Monthly Archives: March 2021
OVER 3,000 people massed around the Clapham Common bandstand on Saturday afternoon for a vigil in respect of Sarah Everard who was abducted and murdered after she walked home from a friend’s house on March 3rd. The man accused of her murder is a serving Metropolitan Police officer. Around the bandstand,...
THE MASS protest marches in Greece against the sheer police violence and oppression have been developing all last week into an insurgency against the dictatorial rule of the Kyriakos Mitsotakis government. Following last Tuesday’s huge march and street battles between youth and armed riot police in the Nea Smyrni Athens...
WITH its dispersal of the vigil at Clapham Common Bandstand on Saturday, where thousands of people were peacefully paying their last respects to the murdered Sarah Everard, the capitalist state, and its Metropolitan Police force has shown its contempt for the working people of the UK. The Met Police Commissioner...
SCOTLAND Yard is to be investigated over its failure to deal with an allegation of two acts of indecent exposure by a serving police officer, who is now suspected of murdering Sarah Everard just days after these two incidents. The police watchdog will consider if Metropolitan Police officers ‘responded appropriately’...
THE UNITE union has expressed its ‘deep concern’ at management proposals to axe more than 200 jobs at the Aston Martin site in the Vale of Glamorgan, South Wales. ‘The scale of the proposed job losses is extremely concerning,’ its statement warned, ‘and raises serious questions regarding Aston Martin’s employment...
THE SURGE in coronavirus cases in January hit key services including cancer and even routine surgery, NHS England figures released on Thursday exposed. Over the last decade the Tories have declared war on the NHS, closing A&Es, maternity services, children’s departments; even entire hospitals have shut down. Tory cuts have created...
A PROTEST of over a hundred Burmese outside the Myanmar embassy in Mayfair, London yesterday demanded the release of their leaders arrested during the military coup of February 1st. Student Chit Oomaung told News Line: ‘We are here to stand with the people of Myanmar to reject the military coup...
THE COMPANY that made the Grenfell Tower cladding was warned of the risks of a building fire that would kill ‘60 to 70’ people a decade before the tragedy. The chilling prediction of the Grenfell fire came at a presentation attended by a marketing manager from Arconic. Gerard Sontag sent an...
STUDENTS at Wits University in South Africa are embarking on a strike, warning that returning students may be unable to continue with their studies this academic year, because of student debt. Wits, UKZN, UFS and other institutions too intend to disallow students with historical debt to register, citing financial strains...
THE COLLAPSE of Greensill Capital, a finance company which acted as a massive lender to companies, has sent shock waves throughout the UK steel industry and now it turns out threatens to cost pension funds millions of pounds. Greensill operated by buying invoices between companies and their suppliers. Greensill would...
ASYLUM seekers are housed in cramped and filthy conditions at two military barracks, with a number of residents feeling suicidal, inspectors have said. Key findings of an inspection of the use of contingency asylum accommodation from site visits to Penally Camp in Pembrokeshire and Napier Barracks, near Folkstone, Kent, by...
ON TUESDAY, the Tories unveiled The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill to stamp down on protests and give the police, courts and the Tory government sweeping powers over any show of dissent. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill includes plans to ‘strengthen police powers to tackle non-violent protests...
THERE was a strong picket line at Harrow bus garage yesterday morning despite the pouring rain. London Sovereign drivers were on their third day of strike action against pay cuts and against the attack on their terms and conditions by the French privateer RATP. John Murphy, Unite member and striking driver,...
THE POLICE, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which threatens the fundamental right to protest, was introduced to Parliament yesterday. The government published some of the features contained in the Bill, which also includes a vicious attack on the Traveller community. The new Bill gives officers sweeping powers to dictate the start...
THE BRITISH government has decided to ‘balance the books on the backs of the starving people of Yemen,’ in an act that will see tens of thousands die and damage the UK’s global influence, the head of the UN’s Office for Humanitarian Affairs has said. Mark Lowcock, formerly a senior...
GREENSILL Capital, the biggest lender to crisis-ridden steel magnate Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance, collapsed into administration yesterday. It has gone bust, and 5,000 steel jobs at Gupta’s Liberty Steel are now under the most severe threat. Gupta is now holding crisis talks with trade unions including Unite and the Community...
‘TEACHERS are concerned that the government have not taken the safety measures that they should have done,’ Dr Mary Bousted, Joint General Secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), said yesterday morning as all schools in England re-opened their doors to millions of pupils. ‘The government said that schools are...
Female doctors say they have ‘felt compelled to step up’ during the pandemic, even though they knew they were at risk, as BMA research shows that they have been consistently taking on extra – often unpaid – work to the detriment of their own wellbeing and mental health. In a diary, written as...
YESTERDAY the TUC joined with aviation bosses and Heathrow management in a joint statement calling for the Tories to ‘protect the UK’s vital aviation sector and secure its recovery.’ The statement said that Britain’s aviation industry is facing financial meltdown unless it gets more government support saying: ‘Thousands of jobs in...
WITH THE Royal College of Nursing launching a £35 million strike fund to defeat the Tory government’s 1% NHS pay insult at the weekend, Labour shadow ministers said yesterday that they would be prepared to join nurses on picket lines. A new opinion poll published in yesterday’s Observer newspaper also...
‘THE SUPPORT has been amazing,’ striker Peter Gleaves told News Line at the Queens Road Depot in Manchester yesterday, where Go North West bus drivers have entered their second week of strike action against fire and rehire. ‘Obviously we have been out for a week, more than a week ......
STUART Appelbaum president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) has spoken about the campaign to unionise Amazon workers. ‘In Bessemer, Alabama, a historic, worker-driven grassroots union organising campaign is underway at the Amazon warehouse there. Votes are being cast and will be counted.
And the campaign could drastically...
AFTER the Tory insult of a 1% pay offer to the heroic health workers, the working class and youth are boiling with anger and are in full support of the RCN setting up its £35 million strike fund. Workers are demanding that the trade union leaders not only give big...
FOLLOWING the recommendation of the ‘slap in the face’ 1% pay award by the Department of Health and Social Care in its evidence to the NHS Pay Review Body, the Governing Council of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) convened an emergency meeting. At that meeting, the RCN Council voted...
‘ESCALATE the action – national strike now!’ bus workers told News Line yesterday on the first day of another two days of strike action by drivers employed by bus privateer RATP across eight London garages, continuing today. Drivers employed by the French government-owned RATP came out on three days of...
THE RULING Fatah party is going to run in the coming Palestinian legislative elections planned for May 22 in one list, today said Jibril Rjoub, secretary of Fatah’s Central Committee. He told Palestine TV that ‘Fatah has taken a final decision and that is it will run in one list...
NURSES, midwives and NHS workers around the country are enraged by the Tory plan set out in the Chancellor’s budget to ‘reward’ them with a 1% rise. On hearing the news, the RCN council have voted to set up a £35m industrial action fund. Health workers are determined that they...
AMNESTY International (AI) described yesterday’s decision by Fatou Bensouda, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), to open a formal investigation into the situation in Palestine as a ‘momentous breakthrough’. ‘Today’s confirmation by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court that she has opened an investigation into crimes under international...
RESPONDING to Tory Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s budget speech last Wednesday, PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka commented: ‘Rishi Sunak has today failed to vaccinate the economy from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. ‘His refusal to lift the pay cap on civil servants and other public sector workers, who have kept the...
THE chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC), Fatou Bensouda, confirmed on Wednesday that the ICC has opened a formal investigation into war crimes committed by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Bensouda’s announcement was welcomed as ‘a historic day in the...
POLICE in Myanmar opened fired on protesters on Tuesday in several cities with live rounds, witnesses and local media reported, killing at least nine people in the worst bloodshed since 18 were killed on Sunday. The people were killed in separate protests in different cities, including Mandalay and Yangon. The videos...
MANY of the measures announced in yesterday’s Budget by Tory chancellor Rishi Sunak had been widely publicised in the run up to his appearance in the House of Commons, mainly focusing on the extension of the Job Retention Scheme – furlough – until the end of September. This, along with...
FRENCH trade unions have called on workers to mobilise and strike on March 8th to demand equal pay for women and men. The CGT trade union federation said last week: ‘Monday, March 1st, all companies must have published their professional equality index.
‘It should be remembered that the initial objective of...
FRENCH ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy has been sentenced to three years in jail, two of them suspended, for corruption. He was convicted of trying to bribe a judge in 2014 by suggesting he could secure a prestigious job for him in return for information. Sarkozy, 66, is the first former French...
SOME 4,000 students and workers marched in Athens on Monday night in the biggest demonstration so far in support of imprisoned hunger striker Dimitris Koufontinas, now in the 55th day of his total hunger strike. He is being held in a critical condition in the intensive care unit of Lamia...
PRIVATISED rail profits have racked up 15 pence of every pound passengers paid on fares, transport union the RMT said yesterday on the day rail fares were raised by 2.6 per cent. New research by the RMT reveals that the private train operating and rolling stock companies’ profits from last...
IRAN has summoned Turkey’s Ambassador, Derya Ors, over the Turkish interior minister’s ‘unacceptable’ claim about the presence of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militant group in the Islamic Republic. The Turkish envoy was called in on Sunday and notified of the protest.
The development came after earlier the same day, Turkey...
THE WEEKEND saw the bloodiest crackdown by the Myanmar military dictatorship when police and soldiers opened fire on demonstrators killing at least 18 and wounding over 30 people. According to the UN Human Rights Office on Sunday: ‘In several locations throughout the country, police and military forces have confronted peaceful...
SYRIA and its allies have angrily condemned the first airstrike ordered by new US President Joe Biden, which the Pentagon claimed had targeted Iran-backed militants in Syria. Syria on Friday condemned ‘in the strongest terms the US aggression on areas in Deir Ezzor near the Syrian-Iraqi border yesterday, stressing it...
PRESIDENT Biden has begun his presidency with a cowardly missile attack on Syria and a shameful wooing, in the most hypocritical manner possible, of the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, who as the CIA have reported gave the go-ahead to Saudi gangsters in his employ, to...
Scores of striking Go North West bus drivers massed outside the company’s Queens Road depot in Manchester yesterday, on the first day of their indefinite strike against the firm’s plan to ‘Fire and Rehire’ the entire workforce on much lower pay. The privateer is seeking to impose massive £2,500 pay...
ONE of the UK’s biggest GP practice operators has been taken over by the US health insurance group Centene Corporation. This has been condemned by many NHS GPs as the ‘privatisation of the NHS by stealth’, prompting calls for an official investigation into what campaigners claim. The merger will create the...