Monthly Archives: September 2021
LABOUR Party leader Keir Starmer followed up his refusal to support the £15-an-hour motion carried by the conference on Monday by boasting in his main speech to the conference that he had ‘got Labour’s house in order’ to win an election. During his speech he did not mention ‘Socialism’ once. He...
THE LABOUR Party Conference in Brighton overwhelmingly passed a resolution condemning Israel for perpetrating an ‘ongoing Nakba’ in the occupied Palestinian territories. The motion, brought by Young Labour, was approved on Monday with about twice as many votes for as against. ‘Conference condemns the ongoing Nakba in Palestine, Israel’s militarised violence attacking...
LABOUR leader Keir Starmer’s first speech to a Labour Party conference yesterday was acclaimed by his supporters as heralding a ‘new dawn’ for the party and drawing a line under the ‘Jeremy Corbyn era’. In other words, Starmer was drawing a line under any pretence the Labour leadership have to...
THE BAKERS’ union (BFAWU), which was one of the first unions to fight to set up the Labour Party in 1902, disaffiliated from the Labour Party yesterday and walked out of the conference. The resignation follows Labour leader Kier Starmer’s refusal to back a motion for a £15-an-hour minimum wage,...
‘WE ARE taking action as part of national co-ordinated action for a pay rise of at least 5%,' Julia Roberts, Lambeth University and College Union (UCU) Branch Secretary, told News Line on the strong picket at Lambeth College yesterday morning, with students there in support. Lecturers were also out at...
Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad has welcomed any move to foster closer relations between Iran and the Arab countries, and reiterated that Damascus is not afraid of the Israeli regime and its backers. In an interview with pan-Arab satellite television channel Al Mayadeen on Sunday, Syria’s top diplomat said his government...
DRIVEN forward by the shock of capitalism’s energy catastrophe the working class is now on the march. Unite Wales union NHS members have voted to reject their three per cent pay increase. 64 per cent said they were prepared to take strike action and 80 per cent said that they...
THE SPIRALLING cost of energy, combined with a lorry driver shortage and now panic buying, has resulted in 5,500 petrol stations across the country running dry. Truckers say that they have been driven out of the profession because of bad pay, long hours, unsafe conditions and lack of facilities, like...
COSATU (the Confederation of South African Trade Unions) has vowed to ask the African National Congress (ANC) government to isolate the Eswatini (Swaziland) monarchy until it allows free political activities and human rights. The federation, through its president Zingiswa Losi, made the pledge to involve the ANC in its ongoing...
WITH the petrol stations closing, British capitalism suffered another shock yesterday when it was announced that the UK’s second biggest oil refinery is on the brink of collapse. Essar Energy, owners of the Stanlow oil refinery in Ellesmere Port, is reported to be facing bankruptcy over a debt of £223...
A MOTION from the Communication Workers Union (CWU) and Unite was passed at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton yesterday calling for ‘extending public ownership’ and demanding ‘deep and transformative change’. Public Ownership Composite Motion 5 was passed by a show of hands despite Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer...
FOREIGN Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian says Iran is ready to resume talks on reviving the 2015 nuclear deal but the administration of US President Joe Biden is sending a ‘negative sign’ by keeping illegal sanctions on Tehran. Amir-Abdollahian made the remark in an interview with NBC News on Thursday, saying Iran...
THERE is ‘no shortage of fuel’ and people should be ‘sensible’ and only fill up when they need to, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said yesterday amid long queues outside the minority of petrol stations that remained open, as British capitalism was brought unceremoniously to a halt. Shapps said he was...
THE CRISIS of capitalism is now acute. It has reached the point of explosion, with its very life blood – gas and electricity now so expensive that the bosses are warning they will have to begin shutting down production, closing petrol stations, emptying supermarket shelves, with a return to...
An unprecedented rise in the price of gas has sent shock waves through the UK energy market, forcing energy suppliers out of business, threatening massive increases to customer bills and provoking government bailouts of carbon-dioxide producers integral to the food supply chain. Speaking about the issue, Unison’s national officer for...
THE government did not act on advice from the London Fire Brigade (LFB) to issue ‘a warning to housing providers’ about the danger of combustible materials used in external cladding systems given eight years before the Grenfell Tower fire. The warning was issued to Sir Ken Knight, in his role...
NEARLY 1.5 million customers have been hit by energy firms collapsing under soaring gas prices. Avro Energy and Green ceased trading on Wednesday and their 830,000 combined customers face being switched to a new, more expensive provider, putting them at serious risk of not being able to afford to heat...
MORE than 560 Israeli settlers stormed the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the occupied Old City of East al-Quds under the protection of the regime’s forces in the latest provocation against the Palestinian people and their holy sites. The settlers desecrated the al-Aqsa Mosque on Wednesday morning to mark a Jewish religious occasion...
THE United Nations has condemned the US’s mass deportations of Haitian migrants who have been camped in squalid conditions under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas after fleeing countries in the Americas. The US started sending planeloads full of Haitian nationals back to their impoverished homeland over the weekend. The...
THE CAMPAIGN group ‘openDemocracy’ has revealed evidence of a concerted campaign by a secretive government Freedom of Information (FOI) screening unit to interfere with and block inquiries about what actually happened in the Grenfell Tower fire that claimed the lives of 72 people in 2017. The tragedy led to a...
The University and College Union (UCU) has confirmed that strike ballots will open at UK universities on Monday 18 October in rows over USS (Universities Superanuation Scheme) pensions and pay, unsafe workloads, casualisation and equality failings. The union’s higher education committee (HEC) met on Monday 20 September and confirmed the...
IN THEIR desperation to prevent a complete meltdown of Britain’s food industry the Tories have agreed to pump tens of millions of pounds into a private American company, CF Industries. This is the giant fertiliser company that supplies 60% of the country’s Carbon Dioxide (CO2) supplies as a by-product of...
THE government has been accused of using the pandemic as ‘a smokescreen’ to push through the Health and Care Bill which will open the floodgates for more NHS privatisation, the union Unite warned yesterday. Unite, which has 100,000 members working in the health sector, said the bill, which has its...
A coalition of organisations joined together on Monday to oppose train operator LNER’s proposed cuts to ticket office opening hours at Berwick-upon-Tweed; Darlington; Doncaster; Durham; Edinburgh; Grant-ham; London King’s Cross; Newark North Gate; Newcastle; Peterborough; Retford; Wakefield Westgate and York train stations. The proposals would see the ticket offices at...
NEARLY 200 human rights organisations are holding Israel fully responsible for the lives and safety of six Palestinian prisoners who tunnelled their way out of a maximum security Israeli detention centre earlier this month and were re-arrested later. A total of 199 organisations, in a joint statement released on Monday,...
‘THERE is absolutely no question of the lights going out,’ Kwasi Kwarteng, Tory business secretary claimed yesterday He was making a statement after a number of companies went bust as global gas prices soar. Kwarteng claimed: ‘There will be no question of people being unable to heat their homes, there will...
HAMAS has denounced the ‘normalisation deals’ with Israel, because they are aimed at legitimatising the regime in the Middle East and forging an alliance with Tel Aviv. In a statement released last Saturday evening, the resistance movement described the so-called Abraham Accords, struck by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain,...
TORY ministers were locked in crisis talks with energy suppliers yesterday as the threat of gas shortages in Britain are so huge that they ‘could easily see a three-day working week’ across entire industries and companies by the winter. The boss of Iceland supermarket told the BBC he is ‘shocked’...
THE TORY government claimed yesterday that there is no threat to the UK gas supplies, despite four energy privateers being widely tipped to go bust this week, while food suppliers are warning that they are ‘on a knife-edge situation’. Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said yesterday that energy security is ‘an...
OVER 400 angry leaseholders from the End Our Cladding Scandal campaign, the National Leasehold Campaign rallied in Parliament Square last Thursday demanding an end to the cladding scandal. Buses had travelled from Bristol, Yorkshire, Liverpool, Manchester, Wales and Leeds. Many of the campaigners are facing bills of thousands of pounds to...
IT HAS emerged that the AUKUS security pact between Australia, the UK and the US, to supply Australia with nuclear submarines was agreed in secret at the recent June G7 summit in Cornwall, which President Biden, PM Johnson and President Macron all attended. The French President was kept out of...
MORE than 10,000 people have signed the BMA’s petition calling for the Westminster government to properly fund general practice and source more desperately-needed GPs. The petition, launched less than a month ago, is part of the BMA’s Support Your Surgery campaign, which explains the impact that a lack of government...
NURSES’ unions have declared that World Patient Safety Day 2021 must be a ‘wake-up call’ to ministers to tackle – ‘urgently’ – the nursing workforce crisis which is ‘currently on a knife-edge’. Nursing staff are relied on to deliver safe and effective care in hospitals, the community, care homes, GP...
THE TORY government is pushing its Building Safety Bill that it says addresses the big issue of fire safety raised by the horrific Grenfell Tower fire. There are still many thousands of unsafe buildings all over the UK packed with tenants and their children. However, the shameful truth is...
THE UK, US and Australia have announced a security pact in the Asia-Pacific, to step up their war against China. China’s embassy in Washington reacted by accusing the countries of a ‘Cold War mentality and ideological prejudice’. China has condemned the agreement as ‘extremely irresponsible’ with foreign ministry spokesman Zhao...
WHILE a United Nations panel has found that the daily Saudi-led air raids on Yemen have caused more than 18,000 civilian casualties since 2015, 90% of the country’s 30 million population are waging a daily struggle to obtain sufficient clean water to survive. Located in a dry and semi-arid region,...
THE UK INFLATION rate hit a nine-year high in August with prices increasing by 3.2%, a sharp increase from the 2% recorded in July, way above the Bank of England’s target level of keeping the inflation rate at 2%. This was the biggest month-on-month jump in the Consumer Price Index...
GAVIN Williamson was the first to go in Tory PM Johnson’s reshuffle yesterday as he was sacked from his post as education secretary. Then Robert Jenrick confirmed that he too has been sacked by Tory PM Johnson as housing secretary. Rehana Azam, GMB national secretary, said: ‘We’ve had nothing but...
The Gaza Health Ministry has held Israel responsible for the expiry of 50,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccine recently delivered to the besieged coastal enclave. In a statement carried by Arab48 news website on Monday night, the ministry said the vaccines had been kept in inappropriate conditions and Israeli authorities had...
THE UK government stepped up its war with China this week when it took the decision to ban the Chinese ambassador to the UK from the grounds of both the House of Commons and the Lords. Ambassador Zheng Zeguang was banned by the Speakers of both Houses from attending a...
A BARRISTER for survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire told the public inquiry that a ‘total neglect of safety’ was at the heart of the disaster. Local residents, survivors and the families of those who died are demanding that all flammable materials are banned.’ Stephanie Barwise QC, who represents some...
Over 660 frontline healthcare, community, social and education workers have called for the Policing Bill to be scrapped ahead of a key debate in the House of Lords next week. In a letter to Home Secretary Priti Patel, sent on Monday 13 September, the signatories warned that the Serious Violence...
