Monthly Archives: February 2019
LATE ON Tuesday, Parliament passed without a vote a motion from the Tory home secretary, Sajid Javid, proscribing Hezbollah, which he claimed was a terrorist organisation. The military wing of Hezbollah has been banned since 2008 in the UK but this new ban will extend to the political wing of...
The General Secretary of the African Regional Organisation of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), Kwasi Adu-Amankwah was on Tuesday morning dragged from his hotel room in Harare by authorities soon after his arrival. Adu-Amankwah was scheduled to meet the leaders of local labour body, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade...
HOSPITALS bombed by Saudi forces in Yemen murdering the staff inside, and doctors shot dead in Palestine treating the wounded on the Gaza border, are just two examples of attacks on medical workers in conflict zones, condemned yesterday by doctors’ union BMA, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM)...
MORE than 150 trade unionists have signed a declaration calling on the labour movement to advocate for a united Ireland and a new all-Ireland constitution with workers’ rights at the heart of it. The new movement called Trade Unionists for a New and United Ireland or TUNUI, includes a number...
THE CORPORATE debt mountain may trigger a devastating, self-feeding chain reaction of fire sales of junk bonds, threatening to collapse the entire financial system, the OECD club of rich nations has warned. The issuing of corporate bonds has doubled to $13 trillion in the last ten years, with standards deteriorating...
A UN COURT has ruled the UK must return Diego Garcia and the Chagos Islands, which it found were under illegal UK occupation and which host a major US military base on Diego Garcia, to Mauritius ‘as rapidly as possible’. The islands were ethnically cleansed of their inhabitants under the...
THE INTERNATIONAL Court of Justice (ICJ) known as ‘the Hague’ ruled yesterday that Britain’s ‘decolonisation and displacement’ of the Chagos Islanders from the Indian Ocean Archipelago was ‘unlawful’. Judges ruled that Britain should relinquish control over the territory ‘as soon as possible’. The case, brought by Mauritius, ruled on the legal...
LEBANON’S Hezbollah has been banned by the UK in its entirety, Tory Home Secretary Sajid Javid and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt announced yesterday. The Lebanon-based group’s military wing is already outlawed, but the proscription will now be extended to its political arm, said the British government. From Friday, membership will be...
TWO RECENT articles in the US socialist magazine Jacobin celebrate the announcement of Bernie Sanders, the Democratic senator for Vermont, that he will be entering the US presidential election for 2020. The Jacobin advances left perspectives on politics, economics, and culture and is read by 1,000,000 people a month. Meagan Day’s...
THE PLUNGE of world capitalism over the precipice of an almighty crash has become so obvious that a sense of panic is gripping bourgeois economists and politicians as they face a world crisis that they are powerless to avoid. Over the weekend the ratings agency S&P Global reported that global...
CHINA has reversed its decision to cancel trade talks with the UK after British finance minister Philip Hammond criticised London’s military plans for the deployment of a British warship in the Pacific. ‘China sets great store on Sino-Britain ties, and hopes Britain can earnestly respect China’s core interests and concerns,...
BOTH THE MAJOR parliamentary parties, Tory and Labour are in turmoil, with splits taking place and more splits to come, as the ruling class trembles as March 29th approaches, and it will have to face the UK working class on its own, without the European Court of Justice to...
AN ISRAELI news anchor Oshrat Kotler has blamed the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands for turning regime troops into ‘animals’. She has defended her comments despite having received death threats from ‘thousands’. Kotler last week denounced the mistreatment of Palestinians in Israeli custody following a piece aired on the channel...
‘WE MAY very well be deporting people who are entitled to be here,’ the Jamaican High Commissioner said, calling on the UK government to halt deportations to the country until the Home Office has published its investigation into the Windrush scandal. This is a move which would stop deportation flights...
HUNDREDS of local government workers entered a Finance Ministry building in Athens on Thursday demanding that there will be no cut to their dangerous and unhealthy occupation allowance. They occupied the office of the Deputy Finance Minister, Stratis Pitsiorlas, until he promised that there will be no reduction of the...
IRELAND and Germany have issued warnings about the consequences of a ‘no deal’ Brexit. To ‘prepare for no deal’ the Irish deputy prime minister Simon Coveney launched a major ‘omnibus bill’ to be fast-tracked through the Irish parliament and be signed into law before 29 March, when the UK is...
CHINA and Russia are rallying behind Venezuela, warning against an imminent military intervention into the Latin American country. It is facing a showdown today when the pro-Trump opposition plans to bring in a US ‘aid’ convoy. China’s Foreign Ministry said on Friday the ‘so-called aid’ should not be forced into...
THE TORY UK immigration minister Caroline Nokes told the BBC that Britain had ‘resettled’ as refugees 100 members of the notorious White Helmets group and that the government was asking local councils across the country to house them. Nokes told the BBC that the UK had ‘a really proud history of...
LABOUR leader Jeremy Corbyn and his shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer were in Brussels yesterday putting forward Labour’s position to the leaders of the European Union which includes ruling out a no-deal Brexit, remaining in a permanent customs union, and putting whatever is decided in parliament to a ‘people’s...
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said: ‘The Israeli occupation’s field measures and steps in occupied Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound, including the closure of Al-Aqsa’s Bab al-Rahma and some of the Al-Aqsa-affiliated institutions, are extraordinarily alarming. ‘They highlight the Israeli intentions to impose new restrictions in order to divide the Muslims’...
ISRAELI forces shot and injured at least three Palestinian protesters with live ammunition, while others suffered tear-gas suffocation as they suppressed naval protests off the coast of the northern besieged Gaza City, on Tuesday evening. Medical workers said that several protesters suffered tear-gas suffocation and were transferred to a nearby...
‘THIS report rightly blames the government’s austerity agenda, including cuts to support services and children’s centres, for limiting the educational potential of disadvantaged young people.’ Dr Mary Bousted, Joint General Secretary of the National Education Union was commenting on a report from an All-Party Parliamentary Group on social mobility, published...
Only half of GP practice buildings in England are fit for purpose, with surgeries too small to meet the demands of growing populations, a major survey on practice premises from the British Medical Association (BMA) has found. The survey of more than 1,000 practices in England asked doctors and practice...
THREE Tory MPs resigned yesterday to join the independent pro-EU group, set up by seven former Labour MPs who have now been joined by another Labour MP, Enfield North’s Joan Ryan. The Tory MPs Anna Soubry, Sarah Wollaston and Heidi Allen wrote a joint letter to Theresa May to confirm...
THE GMB union, ‘the trade union for Asda workers’, has come out in complete opposition to the proposed Asda/Sainsbury’s merger as the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) released its ‘staggering’ provisional findings. A provisional report has expressed extensive concerns about the impact of the merger on choice and quality for...
THREE Tory MPs – amongst the most ardent opponents of Brexit – Anna Soubry, Sarah Wollaston and Heidi Allen, announced yesterday they were deserting the Tories and joining the ‘Independent Group’ of eight right-wing Labour MPs who resigned from the party on Monday. In their letter of resignation to Theresa...
A MASS protest in support of the fire service took place outside Ladbroke Grove fire station on Monday night, by residents who live in the surrounding area to the Grenfell Tower fire. Community activists and campaigners demanded the boycott of Channel 4’s extremely controversial documentary ‘Dispatches Grenfell: Did the Fire...
Albert Einstein is widely credited with saying, ‘The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results,’ the South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) said in a statement on Monday ahead of this week’s budget. SAFTU’S statement reads: ‘Minister of Finance Tito Mboweni’s...
OVER 30 GMB members held a lively picket of the private contractor ISS at the company’s HQ in the South Quay Building, Canary Wharf, yesterday morning. On the picket Helen O’Connor, GMB Southern Regional Organiser, said: ‘Today’s picket is part of our campaign at Kingston Hospital and at Queen Elizabeth...
HONDA yesterday issued a closure statement in which Katsushi Inoue, Chief Officer for European Regional Operations, Honda Motor Co. Ltd., and President of Honda Motor Europe, said: ‘In light of the unprecedented changes that are affecting our industry, it is vital that we accelerate our electrification strategy and restructure...
LABOUR leader Jeremy Corbyn insisted yesterday that whatever Parliament decides, Brexit should be put to a ‘popular vote’, and that Labour is still campaigning for a permanent customs union and he is going over to Europe tomorrow to put his position to the leaders of the EU. He was speaking...
BAGGAGE handlers and check-in staff employed by GH London Ground Handling Services at Luton Airport have voted for strike action over the company’s decision to impose a pay freeze on hard-working staff. A week-long strike will commence on Sunday 3rd March at 6:00pm until Sunday 10th March at 5:59pm. 96 per...
US Senator Bernie Sanders announced yesterday that he will run again for president in 2020, making a second attempt to win the Democratic Party’s nomination. The senator from Vermont, 77, said: ‘We began the political revolution in the 2016 campaign, and now it’s time to move that revolution forward.’ Sanders –...
AHMAD Majdalani, of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Executive Committee, has warned that Israel is attempting to destroy the Palestinian Authority through more financial sanctions in partnership with the United States. In a press statement, Majdalani said this is being done ‘through more sanctions and violations of international law and...
SYRIAN president Bashar al-Assad said that holding local council elections on time proves the strength of the Syrian people and the state. In a speech to a meeting of heads of local councils from all provinces on Sunday, he stressed that the elections prove the failure of enemy plans to...
AFTER weeks of speculation, seven right-wing Labour MPs announced yesterday that they are resigning from the Labour Party, citing ‘institutional anti-Semitism’ and the ‘shameful’ leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and his handling of Brexit. The seven MPs proclaimed that the Labour Party had been ‘hijacked by the politics of the hard...
‘THE HONOURABLE thing, the usual thing for them to do now, is to stand down and fight by-elections, back in their constituencies,’ shadow chancellor John McDonnell said yesterday after a group of seven Labour MPs quit the Party. McDonnell said: ‘All of these MPs stood on our manifesto in 2017,...
A TOWER block in Bradford with 160 flats has been evacuated over ‘serious fire safety deficiencies’. All the residents at Appleton Point were told to leave their homes last week after West Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Service (WYFRS) identified a number of issues. It said the property did not have an...