Monthly Archives: December 2020
WORKERS at Heathrow Airport will next week step up strike action in their increasingly bitter dispute over massive wage cuts that the company is imposing on them through a controversial fire and rehire policy. The workers will be taking a second day of targeted strike action on Monday 14 December...
THE INTERNATIONAL Criminal Court has said it will not take action against the UK, despite its finding of evidence British troops committed war crimes in Iraq. Its 180-page report specifically says that ‘hundreds of Iraqi detainees were abused by British soldiers between 2003 and 2009’. But the ICC could not...
ISRAEL and Morocco announced they are to ‘normalise ties’ in another US-brokered deal. On Thursday, Morocco became the fourth Arab country since August to strike a deal ‘normalising relations with Israel’. The others are the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan. As part of the agreement, US President Donald Trump agreed...
THE POLITICAL and economic crisis over Brexit has reached explosion point this week, with negotiations between the Tory government and the leaders of the EU virtually collapsing on Wednesday night. British PM Johnson and EU leader Ursula von der Leyen met over a three-hour dinner in Brussels for ‘a frank...
THE FRENCH CGT union federation has condemned as a ‘provocation’ a short term ‘alms’ payment that ignores many workers. It said: ‘The government announced on Thursday, November 26 an exceptional aid of 900 euros per month for “permittent.es”, many of whose rights to unemployment benefits are coming to an end...
THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) published yesterday its contingency plans for a ‘no deal scenario’ as post-Brexit trade deals with the UK remain deadlocked. The President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said: ‘I had a stark conversation with Prime Minister Boris Johnson yesterday night. It was a good...
MORE than half the country wants chancellor Rishi Sunak to continue permanently with the £20-a-week uplift in Universal Credit (UC) due to end in April 2021, according to a survey carried out for Unite the union, as millions face a descent into poverty. The survey carried out by Survation revealed...
NINETY children’s charities have warned the United Nations that children’s rights have deteriorated in England and ‘regressed in many areas’ since 2016. On Wednesday 9th December, the Children’s Rights Alliance for England (CRAE) launched its Civil Society report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child with the endorsement of 90 children’s...
A LEADING member of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council, Mohammed Ali al-Houthi yesterday indicted US imperialism saying that it is killing thousands of Yemeni civilians en masse in order to keep production at its major arms manufacturing corporations running high, to try to lower the devastating US unemployment rate, pay...
‘TEARING up the Human Rights Act would be a giant leap backwards. It would be the single biggest reduction in rights in the history of the UK,’ said Amnesty UK Director, Kate Allen on Monday. She was responding to the UK government’s announcement that Sir Peter Gross has been appointed...
UNITE, the UK’s biggest trade union, is on the front line of the class struggle as ‘fire and rehire bosses’ at BA and other giant air companies sack thousands of workers and rehire some of them at cut wage rates and vastly inferior terms to try to drive workers...
A SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD Palestinian minor has told his lawyer that he was severely beaten while detained by Israeli occupation soldiers last week and that he suffered a broken jaw and teeth, as well as bruises and cuts all over his body. Mamoun al-Hashem, an attorney with the Commission of Detainees and...
CARGO workers at British Airways have voted overwhelmingly in favour of strike action in the bitter dispute over the company’s plans to fire and rehire its entire workforce and re-employ them on vastly inferior terms and conditions. The workforce, who are members of Unite, recorded a 98 per cent yes vote...
TALKS between the UK and EU broke up yesterday, as the two sides remained at loggerheads over a post-Brexit trade deal. Another deadline passed, but talks were extended until tomorrow in a last ditch attempt at a deal. Tory Prime Minister Boris Johnson spoke to European Commission President Ursula von...
JAPAN, France, and the United States are reportedly set to hold joint military drills for the first time in May next year, as part of attempts to contain what is claimed as China’s growing influence in the Asia Pacific region. Japan’s Sankei Shimbun newspaper reported on Sunday that the exercises...
SUNDAY’S general election in Venezuela saw President Nicolas Maduro’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela sweeping to victory winning 67% of the votes and control of the country’s National Assembly. Previously, the National Assembly had been the main bastion of counter-revolution in Venezuela, led by Juan Guaido. Guaido spearheaded imperialism’s drive...
LABOUR leaders refused to confirm whether they would vote in favour of a Brexit trade deal between the UK and the EU or abstain again yesterday. Arriving in Brussels yesterday, the UK’s chief negotiator David Frost said: ‘We will be looking forward to meeting our European colleagues later on this...
IRAN has called on the United Nations and its Human Rights Council to stop their ‘selective’ approach and condemn the recent assassination of the prominent Iranian nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, as an act of terrorism. In separate letters to the UN Secretary General and the High Commissioner for Human Rights,...
THE government of Boris Johnson has reached decision point over the EU. It is to be made under conditions of a growing and terrible worldwide crisis of capitalism, where even the fittest will not be able to survive. The EU has made it clear through France’s President Macron, that the...
FRONTLINE health and social care workers must be given every opportunity to have the Covid-19 vaccine, BMA council chair Chaand Nagpaul has said. Dr Nagpaul welcomed the news that the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency had approved the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine on Wednesday – calling the work an ‘incredible achievement...
THE UN General Assembly has again voted by majority to recognise Syria’s rightful sovereignty over the occupied Golan, and on considering all the measures taken by the Israeli occupation forces inside Syria as null and void. Eighty-eight states voted in favour of the draft resolution, while eight states voted against...
A LAST-DITCH legal attempt by two children to stop their father being forced onto a plane and deported to the Caribbean failed on Tuesday, leaving their family ripped apart. A letter to the court to attempt to stop the flight and a drawing from his 10-year-old son were addressed to...
SUPERMARKET giants Tesco and Morrisons have claimed almost £1bn worth of emergency finances between them – finances that were made available for shops that were forced to close during the lockdown. This is despite both supermarkets being open for business as usual! They have now after public outcry had to...
THE CONGRESS of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) is celebrating 35 years of existence – and relentless struggle – since it was formed on the 1st of December 1985 in Durban. ‘The Federation plans to roll out a campaign that celebrates this important milestone for the next twelve months,’ it...
AMERICA, the wealthiest capitalist country in the world, on Wednesday recorded its highest daily level of Covid deaths with 3,157 new deaths recorded. This exceeds the previous high of 2,607 deaths on 15 April at the start of the pandemic. New cases of coronavirus infection across the US reached a staggering...
THE UK has approved the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, paving the way for mass vaccination. Britain’s medicines regulator, the MHRA, says the jab, which offers up to 95% protection against Covid-19 illness, is safe to be rolled out. Elderly people in care homes and care home staff have been placed top of...
BY Fra Hughes PAT FINUCANE was gunned down as he sat down to dinner with his family one Sunday evening in Belfast on February 12, 1989, just two days before celebrating Valentines with his beloved wife Geraldine.
Two gunmen broke down his front door before entering the dining area and brutally...
ONLY 15 Labour MPs, including Jeremy Corbyn, were prepared last Tuesday to vote against the Tories to bring the Johnson government down! The vote on new measures to replace the national lockdown was crucial for Boris Johnson’s government, and ‘Labour leader’ Starmer refused to vote to bring the Johnson government...
THE GMB trade union has called for a parliamentary inquiry into ‘dehumanising’ working conditions at Amazon warehouses, as the company enjoyed mammoth Black Friday sales. GMB projected a huge ‘Make Amazon Pay’ banner on the online giant’s London HQ as part of the Black Friday protests. The union has now joined a global...
LABOUR leader Keir Starmer instructed his party’s MPs to abstain in last night’s vote on the Tories’ new Covid regulations tier system, thus ensuring the survival of a Tory government that is split from top to bottom and which faced a defeat that would have brought the Johnson government...
‘CALL the airport out!’ striking worker Carlos Rodriguez said at the rally outside the union Unite’s headquarters on the outskirts of Heathrow Airport yesterday. 4,000 Unite members employed by Heathrow Airport Limited (HAL) voted by an 85% majority to strike against 25% pay cuts amounting to £8,000 a year. Yesterday was...
Heathrow Airport Limited (HAL) workers are on picket lines today in the first of four days of strike action called to fight the savage wage cuts imposed on the 4,000-strong workforce through a brutal ‘fire and rehire’ programme. The union Unite recorded an 84 per cent yes vote among its...
PALESTINE President Mahmoud Abbas received a telegram from his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Sunday to mark International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people. In it, the Russian leader emphasised that his country has always been committed to achieving the legitimate right of the Palestinian people to establish an...
TODAY, members of the Unite union at Heathrow Airport Ltd (HAL) are out on strike over the ‘fire and rehire’ of 4,000 workers on new contracts – which include pay cuts of up to £8,000 a year. The one-day strike, described by the Unite leadership as ‘targeted strike action’, is...