Monthly Archives: February 2021

THE HEAD of the Palestinian National Independent Assembly says a London-based law firm has been hired to prosecute the British government over the 1917 Balfour Declaration that paved the way for the creation of Israel. Munib al-Masri said in a Thursday statement that the Sunday decision by the Court of...

THE LEADERSHIP of the Trade Union Congress, a body which includes 6.4 million workers and has the power to shut the entire country down with a general strike, has given up any semblance of a fight against the Tories and is now calling on them to bring in a...

THE UNITE trade union, which represents over 400 bus drivers at Go North West, has written to the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, urging him to intervene, having becoming increasingly alarm-ed at the company’s plans to strike-break and continue to run services when strikes begin tomorrow. The bus drivers...

IN THE House of Commons on Wednesday, Conservative MP Royston Smith said the housing market was at risk of partial ‘collapse’, with many leaseholders unable to sell. He urged MPs to ‘think very carefully before they abandoned thousands of constituents’, warning: ‘They will not forget and they will not forgive.’ However,...

HUNDREDS of thousands of workers across South Africa downed tools on Wednesday, February 24, as a part of a general strike called by the left wing South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU). With 21 affiliated unions, SAFTU represents a total of 800,000 workers in the country. Demonstrations were held in...

IN ADVANCE of the budget next week, former Tory chancellor Philip Hammond delivered a shot across the bows of the Tory government with a warning that they cannot carry on blagging about the strength of the UK economy, and that Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak must risk unpopularity and...

LONDON bus drivers employed by French government-owned privateer RATP took their third day of strike action against £2,500 pay cuts yesterday, with another two days of action planned for Friday and Saturday next week. There were two powerful picket lines at Hounslow bus garage in west London, where workers told...

THE G7 (Group of Seven) countries have ‘firmly’ condemned the heavy-handed crackdown, including the use of live ammunition, committed by Myanmar’s junta against the anti-coup protesters. Seeing the working class fight back with a general strike, the foreign ministers of the G7 countries, comprising Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain,...

AN ARTICLE in Wednesday’s Daily Telegraph by its chief economics commentator, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, highlighted the inevitable consequences following the massive amount of borrowing carried out by governments and central banks. Last week the global banking body, the Institute of International Finance (IIF) revealed that global debt by the end of...

THE BUS strike by 2,200 Unite members employed by the privateer RATP at eight London garages was solid yesterday, with strikers demanding that the action is expanded in order to defeat the company’s attacks on their pay and conditions. The strike is against pay cuts of up to £2,500 per...

COTTON processing workers in Argentina began a new strike on Monday, 22 February 2021, demanding wage increases, the latest in a string of farming sector standoffs in the country. Announcing the strike action on Saturday, the Federation of oilseeds workers said workers in cotton processing (ginning) plants have seen their...

THE UK’s unemployment figure rose to 5.1% in the three months to December, a five-year high, official figures from the Office for National Statistics show. 1.74 million people were unemployed in the October to December period, up 454,000 from the same quarter in 2019. The figures show 726,000 fewer people...

‘THERE IS no credible route to a zero Covid Britain or indeed a zero Covid world,’ Tory PM Johnson told Parliament yesterday, setting out his road map to ending the lockdown. This is despite China having successfully eradicated the virus very early on, saving hundreds of thousands of lives. Johnson said:...

‘WITH these private companies running London’s buses it’s a race to the bottom – the only way to stop it is to renationalise London Transport,’ Steve Stockwell, Unite Regional Officer, said on the picket line outside Hounslow Bus Garage yesterday morning. 2,200 Unite members went on strike at eight London...

IRANIAN Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has told Press TV in an exclusive interview that the Islamic Republic is open to negotiations on reviving the historic 2015 nuclear JCPOA accord – once all the other signatories start fulfilling their obligations. The top Iranian diplomat also said US President Joe Biden...

MYANMAR (formerly called Burma) was brought to a halt yesterday as hundreds of thousands of workers and youth answered the call for a general strike to bring down the military junta which seized power in the country three weeks ago. The army seized power from Aung San Suu Kyi’s government...

DRIVERS employed by the RATP bus privateer begin strike action today against £2,500 pay cuts, with 2,200 workers striking at Edgware, Epsom, Fulwell, Harrow, Hounslow, Park Royal, Shepherd’s Bush and Tolworth garages. Some of the garages are continuing their strike action for three days until Wednesday. Unite regional officer for RATP...

CHINA and Russia say the United States should immediately lift the sanctions it has re-imposed on Iran and fulfil its obligations in order to preserve the multilateral deal of 2015. In recent weeks, Tehran and Washington have been at loggerheads over which side should first return to compliance with the...

THE PALESTINIAN Authority’s Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs Commission said yesterday that the Israeli occupation authorities are maintaining the unfair policy of medical negligence of Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli detention. The Commission said in a statement that the occupation authorities’ prisoners are only to get painkillers rather than a genuine...

‘WE HAVE warned that the government’s planned pay freeze will inflict yet another real-terms cut to salaries, adding to the damage caused by below-inflation awards since 2010,’ teachers’ unions told the government this week. ‘It will further worsen teacher shortages because of the long-term impact on recruitment and retention.’ In their...

THE GRENFELL inquiry has heard from the bosses of both the insulation and the cladding companies that produced the flammable material installed on the tower. Both the insulation and the cladding contributed to the rapid spread of the horrific fire and the deaths of the 72 men, women and children...

THE GMB union scored an ‘historic’ win on Friday when the Supreme Court passed judgement in the union’s landmark workers’ rights case against Uber. This is after four court wins in four years. The GMB will now consult with Uber driver members over their forthcoming compensation claim at the Employment...

LONDON bus drivers are preparing for strike action starting next Monday. Unite has called a series of strikes against massive attacks on pay and conditions by the bus privateers, with some garages striking for three days next week and others the following week. Unite members at Hounslow Bus Garage in West...

IRANIAN and Russian naval forces have practised anti-piracy operations, during which they rescued two hijacked merchant vessels, on the second day of their joint naval manoeuvres in the Sea of Oman and the northern part of the Indian Ocean. According to the manoeuvres’ spokesman, Rear Admiral Gholamreza Tahani, the commercial...

THIS WEEK, the global banking body, the Institute of International Finance (IIF), revealed that global debt had shot up to an eye-watering $281 trillion by the end of 2020 and is set to rise even higher in 2021. This debt pile is over 355% of the global Gross Domestic Product...

‘THE CENTRE of Indian Trade Unions vehemently denounces the utterly humiliating and derogatory statement by the Prime Minister against the struggling farmers and their supporters on the floor of Parliament,’ said CITU General Secretary Tapan Sen in a major statement last week. He continued: ‘The Prime Minister called the struggling...

FAST food workers in 15 cities across America came out on strike on Tuesday demanding a nationwide $15 minimum wage, union recognition rights and better protection from the coronavirus pandemic that has devastated the US, with low paid workers bearing the brunt of infections and deaths. For eight years, low...

CLAUDE SCHMIDT, president of Arconic that made the Grenfell Tower cladding, has said it was not his ‘priority’ to understand fire safety tests and certificates. He admitted to the inquiry into the fire that he only learned about a key British fire safety standard after the disaster. The inquiry also heard...

THE RCGP (Royal College of General Practitioners) has written to Home Secretary Priti Patel demanding that the government must act ‘urgently’ to prevent newly-qualified foreign GPs from being deported as they struggle to secure visas during the pandemic. The RCGP warned the extra pressure placed on practices by Covid-19 meant...

IN 2019, the UK Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) published their two-part staff guide on conducting fraud investigations. Privacy International (a UK-registered charity which fights to protect and defend privacy across the world) went through the 995 pages to understand how those investigations happen and how the DWP is...

LONDON bus passengers should give their full support to London bus workers as they prepare for massive strike actions in the capital called by the Unite trade union. The first wave of strike action, which starts on Monday, involves bus drivers employed by the French-owned company RATP, which operates three...

CHAOS reigned at Heathrow Airport with five-hour queues reported over the last few days risking passengers spreading the virus to each other, as the first quarantine hotels opened. As of yesterday anybody arriving in England from a ‘red list’ country is required to quarantine in a government-approved hotel for a period of...

ISRAEL yesterday notified Palestinians in the town of Yatma, south of Nablus, in the northern occupied West Bank, of its intention to demolish their homes, according to a local activist. Ghassan Daghlas, who monitors colonial settlement activities in the northern West Bank, told WAFA Israeli forces handed 15 Palestinian residents...

THE SPLIT within the Tory Party over ending the coronavirus lockdown broke out in the open at the weekend when Tory Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab publicly rejected demands from the Tory Covid Recovery Group (CRG) for a firm date for reopening British capitalism. The CRG group of 63 Tory MPs...

YEMENI forces successfully launched a missile attack on the airbase in southwestern Saudi Arabia. The spokesman for Yemeni Armed Forces confirmed that army troops and allied fighters from Popular Committees launched the missile attack on Saudi Arabia’s southwestern region of Asir, in retaliation for a devastating war led by the kingdom against the...

EX-PRESIDENT Donald Trump has welcomed his impeachment acquittal on the charge of ‘inciting insurrection’, saying, his political movement ‘to Make America Great Again’ has only just begun. He was completely unrepentant, and has defeated the second bid to impeach him. He called the trial ‘yet another phase of the greatest...

FOREIGN Secretary Dominic Raab rebuked the Covid Recovery Group (CRG) of rebel Tory MPs yesterday, insisting that the government won’t be held to an ‘arbitrary target’ of lifting lockdown by the end of April. Raab rejected calls from the CRG, which comprises 63 mainly north of England Tory MPs, demanding...

THE UK economy nosedived by a record 9.9%, the biggest slump in modern times, with the contraction in 2020 ‘more than twice as much as the previous largest annual fall on record,’ the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said yesterday. Tory Chancellor Rishi Sunak responded by reiterating that the books...

ISRAEL plans to build a new settlement in the central area of the occupied Jerusalem al-Quds, despite international condemnation, a new report says. Israeli newspaper Calcalist reported on Thursday that the new settlement, to be built near Malha Mall in central Jerusalem al-Quds, will include hundreds of settler units and offices...

TORY Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock outlined the new government White Paper in Parliament on Thursday pushing a complete reorganisation of the NHS, breaking the NHS into local regions. This will mean that in richer areas people will get treated and in poorer areas they will receive...

TORY Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock outlined the new White Paper in Parliament yesterday pushing a complete reorganisation of the NHS, breaking the NHS into local regions, where richer areas people will get treated and in poorer areas they will receive inadequate care while giving private companies...

THOUSANDS of staff working at the DVLA will be balloted for strike action over continuing Covid health and safety concerns, the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) has announced. The ballot will open on 18th February and close on March 11th, and could see spring walkouts. The DVLA (Driver and Vehicle...

GREEK students fought a pitched battle with riot police in Athens on Wednesday as the Greek parliament debated new laws to station security personnel on university campuses. Thousands of students clashed with police in Syntagma Square outside the Hellenic parliament building as MPs debated the new laws that would overturn...

‘THREE and a half years on from Grenfell and hundreds of thousands can’t sleep at night because their homes are unsafe,’ Labour’s Shadow Housing Secretary Thangam Debbonaire, said yesterday. She was replying to a statement on housing and building safety by the Tory Housing Minister Robert Jenrick in which he...

STATEMENT of the Workers Revolutionary League – the Soviet section of the International Committee of the Fourth International: During this time we’re facing the new attempts of pro-imperialist forces to restore capitalism in Russia. This time these attempts are connected with the arrest of Alexey Navalnyy – the leader of right-wing...