Monthly Archives: December 2022
THE News Line Editorial Board sends revolutionary greetings for 2023 to all our readers, and to the working class, youth and the poor, who across the world are rising up against a bankrupt capitalist system that is in its death agony, gripped by the greatest economic crisis in its...
‘FIREFIGHTERS and control staff are being left with no other choice but to take action,’ Fire Brigades Union (FBU) General Secretary Matt Wrack said in a statement yesterday. He was responding to the results of a survey which found Fire Service bosses are being paid six figure sums as firefighters...
THE Strategic Organising Centre (SOC) has recently released a report called: The Injury Machine: How Amazon’s Production System Hurts Workers. The SOC is a coalition of four labour unions (Service Employees International Union, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Communications Workers of America, and United Farmworkers of America) that together represent more...
IN THE understatement of the year, the new leader of the TUC Paul Nowak warned yesterday that further strikes could lie ahead in 2023 unless the government enters talks with unions over wages. This is not news for workers! General Secretary Nowak has replaced Frances O’Grady as head of the...
‘COORDINATED’ public sector strike action will escalate significantly in January and continue right up until May, PCS General Secretary Mark Serwotka warned yesterday in a BBC News interview. British Army strikebreakers were again mobilised against 1,000 Border Force PCS strikers at Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, Birmingham, Cardiff and Glasgow airports, and...
HUNDREDS of US rabbis have signed an open letter protesting against Israel’s new far-right administration and pledging to block the extremist members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet from speaking at their religious centres and communities. The letter, drafted by two prominent retired rabbis, drew more than 300 signatures from rabbis in the...
THE British working class is showing a real class determination and ability to defend its jobs, its wages, its basic rights and its families, against the massive inflation that has been consciously let loose by the UK-US ruling classes as they pour billions into the Ukraine to try to...
NURSES’ strike action will escalate and spread across the UK in the new year, after RCN Scotland members overwhelmingly voted to reject the Scottish government’s imposition of a miserly pay deal. The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Scotland will announce dates for industrial action in January after SNP Health Secretary...
Israeli occupation forces killed a young Arab man from the city of Kafr Qassem last Friday morning, as unchecked crimes against Palestinians rage on in the deadliest year in the occupied territories since 2005. Twenty-three-year-old Mahmoud Naim Badir was killed when the Israeli occupation forces claimed he was carrying out an...
THE Royal College of Nursing (RCN) in Scotland has voted overwhelmingly to reject the final pay offer from the nationalist SNP government, meaning Scottish nurses will be joining RCN strikes across the UK in January. RCN Scotland had postponed earlier strike action in December to consult members on the widely...
THE GMB has suspended its Christmas Strike date for ambulance service workers, right at the time when the Tories are reeling from their deadly economic and political crisis and the massive support that NHS workers have received from the working class and the middle class. Instead of getting rid of...
A SERVING British Transport Police (BTP) officer has been dismissed without notice, after sexually assaulting a colleague at London Bridge station. Police Sergeant Tristan Davis had then boarded the same train as the woman and went on to sexually assault the victim a further two times despite her numerous attempts...
CWU members braved the continuous pouring rain yesterday morning at the Greenwich, Blackheath and Charlton delivery office London SE10. CWU General Secretary Dave Ward told them: ‘For Royal Mail Group to reject our offer just hours after receiving it demonstrates that they were never serious about saving Christmas for customers...
A NEW government, seen as the most right wing and racist in Israel’s history has been agreed, sealing Binyamin Netanyahu’s return to power. Netanyahu, who won elections in November, is set to serve an historic sixth term as prime minster. His coalition contains far-right parties, including one whose leader was once...
Thousands of ambulance workers, paramedics, emergency care assistants, ambulance technicians and other 999 crew members in Britain held a one-day strike on Wednesday. Ambulance staff working for five services in England – London, Yorkshire, North West, North East and South West – took part in the industrial action over pay...
On Wednesday, the recently elected president of Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu, finally announced that he has assembled a ruling coalition cabinet between his Likud party and the fascist Otzma Yehudit party and the extreme right-wing racist Religious Zionism parties. Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party leader Itamar Ben-Gvir has been installed as...
STRIKING ambulance workers and their union leaders responded with fury at Tory Health Secretary Barclay’s article in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph newspaper, in which he accused them of ‘a conscious choice to inflict harm on patients’. Mass pickets outside ambulance stations in towns and cities all round the country received a...
THE RCN picket outside St Thomas’ hospital opposite Parliament in central London on Tuesday was joined by hundreds of nurses, hospital staff, doctors, and ambulance staff along with teachers, railway workers and other workers. The striking nurses were met with overwhelming support as a crowd cheering them formed near the...
YESTERDAY Tory Health Secretary Barclay, who is refusing to negotiate with the NHS trade unions over NHS pay, accused striking nurses of putting patients’ lives at risk, when he is the one who is refusing to negotiate an agreement over nurses pay, after rampant inflation has pauperised many thousands...
THE TORY government issued a calculated insult to thousands of striking nurses yesterday as the Royal College of Nursing held national strike action for the second day in its over 100 years history, following its first ever strike last Thursday. RCN leader Pat Cullen toured the picket lines, where she...
EMERGENCY blackouts are in effect in nine regions of Ukraine, the Kiev regime’s energy operator Ukrenergo reported on Monday. ‘As of the morning of December 19, there was a difficult situation in the Ukrainian power system. The most difficult situation is in the Central, Eastern and Dnieper regions. ‘The emergency shutdown...
ON THE EVE of the unprecedented strike by nurses and ambulance workers, Tory prime minister Rishi Sunak said that he will not ‘back down’ against striking workers by re-opening pay talks with the unions. Sunak told the Daily Mail newspaper: ‘I’m going to do what I think is right for...
‘THE damage that you’re doing to families like mine is terrible,’ the mother of a sick three-year-old girl told Tory Health Secretary Stephen Barclay when he attempted a political stunt against striking NHS workers at King’s College Hospital in south London yesterday. On the eve of today’s second ever NHS...
STARBUCKS workers from around 100 stores across the United States started a three-day strike last Friday, making it the longest nationally coordinated job action in the company’s history. ‘Starting today, over 1,000 baristas are walking out on a THREE DAY STRIKE, making this the longest collective action of our campaign...
THE SOARING price of energy has cost Europe $1 trillion in 2022 and this is just the beginning of the biggest, deepest economic crisis facing European capitalism in decades. This devastating analysis of the crisis is contained in a report published on Sunday by Bloomberg, the international business analyst, which...
PM Sunak yesterday accused RMT leader Mick Lynch of causing ‘misery for millions’ with the ‘cruelly timed’ pay rise walk-outs by rail workers. He added this was holding Britain to ransom with a ‘class war’. Writing in the ‘Sun on Sunday’ he said: ‘The unions are causing misery for millions...
THE ARMED forces are being mobilised to break NHS workers’ picket lines this week, Dowden, the Tory minister in charge of the capitalist state’s COBRA committee confirmed yesterday morning. Following the first national strike in their history last Thursday, nurses are striking again tomorrow, followed by ambulance workers on Wednesday,...
THE DIRE state of junior doctors’ finances has been revealed in a British Medical Association survey. Junior doctors are cutting back on buying food and heating their homes, as they regularly borrow money from family and friends to help make ends meet.
In a survey of more than 4,500 junior doctors...
PM Sunak yesterday accused RMT leader Mick Lynch of causing ‘misery for millions’ with the ‘cruelly timed’ pay rise walk-outs by rail workers. He added this was holding Britain to ransom with a ‘class war’. Writing in the ‘Sun on Sunday’ he said: ‘The unions are causing misery for millions...
IRAN has lashed out at US officials for making ‘meddlesome’ remarks about domestic developments in the country, saying the world public opinion is well aware of America’s dark human rights record and will no longer be deceived by its political stunts against Tehran. ‘Despite the hypocrisy and continuous lies of...
THE nurses’ strike actions have revealed that they have the massive support of the vast majority of the working class in the UK, and that they now have the power to bring down the government, by calling for a TUC-led general strike They already have the full support of trade...
RAIL and bus workers are supporting the call for the TUC to call a general strike to bring down the Tories. On the picket line at Euston station, northwest London, RMT member John told News Line: ‘We’re fighting to keep our jobs.
‘The rail franchises and the government are planning to...
SYRIA has renewed its call for the withdrawal of US forces from the energy-rich northeastern part of the country, saying the occupation troops and their allied Takfiri militants are involved in the systematic looting of oil, wheat crops and other commodities. Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates in a statement...
THE Bank of England has raised UK interest rates to their highest level for 14 years as it battles to stem soaring prices, by deepening the capitalist slump and adding to the number of companies going bankrupt, driving up the numbers of unemployed workers. The Bank increased rates to 3.5%...
‘It’s an astonishing level of support you are giving to the union, you care about the service you are giving to the public, you act as an inspiration to workers everywhere,’ said CWU General Secretary Dave Ward yesterday. Ward was speaking to the picket line of over 50 striking postal...
PCS (Public and Commercial Services) union members on Tuesday began a series of strikes across England, Scotland and Wales which the Tory government intends to break with the use of the armed forces. The PCS has condemned the Tory government’s planned use of military personnel to break strikes, calling for...
THE Palestinian Foreign Ministry said yesterday that the fatal shooting of a teenage girl by Israeli military forces during a raid in the northern occupied West Bank city of Jenin was the outcome of the international community’s failure to hold the Tel Aviv regime accountable for its crimes against the...
MICK LYNCH issued a defiant message from the RMT picket line at Euston Station in central London yesterday morning, saying: ‘I’ve just heard Huw Merriman (Tory MP) talking about a very generous offer. ‘It’s not generous, it’s way below inflation and it’s predicated on a set of changes – cuts...
SYRIA has again condemned the Israeli occupation’s practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory – the demolition of schools, the killing of children and innocent Palestinians who are clinging to their lands – as war crimes and crimes against humanity. On Monday, Syrian Foreign and Expatriates Minister Dr Fayssal Mikdad held...
30 MILLION people in Britain will be unable to afford a decent standard of living in the coming year according to a study published this week by the New Economics Foundation (NEF). Spiralling increases in the price of food, energy and rents alongside projected increases in unemployment plus the drive...
‘MY BLOOD was boiling when I heard what he said,’ Patricia Marquis, Royal College of Nursing Director for England, said yesterday after Tory Cabinet Secretary Oliver Dowden announced that Cobra has authorised the armed forces to be used against striking NHS workers. Following the Downing Street Cobra meeting, Dowden announced...
A STRIKE wave is erupting in Australia, with airport firefighters and guards walking out in the lead-up to Christmas. An industrial dispute between a major security provider and the union representing its guards has escalated, with strikes planned for Brisbane, Gold Coast and Canberra airports.
The United Workers Union (UWU) is...
TORY Chancellor Jeremy Hunt yesterday morning admitted that the UK economy is ‘likely to get worse before it gets better’ although he went on to admit that he didn’t have a clue about when things would start to ‘get better’ for a UK economy that is crashing out into...
TORY Foreign Secretary James Cleverley yesterday rejected talks with the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), whose members are coming out on strike this Thursday and next Tuesday. RCN General Secretary Pat Cullen said yesterday morning: ‘UK nurses are the lowest paid in Europe’ and she urged the Tories: ‘Negotiate with...