFDT, CFTC,...

THE House of Lords on Monday night passed amendments to the EU Withdrawal Bill that provide a basis for a parliamentary coup to bin the Brexit referendum result and remain in the EU. With the support of 19 Conservative peers, the Lords backed an amendment by 335 to 244,...

MORE than 5,000 trade unionists, workers, students and youth marched from Clerkenwell Green to Trafalgar Square on the London May Day March yesterday afternoon. There were trade union banners from the South East Region of the TUC, ASLEF, PCS, Unite, RMT, POA, and other trade union flags. There were...