Monthly Archives: March 2021
‘INDEFINITE strike action to win it quick and win it now,’ Hounslow bus garage driver and Unite member Stoyan Ivanov demanded yesterday. More than 2,000 drivers employed by bus privateer RATP are to take a 7th and 8th day of strike action against £2,500 pay cuts at five London garages...
FRANCE’S major trade union confederation, the CGT, has announced a ‘spring of struggles and has called for ‘joint action between the different professions in struggle’. There were demonstrations and protests throughout France last Saturday against evictions.
The annual winter ban on tenant evictions has been extended from March 31 to June...
LAWYERS for victims of the Grenfell fire have indicted the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea council, which owned the Grenfell tower block, and its building managers accusing them of ‘neglect, indifference and discrimination’ towards residents. They told the on-going inquiry that worried residents who raised safety concerns before the...
‘GEORGE Floyd was living, breathing, walking and talking just fine until the police put him face down in handcuffs and put a knee on his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds,’ said Ben Crump, Attorney for the family, outside the court yesterday where former police officer Derek Chauvin...
1.1 million workers in Australia will have their ‘JobKeeper’ payments removed from this week, with the Head of Treasury estimating that between 100,000 and 150,000 workers face the sack as a result of the programme ending. Of the remaining million workers, hundreds of thousands are likely to lose hours, shifts...
THOUSANDS of workers and young people in cities throughout the country, peacefully protesting against the Tory Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, were met with violent and brutal attacks from the police for the second weekend running. In Bristol on Friday night, over 1,000 people holding a peaceful demonstration outside...
THE GMB and Unite unions yesterday called for Liberty Steel to be nationalised after the Tory government rejected a request for £170m in financial support to keep it going. The firm’s founder Sanjeev Gupta sent a letter last week asking for help to pay day-to-day operating expenses and absorb recent...
‘KILL the Bill’ mass demonstrations took place against the Tory government’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill in cities around the country on Friday and Saturday. Protests were held in UK towns and cities including Manchester, Brighton, Bristol, Bath, Falmouth, Nottingham, Sheffield, Cambridge and Kingston.
In Manchester ‘significant disruption’ was caused...
THE NUMBER of protesters killed in Myanmar since February’s military coup has surpassed 320, according to the country’s Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, which said its total only included documented cases and that the real number was likely to be much higher. The latest tally came as security forces shot...
DURING a telephone conversation with Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Friday, US President Biden proposed that Johnson adopt and join his anti-China crusade, to confront and drive back the Chinese revolution, which has liberated China from imperialism, after being ruthlessly exploited from the period of the Opium Wars onwards,...
Open air meeting organised by North Kensington Council of Action
Wednesday, 14th April 2021 at 5.30pm
Outside Ladbroke Grove tube station on the monthly remembrance of the Grenfell Tower fire we remember those who tragically died. Cladding and insulation companies knew cladding was flammable!
Kensington & Chelsea council used Rydon to...
PEOPLE across the country are being asked to put colourful posters in their windows in support of a proper NHS pay rise, in a campaign launched yesterday (Friday 26 March) by health unions representing more than a million health workers. Fourteen unions – including Unite, Unison and the Royal College...
RAIL UNION the RMT has confirmed that planned industrial action by ScotRail conductors will go ahead from this Sunday – in a fight for equality and justice over enhanced payments for rest day working. The RMT, its members say, is appalled that ‘the company are now slandering their own staff...
CHINA has imposed sanctions on nine UK citizens – including five MPs for spreading ‘lies and disinformation’ about the country. This is China’s very minor response to the UK imposing its first-ever sanctions on Chinese officials earlier in the week. The retaliation measures by China are the first sanctions imposed...
THE CORONAVIRUS Act was put to Parliament for renewal yesterday, extending the sweeping police powers contained in it for a further six months until October. Matt Hancock, Tory Health and Social Care Secretary, proposing the renewal, addressed Parliament yesterday afternoon. He faced opposition from some of his own Tory MPs as...
DOCTORS’ union the Medical Association (BMA) underlined their demand on Thursday for a pay increase for NHS staff. Responding to a recent analysis by the Labour Party which warns of a further exodus of NHS staff if there is not a increase in pay, BMA consultants committee chair, Dr Rob...
ON WEDNESDAY the leaders of 12 of the largest and most prominent trade unions issued a letter demanding immediate action to ensure transparency in the Mittings public inquiry into the use by the state of undercover police spies. The entire Mittings inquiry was set up as a result of the...
LEADERS of many of the largest and most prominent trade unions in the UK, have jointly signed a letter demanding that immediate action is taken to ensure transparency in the Mittings public inquiry into undercover police officers. The letter is a result of increasing concerns that the crucial next stage...
UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, said that it is ‘deeply saddened at the loss of life and immense suffering caused’ by Monday’s massive fire in the Kutupalong Balukali refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Based on provisional reports, as of Tuesday morning, 15 refugees were confirmed to have tragically lost...
IN A VIDEO call with Tory backbenchers on Tuesday night, prime minister Boris Johnson boasted that capitalist greed was responsible for the UK’s vaccination programme saying: ‘The reason we have the vaccine success is because of capitalism, because of greed, my friends.’ Johnson quickly realised that blurting out the truth...
YESTERDAY’S decision by the Court of Appeal to overturn the convictions of the Shrewsbury Pickets after a nearly 50-year campaign has been hailed as a ‘joyous and just day’ for the 24 workers and their families by Unite said. Unite general secretary Len McCluskey said: ‘Today is a joyous and...
N 2012, French union confederation Force Ouvrière decided to take legal action to shed light on the discovery of a ‘surveillance and espionage service’ on employees of the Ikea brand by their management. This is not the first time that the brand has committed offences and violated the rights of...
ON 23 March 2020, Boris Johnson outlined measures to stop the spread of Covid-19, with a series of stop-go lockdowns. Since then, of the major capitalist economies, the UK’s official death toll has risen from 364 to 126,172, second only to the US death toll of 555,945. In the total...
THE ‘ROGUE bus service’ being operated by Go North West in the Greater Manchester area is under investigation for serial Covid-19 safety failures and breaches of other vital safety regulations, the Unite union reported yesterday. Go North West, which is part of the multi-billion pound Go Ahead group, launched its...
VITAL public services such as schools and hospitals face serious disruptions should government fail to prepare for the expiry of its 700 PFI contracts, warn MPs on the Public Accounts Committee (PAC). The summary of the latest PAC report, ‘Managing the expiry of PFI contracts’, continues: ‘These PFI projects represent public...
LEN McCLUSKEY, general secretary of the Unite union, said that Labour Party leader Keir Starmer faces being ‘dumped into the dustbin of history’ in an interview with Times Radio on Sunday. McCluskey lamented that under Starmer, voters ‘don’t understand’ what Labour stands for anymore and that the Labour leader needed...
At least 36 people were arrested for ‘breaching Covid regulations’ after a march of thousands of protesters through central London came under attack by riot police on Saturday with some fighting back. Protesters included people who had also been attacked by police at the vigil following the death of Sarah...
OVERWORKED doctors must be allowed to rest and recover so we can keep patients safe, doctors’ union the British Medical Association (BMA) warned. The BMA said: ‘Doctors must be allowed to rest and recuperate from the exhaustion of working throughout the pandemic if we want to have safe patient care...
THE latest available statistics give an indication of just how diseased the Metropolitan Police is, and just how great the need is for it to be disbanded and replaced by a workers’ militia, and socialism. The Observer newspaper has got its hands on documents that show there were a total...
‘EVERY member of the RMT welcomes the Scottish government’s announcement that the publicly-owned Operator of Last Resort will run the ScotRail franchise from March 2022,’ said RMT rail union General Secretary Mick Cash on Thursday. He stressed: ‘RMT welcomes today’s announcement from the Scottish Government that ScotRail services will be...
THE DECREPIT state of British capitalism has been exposed for all to see. There is borrowing at an all-time high, industry is shutting down, high street shops are closing – while mass unemployment, and homelessness with over five million children in poverty is the new reality. Coronavirus has exposed all...
UNITE has called ‘targeted’ strike action at Heathrow Airport Limited (HAL) from Friday 2nd April to Sunday 25th April, with 41 strikes over the 23-day period, involving engineering, airside operations, landside operations, fire service, campus security and central terminal operations. Each sector will be taking seven days of strike action....
ISRAEL will be hit by 2,000 missiles a day in a future war with Hezbollah an Israeli general has said. A high-ranking Israeli military commander says the Hezbollah resistance movement can fire 2,000 missiles per day towards Israel in case a military confrontation breaks out with Lebanon. Speaking at the B’Sheva...
ON TUESDAY, Norman Tebbit, former Tory minister in the government of Margaret Thatcher, proudly announced that while he was employment secretary from 1981-83 he regularly received briefings from the police and special branch about trade unions and the activities of trade unionists. So detailed were these reports that Tebbit boasted...
UNITE members at RATP London United yesterday held their sixth day of strike action against £2,500 per annum pay cuts being imposed by French government-owned bus privateer. They sent greetings to striking colleagues in Manchester.
Hounslow Bus Garage Unite Rep Ian May said: ‘We are fully in support of the guys...
IRANIAN President Hassan Rouhani said on Tuesday that the former ‘criminal’ US administration did great injustice to the people of Iran with its terrorist acts, and that the new leadership in the White House has so far failed to take any practical measure to make up for the past...
THE LARGE taxi app company Uber announced yesterday it would start treating over 70,000 of its drivers in the UK as employed workers entitled to benefits such as holiday pay and pensions and the National Living Wage. The climb down by the ride-hailing giant, which has always insisted that drivers...
MANCHESTER Go North West strikers were out yesterday mass picketing the depot as part of their indefinite strike. Go North West Unite branch secretary Pat Gleave told News Line: ‘Morale is still very good. The company is under a lot of pressure.’
‘The management have put out a lot of buses...
‘Over our long fight for the truth there has been no remorse shown by the police – in fact they have tried to disrupt the investigation at every turn, determined to cover their own backs,’ Leon Briggs’ mother, Margaret Briggs, said after the inquest into her son’s death delivered...
WITH Britain in a major economic and political crisis the Johnson government is not only preparing for a war with the UK working class, to make it pay for the crisis, it is also preparing for new imperialist wars to try to rebuild British imperialism’s ‘lost empire’. With the UK...
‘THIS GOVERNMENT was elected a year ago on a manifesto to support the police and uphold law and order,’ Tory Home Secretary Priti Patel said yesterday during the Second Reading of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, a Bill which Labour pledged to vote against. ‘I have worked closely...
United Workers Union (UWU) members at the McCormick Foods manufacturing site in Clayton, south-east Melbourne, Australia, have just started their third week out on strike. They are locked in a dispute with the company over a new enterprise agreement, to replace the one that expired in 2016 – the last...
ANDREW Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England, used an interview on the BBC yesterday to once again insist that British capitalism is not fast going over the cliff of collapse, and that the Bank is ‘not out of firepower’ in defending the economy. This was just the latest...