Monthly Archives: January 2023
THE MURDER of Keenan Anderson, the cousin of a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, Patrisse Cullors, after he was repeatedly tasered by police officers in Los Angeles has sparked a massive outcry in the United States where the working class is already on the march against capitalist super-exploitation. Anderson, a...
WEAPONS supplied by the United Kingdom and the United States to the Saudi-led coalition in war-torn Yemen killed at least 839 civilians and wounded 1,775 others in just over a year, a new report said on Wednesday. The report by the Oxfam charity revealed that the Saudi-led coalition used weapons supplied solely by...
PCS president Fran Heathcote will be speaking at the demo on 16 January to coincide with the second reading of the government’s Strikes Bill. The Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill will give the Secretary of State for business the power to set minimum service levels across six different sectors including...
‘NEXT week’s strikes are in protest at unsafe care,’ said Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Director for England, Patricia Marquis yesterday, in response to the latest NHS England performance data. Marquis said: ‘Ministers – including the Prime Minister – have so far refused to acknowledge that health and care is...
STRIKING housing workers in the north of Ireland have voted 99.5 per cent on a 93.5 per cent turn-out to reject the inadequate NI Housing Executive pay offer. As industrial action by the housing workers enters its twenty-third week without resolution, Unite has demanded the Department for Communities intervention.
Thousands of...
THE Tory ‘Strikes (Minimum Services Levels) Bill’, unveiled by business secretary Grant Shapps this week has been criticised by sections of the bourgeois press for its lack of any detail and the sweeping powers it gives to Tory ministers over trade unions and strikes. The basic thrust of the bill...
A new academic study has shed light on the devastating impact of British colonialism on India, uncovering staggering death tolls and immense wealth extraction that was carried out by the empire during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The study, conducted by economic anthropologist Jason Hickel and his colleague...
THE TORIES are proposing to turn free and independent trade unions into ‘Labour Fronts’ run by the bosses with their new anti-trade union legislation. Under the proposed law, the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill, some trade union members will be ordered to continue working during a legal strike. The legislation will...
THE Tories wasted no time in placing their anti-strike laws before parliament yesterday in their determination to break the trade unions and inflict the cost of the capitalist crisis squarely onto the backs of workers. With the working class throughout the country rising up in mass strike action to demand...
A STRIKE by more than 7,000 nurses at two major New York City hospitals began at 6.00am on Monday after talks aimed at averting a walkout broke down overnight. Tentative deals had been reached in recent days covering nurses at several hospitals, including two new agreements late on Sunday evening. But...
STRIKING Paramedics, Emergency Care Assistants, call handlers and other ambulance staff across the country who are on strike again in England and Wales today, came under attack in Parliament yesterday by Business Secretary Grant Shapps as he launched the new Tory anti-union law. Workers across the ambulance services are striking after...
TRADE union leaders are meeting at the TUC in central London today to discuss their response to meetings held yesterday with Tory ministers where they faced ‘insulting’ calls for increased productivity in return for any pay increase. RCN leaders came out of the meetings saying that Tory ‘intransigence’ means that...
IRANIAN President Ebrahim Raeisi has said that, having successfully developed their diplomatic relations, Tehran and Moscow now need to enhance their ‘strategic economic cooperation’. Raeisi highlighted the need for the expansion of Iran-Russia ties in a meeting on Sunday with the new Russian Ambassador to Tehran Alexey Dedov.
‘Iran and Russia...
OVER 10,000 people took to the streets of the main Israeli city of Tel Aviv on Saturday in protest against the policies unveiled last week by the new right-wing government led by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. On Wednesday, Netanyahu’s newly installed Justice Minister, Yariv Levin, revealed his plans to tear...
NEW TUC leader Paul Nowak has insisted that tomorrow’s meeting of the TUC General Council in central London will not be considering calls for a general strike to defend the NHS and smash the anti-union laws. The meeting is being held ahead of the mass 12-hour strike by thousands of...
THE General Council of the TUC is set to meet on Tuesday, in a meeting that has been kept a secret, lest large numbers of workers decide to pay their leaders a visit to demand that they call a general strike. The meeting is one day after union leaders have...
PRIME Minister Rishi Sunak is facing calls from senior Tories, including members of his own government, to tackle the crisis in the NHS and make a more generous pay offer to end strikes by nurses and ambulance drivers. Ministers, officials and Tory MPs are among those who raised concerns to...
FBU general secretary Matt Wrack has hit out at the government announcement that it will introduce new anti-union laws which will include the following – minimum service requirements for the fire and rescue services, and all services; to work during strikes; to make it possible for unions to be...
JUNIOR doctors in England WILL walk out for 72 hours in March if the ballot for industrial action is successful, says the BMA. The BMA yesterday told the government that, if a ballot for industrial action is successful, junior doctors will begin their action with a 72-hour full walkout in...
‘GRANT Schapps doesn’t respect the right to strike. He wants to make strikes ineffective. I don’t believe him at all. I don’t think he’s genuine. I think he just wants to suppress the trade unions,’ said RMT leader Mick Lynch yesterday In a blistering attack Mr Lynch centred his comments...
LABOUR leader Sir Keir Starmer said yesterday that Labour ‘won’t be able to spend our way out’ of the ‘mess’ left by the Tories. While promising a ‘decade of national renewal’ if he wins the next general election, he added that ‘the party won’t be ‘getting its big government chequebook...
LABOUR leader Keir Starmer delivered a speech in Stratford, east London yesterday setting out Labour’s ‘vision’ for the country under any future Labour government. His speech was exactly 24 hours after Tory leader Rishi Sunak set out the Tory ‘vision’ in the same venue, and the similarities didn’t end there. Indeed,...
At least 18 people were injured in Yemen’s north-western province of Sa’ada when Saudi border troops fired artillery at residential neighbourhoods near the border with the kingdom. According to local sources cited by the Arabic-language al-Masirah television network, 10 civilians, including African refugees, were injured in the Monabbih district on...
THE TORY government is refusing to hold any serious negotiations with the rail trade unions for the simple reason that it is introducing anti-strike laws that will remove the right to strike of British workers, and be a strikebreakers’ charter. The proposed law will require the running of 20% of...
‘The strike is strong, the public are still behind us and members are strong and want to continue,’ striking RMT London Area Council Rep Paul Chadwick told News Line on the striking railway workers’ picket line outside Euston Station in Central London yesterday morning. Paul continued: ‘We had a referendum...
‘THE STRIKE is going well, we’re still getting a lot of public support – this fight is important for job security and safety for our members and the public,’ Kathy Mazur, RMT London and Anglia regional organiser, told News Line on the picket line at Euston Station yesterday morning. ‘The...
THE HEAD of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Georgieva, has delivered a stark New Year warning that a third of the world economy will plunge into recession in 2023. Speaking on US television on Sunday, Georgieva warned that the world’s three largest economies – the US, the European Union...
AIR defences downed a Ukrainian drone approaching the Russian city of Voronezh, the regional government said in a statement on Monday. ‘Last night, air defences detected and downed a small reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicle approaching Voronezh, which had been launched from Ukraine,’ the statement read.
The regional government reported that there...
‘AS WE begin a new year, the NHS is buckling before our eyes. The pressures are immense with flu cases surging while staff absences rise dramatically,’ Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Director for England, Patricia Marquis, said yesterday. ‘On top of this, the vast majority of adult general and acute...
PALESTINIANS have denounced Binyamin Netanyahu’s swearing-in as Israel’s prime minister in his return as head of the Tel Aviv regime’s most far-right cabinet in history. Israel has declared it will expand illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and pursue other anti-Palestinian policies.
Netanyahu, who is facing corruption charges in court,...
TORY ministers have instructed the supposedly independent NHS Pay Review Body to cap the wages of frontline health workers to just 2% in 2023-24. At the end of last year, as nurses and NHS workers took strike action over a miserable wage-cutting offer of 4% for 2021-22, demanding an inflation...