Monthly Archives: March 2022
REPEATED catastrophic failures at an NHS trust meant that more than 200 babies may have died and that many others were left with life-changing injuries, a report has said. In all, the report’s author Senior Midwife Donna Ockenden identified 60 specific improvements that could be made at Shrewsbury and Telford...
MICK LYNCH, RMT General Secretary said yesterday ‘Despite all the bluster, Grant Shapps has failed to grasp the opportunity to adequately stand up to the banditry behaviour of P&O. ‘The Prime Minister repeatedly said to parliament that the Government would be taking legal action to save British seafarers’ jobs but...
RUSSIAN Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu says Moscow has completed the main objectives of the first phase of the special military operation in Ukraine and that the army will be focusing on the ‘liberation’ of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, collectively known as the Donbass. Shoigu said in a meeting at...
THE INDEPENDENT Ockenden inquiry into maternity provisions at the Shrewsbury NHS Trust has revealed a horrific catalogue of failures contributing to the deaths of 300 babies. Senior midwife Donna Ockenden who led the review said: ‘The reasons for these failures are clear. There was not enough staff, there was a...
MOSCOW is handling the details of its gas delivery plans to unfriendly countries for payment in roubles, but it won’t engage in charity if Europe refuses to pay in the Russian currency, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday. Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin requested reporting on measures on...
WHILE Israeli settlers, police and troops are running riot in occupied Palestine burning down the homes of Palestinian families and injuring and killing their occupants, the Arab League has given the go-ahead for special meetings between its members, the USA and the Israeli Foreign Minister Yahir Lapid. It is all...
‘WE MUST send a clear message that rogue employers cannot get away with trampling over the laws of this country, it is time to throw the book at P&O and save this loyal workforce,’ Louise Haigh, Labour’s Shadow Transport Secretary said yesterday in Parliament. She was asking an urgent question...
ISRAELI officials plan to rubber-stamp the construction of ten new settlements in the Negev desert region at a cabinet meeting next Sunday. The decision comes just days after a Palestinian man was fatally shot over an alleged stabbing attack near a shopping centre in the southern Israeli city of...
IN AN unscripted departure from his speech in Poland on Sunday, US president Joe Biden blurted out that the real aim of the war on Russia and all the sanctions imposed by imperialism have only one aim – to carry out a regime change. Immediately, the other NATO leaders rushed...
MUCH tougher guidelines will be introduced in response to the ‘hugely distressing’ strip-searching of a black schoolgirl referred to as Child Q, the education secretary has said. Nadhim Zahawi said he would set out a new policy after the ‘appalling’ incident. The 15-year-old was wrongly suspected by teachers of carrying cannabis. A...
GERMANY will send 2,000 additional anti-tank weapons to Ukraine to replenish the country’s depleting arsenal and bolster its defences against the Russian military operation. The Ukrainian forces have already received 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger-type surface-to-air missile launchers from the German army.
Germany has also provided around 500 Strela surface-to-air...
THE UNITE leader Sharon Graham on Saturday in a speech in Coventry suspended all Coventry Labour councillors who are Unite members from the union for sabotaging the bin workers’ strike! She said: ‘There will be an investigation of their conduct: they stand accused of colluding with strike breaking, sacking a...
STRIKE action at 27 universities begins on Monday as a survey shows most UK university staff are considering leaving the sector. A third wave of UK-wide strike action enters second week with staff at 27 universities walking out on Monday over pay, pensions and working conditions.
Altogether, staff at 67 universities...
DURING the nationwide university staff and lecturers strike this week, strikers were determined to stop the pension cuts, staff sackings, overbearing workloads and pay cuts. At Imperial Collage in West London UCU on Wednesday, strikers on the picket line were winning the support of students and technicians over their fight...
AS INFLATION soars and the cost of petrol rapidly rises, workers across Europe are being forced to protest, with strikes spreading like wildfire. European energy prices soared after Russia declared its ‘Special Military Operation’ in Ukraine, prompting EU capitalist rulers to impose further sanctions on Moscow. Benchmark Dutch gas futures rose...
THE CHIEF executive of P&O Ferries, Peter Hebblethwaite, appeared before a joint hearing of the transport and business committee of MPs yesterday to answer questions about the brutal sacking of 800 workers without any notice last week. Hebblethwaite began with the obligatory apology for the impact of the decision saying...
IN AN extraordinary admission yesterday P&O Ferries chief executive Peter Hebblethwaite admitted the firm knowingly broke the law, choosing not to consult with the unions over the mass sacking of 800 workers and if given the opportunity he would do the same again. Hebblethwaite was appearing before a joint hearing...
TRADE unions have highlighted the acute crisis facing millions of families facing steep rises in the cost-of-living, declaring that measures outlined in Tory Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s Spring Statement will do little to alleviate the mass poverty spreading throughout the UK. Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: ‘With inflation at its...
‘THE ACTIONS we have taken to sanction Putin’s regime are not cost free for us at home,’ Tory Chancellor Rishi Sunak said yesterday, outlining the Tory economic plan in his Spring Statement. Sunak indicated that the UK working class will have to pay for the ruling class’ war against Russia....
UKRAINIAN President Volodymyr Zelensky says any agreement that would be yielded from the peace talks with Russia that are aimed to end the conflict would be put to a referendum in Ukraine. ‘I explained it to all the negotiating groups: when you speak of all these changes (in a future...
TORY chancellor Rishi Sunak opened his Spring budget statement with a naked appeal for the nation to ‘pull together’ and that the nation should be grateful for ‘the security’ we have in the UK, security he insisted was a result of British capitalism’s massive ‘economic strength’. This statement by Sunak...
THE METROPOLITAN Police’s approach to tackling corruption within its ranks is ‘fundamentally flawed,’ an inspection by the police watchdog published yesterday concluded. It found the force had recruited people with criminal connections in the last two years, and more than 100 staff had broken the law.
Last week, the Met rejected...
THE CHILD Poverty Action Group and dozens of other charities have called for a 7% hike in benefits in a demand made to coincide with Tory Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s Spring Statement today. They wrote: ‘Prices are rising at the fastest rate in 30 years, and energy bills alone are going...
RAIL, Maritime and Transport Union (RMT) members will be joined by many other trade unionists today at 7.00am and on Saturday 26th March at 7.00am at the Port of Liverpool to protest against the mass sacking of 800 workers by P&O. The demonstrations will demand the reinstatement of the...
OUTSIDE Parliament yesterday a two hundred-strong rally of P&O workers and their supporters shouted: ‘Seize our ships!’ and ‘P&O we say no!’ The rally was addressed by trade union leaders including the head of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) Frances O’Grady.
She said: ‘We will not let them get away with...
THE conflict in Ukraine has seen Russia use its newest Kinzhal hypersonic missiles close to the border with NATO member Romania, while Kiev says it will soon receive a new shipment of advanced US weapons, including Javelin and Stinger missiles. Russia said on Saturday it had fired hypersonic missiles from...
THE THIRD wave of a countrywide strike by members of the University and College Union (UCU) began yesterday with a five-day walkout at 38 universities over cuts to pensions and pay, and demanding an end to casual working by university staff. A further 27 will start strike action next week,...
‘THERE must be national strike action by the whole RMT to win our P&O members their jobs back,’ leading RMT rep Darren Lalli said on Saturday night ahead of today’s mass demonstration outside Parliament. The RMT has called the demonstration outside Parliament at 2.30pm today following last Thursday’s mass sacking...
PALESTINIAN Islamic Jihad and Hamas resistance movement have warned that Israel’s house demolitions and its expansion of illegal settlements in al-Quds (Jerusalem) will trigger an ‘explosion’ of the situation in the occupied territories. Islamic Jihad leader Ahmad al-Mudallal said a great struggle has begun in al-Quds against Tel Aviv's attempts...
YESTERDAY, Chancellor Sunak pledged to help the masses ‘where we can make a difference’, as households face soaring living costs, to the extent that many workers cannot feed their families. Ahead of this Wednesday’s Spring Statement, Sunak told the BBC he would ‘stand by’ people, but, seeking to find a...
POWERFUL protests erupted in Liverpool, Hull and Dover yesterday after 800 P&O Ferries’ seafarers were sacked by decree and replaced by cheap labour. The RMT union and Nautilus International union instructed their members to refuse to leave the ships, and now the whole trade union movement must take a stand...
SECURITY workers from Great Ormond St Children’s Hospital (GOSH) held a rally on Thursday at lunchtime to mark the end of their six week strike, in the park at the end of Great Ormond Street. They went back to work yesterday. However, they will be striking again every Friday in April,...
OVER 500 trade unionists gathered outside the RMT headquarters on the waterfront in Dover, yesterday with red RMT flags and union banners after 800 P&O seafarers were instantly sacked and driven off their ships on Thursday. John McDonnell MP for Hayes and Harlington said: ‘100 per cent solidarity with this...
THE BANK of England Monetary Policy Committee met yesterday and decided to increase the interest rate by 0.25% to 0.75% in a futile attempt to halt inflation spiralling out of control. It is the third time in four months that the rate has been increased. Officially inflation is currently at...
RUSSIA’S President, Vladimir Putin, has opined that the latest raft of unprecedented sanctions imposed on Russia by the US and its allies over the Kremlin’s military campaign in Ukraine, mark the end of an era. According to Putin, from now on the West will be losing its ‘global dominance’...
P&O FERRIES has fired 800 seafaring staff with immediate effect. However, crews defied orders and refused to leave their ships, as their union the RMT launched an all-out battle for jobs. Workers had been told the news on zoom. RMT said crew members were being replaced with cheaper foreign non-unionised...
A BLACK schoolgirl was strip-searched by police after being wrongly suspected of carrying cannabis. The ‘traumatic’ search by Metropolitan Police officers took place without another adult present at the girl’s secondary school in Hackney in 2020.
A safeguarding report on the incident concluded it was unjustified and racism was ‘likely’ to...
RUSSIA’S Defence Ministry said its troops have taken control of Ukraine’s southern region of Kherson as the Russian military campaign entered its 20th day. ‘The armed forces of the Russian Federation have taken full control of all the territory of Kherson region,’ the ministry’s spokesman, Igor Konashenkov, said at a...
IT HAS become clear over the past days that Ukraine and its president Volodymyr Zelensky have been unceremoniously dumped by the imperialist powers and are now desperate to secure some kind of ‘peace deal’ with Russia. All his demands for the NATO powers to impose a no-fly zone over the...
THE RUSSIAN Ambassador to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, held a press conference in New York yesterday during which he made it clear that Russia’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine will cease when its objectives have been achieved. Nebenzia said: ‘We have made it clear that we would be prepared...
COLLEGE lecturers at the College of Haringey, Enfield and North East London (Conel) on Thursday 10th March voted to condemn the Tory government’s proscription of the Palestinian Hamas government in Gaza as a terrorist organisation. The terrorist designation of Hamas’s political wing by Tory Home Secretary Priti Patel criminalises any...
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has called for a speedy end to ‘dependence’ on Russian oil and gas, comparing it to ‘addiction,’ in his Daily Telegraph article yesterday. He warned that the process will be ‘tough’ and ‘painful’ meaning that millions of UK workers will be pauperised with zero living...
THE UK Supreme Court yesterday rejected WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s appeal of the decision to extradite him to the US, where the WikiLeaks co-founder faces espionage charges. It is now up to Tory Home Secretary Priti Patel to authorise the extradition. The Supreme Court has not yet officially released its...