Monthly Archives: April 2018
THE SOUTH African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) said last Wednesday 25 April 2018 will be recorded in the history of the South African trade union movement as an historic turning point. This was when workers took to the streets in their many thousands to demonstrate against a poverty...
DURING almost a month of Friday demonstrations in Gaza, called the ‘Great March of Return’, the Israeli army has used snipers to shoot dead over 44 Palestinian civilians, many of them children, as well as injuring over 6,000 people, either by the use of tear gas or by shooting...
MORE than 200 MPs have signed a letter to the prime minister calling for government promises to Windrush migrants to be written into law. The letter, co-ordinated by Labour MP David Lammy, said concerns over compensation, housing and legal rights had not been settled. Home Secretary Amber Rudd is accused...
THE ‘GREAT March of Return’ has become the beacon for all Palestinians and the workers of the world to unite in the struggle to demand that every country in the world recognises the Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital and recognises the right of all Palestinians to...
HAILING a ‘new era of peace’, North Korea leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, sealed their talks on Friday with a joint declaration. Among the major points of a joint statement are ‘The two Koreas agree to: • fully implement all existing agreements and declarations adopted so...
THOUSANDS of striking electricity, industrial and hospital workers met up with protesting pensioners in the streets of Athens last Wednesday, as they all marched to the Vouli (Greek parliament) demanding no privatisations, no sackings and no cuts in pensions. Inside the Vouli, the Tsipras coalition government’s deputies voted for...
AT WEDNESDAY’S Prime Minister’s Question Time, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called for Tory Home Secretary Amber Rudd to resign – the only problem with this is that he didn’t demand not just her resignation but that of Theresa May and indeed for the entire Tory government to resign or...
IN RESPONSE to the sentencing of Israeli border policeman Ben Deri who murdered unarmed Palestinian teenager Nadeem Nuwara in cold blood on May 15th, 2014, Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Executive Committee member, Hanan Ashrawi, said the sentencing represents Israel’s deliberate dehumanisation of its Palestinian victims. It is ludicrous that Palestinian...
EXTREMELY sick children will not receive the treatment they need if Scotland does not recruit over 100 extra consultants, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) warned yesterday; while in Lincolnshire, a hospital’s children’s department is threatened with closure because of lack of staff. The RCPCH estimates between...
‘A PALESTINIAN state without Jerusalem as its capital will not be accepted,’ Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokes-man for President Mahmoud Abbas, said on Tuesday. He added ‘We tell those who try to circumvent the Arab Peace Initiative and the resolutions of international legitimacy by proposing vague ideas or slogans that...
SOME 200 railworkers and supporters demonstrated opposite Parliament yesterday morning to mark two years of strikes by the RMT union to Keep the Guard on the Train. There were banners from Cumbria, Liverpool, South East Regional Council, East Sussex Coastway, Norwich Rail Branch, Tube Branches Piccadilly and Finsbury Park. The RMT...
‘WE ARE talking about the environment created by her (PM Theresa May) as Home Secretary for six years when she knew full well of the problems the Windrush generation were facing,’ Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said at Prime Minister’s Questions in Parliament yesterday. He concluded PMQs by demanding that...
AT a time when US President Trump and France’s Macron are plotting a permanent US presence in northern Syria, to be supported no doubt by French and British troops, Saudi Arabia is busily raising billions for the projected US campaign. Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister, Adel al-Jubeir, on Tuesday advised...
FRENCH President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday April 15 told the assembled media that it was he who had convinced US President Donald Trump to keep troops in Syria for the long term and limit their joint strikes to chemical weapons facilities. This was just one day after the US,...
‘THE WINDRUSH scandal is one of the cruelest examples of unaccountable state power targeting the vulnerable, the defenceless and the innocent that I can ever remember,’ Labour shadow justice secretary Richard Burgon told Parliament yesterday. He added: ‘I was disappointed yesterday to hear the Home Secretary say that people affected...
THE FIRST person to have a joint enterprise murder conviction quashed was released from prison yesterday in a landmark ruling against the controversial form of collective punishment. Joint enterprise is used to convict defendants in gang-related cases even if they did not strike the fatal blow. There have been...
NIGERIA’S nurses, pharmacists, and other medical professionals on Sunday declared an indefinite strike at federal hospitals under the auspices of the Joint Health Sectors Unions (JOHESU). The federal government said it will invoke the ‘no work no pay rule’ rule if the Joint Health Sector Unions (JOHESU) do...
STUDENT workers from the University of California demanded the UC implement new anti-discrimination and harassment provisions at a union contract negotiation session last Thursday. UAW Local 2865, the UC student-workers union, called for the UC to create procedures that value and protect survivors of sexual assault, as well as extend...
THE NUS has just published its Poverty Commission Report which shows how education costs are rising, condemning students to live in poverty and blighting their lives. It has gathered evidence on the experiences of students from the age of 16. In fact student fees and living costs are driving many...
SOUTH Africa’s ruling ANC said on Friday it understands the anger of North West residents who took to Mahikeng’s streets last week in protest against corruption and demanding North West Premier Supra Mahumapelo be sacked. The African National Congress (ANC) said it will discuss and test allegations of corruption against...
IN FOUR weeks of Friday protests at the Gaza ‘border’ more than 32 Palestinians have been killed and over 5,000 injured by Israeli snipers who shoot-to-kill if Palestinians approach the illegal ‘border’ fence. The Palestinians face both bullets and gas delivered by Israeli drones which double as spotters of Palestinian...
LABOUR leader Jeremy Corbyn says Prime Minister Theresa May’s ‘hostile environment’ set a ‘deliberately unreachable bar’ for migrants and created the Windrush generation scandal. In a speech to the Welsh Labour Conference in Llandudno yesterday, Corbyn called on May to listen to the harrowing human consequences of her cruel and...
THE IMF (International Monetary Fund) this week sounded the alarm bells for the world capitalist crisis when it announced the real scale of the huge global debt mountain and begged governments around the world to start cutting debt immediately. In its latest ‘Fiscal Monitor’, the IMF has estimated that the...
THE IRAQI air force has launched deadly strikes against terrorists’ positions in Syria as both neighbouring countries step up efforts to get rid of terror groups’ remnants. The office of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced in a statement on Thursday that Daesh positions in Syria came under attack from...
‘BED closures will put patients’ lives at risk,’ campaigners fighting to save community hospital beds across North Staffordshire declared yesterday. The claim that ‘patients would generally prefer to be cared for in their own homes’ has been used as an excuse to justify mass bed closures, the campaigners said. Health...
SPEAKING on the BBC Newsnight programme on Wednesday, a former head of the Civil Service, Sir Bob Kerslake, damned the Tories and Theresa May in particular as having set out to create a climate so hostile to immigrant workers that it was regarded by some ministers as ‘almost reminiscent...
OVER the next two weeks, thousands of Australian trade union members will be marching across the country, campaigning for wage increases and job security. Union representatives met on Tuesday at the Melbourne Town Hall, before workers begin Change the Rules rallies across Australia from Newcastle, Canberra, Ipswich to Maryborough, across...
The victims of the Marikana massacre should not be used to mend relations between the ANC and the Economic freedom Fighters (EFF), Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) president Joseph Mathunjwa said on Monday. ‘We were unpleasantly surprised in the recent address at the funeral of our struggle...
THE ENTIRE justification for last Friday’s illegal bombing of Syria by British, US and French forces is falling apart rapidly as the truth emerges. The lying narrative spun by May that it was an exercise in ‘humanitarian’ war designed to protect innocent civilians from the horrors of chemical weapons has...
A NATIONWIDE general strike took place yesterday, as Air France workers joined striking railworkers, civil servants, power workers and rubbish collectors in a head-on battle against the Macron government. Echoing the French revolution of May/June 1968, students have occupied universities both in support of the striking workers and...
A CONSULTATION of NHS workers was launched at the Unison health conference in Brighton on Monday on the new ‘pay deal’. Unison members must defy their union leadership and vote ‘NO!’ to the deal. The pay deal will affect over a million hospital porters, 999 call handlers, healthcare assistants,...
A LEAKED ‘interim document’ into the Grenfell Tower disaster on June 14, 2017 shows beyond shadow of a doubt that every death was preventable, and survivors are demanding that all those responsible be put on trial for murder. The 210-page interim document, by fire investigation experts BRE Global, was produced...
TORY Prime Minister Theresa May was determined on Monday to avoid a substantive vote in Parliament on ‘her right’ to go to war and bomb Syria any time she likes. This was despite the opposition to the attack launched last Friday, opposition that included a large number of Tory MPs...
FRENCH rail workers began another two-day rolling strike on Friday which hit services across the country. But President Emmanuel Macron has vowed he will not back down. Friday saw a sixth day of strikes, with the national rail operator SNCF urging people to postpone travel plans and to stay...
THE GOVERNOR of the Bank of England Mark Carney is a very worried man. Giving him sleepless nights is the spectre of a working class being revolutionised by capitalist crisis and embracing revolutionary Marxism as the only way forword out of this crisis. Carney made his fears clear at...
‘THIS STATEMENT serves as a reminder that this Prime Minister is accountable to this Parliament, not to the whims of the US President,’ Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn said yesterday. He was speaking in response to Tory PM May’s statement to Parliament in which she attempted to justify joining US,...
‘OCCUPATION no more!’ ‘Israel is a terror state!’ ‘Free Palestine!’ shouted over 200 workers and youth at a picket of the Israeli embassy in west London on Saturday. Over 30 Palestinians have been killed and thousands wounded by live fire, tear gas and rubber-coated steel baton rounds. News Line spoke...
WHILE Trump and US Defence Secretary, General ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis were blowing hot and cold over whether they were going to attack Syria or not, UK MPs and the media were debating just how PM May was going to get the House of Commons – which in 2003 voted...
YEARS of savage Tory cuts to the NHS have created the unprecedented situation where there are not even enough staff to run wards. It emerged that there are now 82 ‘ghost wards’ containing 1,400 empty beds, the equivalent of two entire hospitals. Wards are being shut down because there...
THREE civilians were injured with shells in a terrorist attack on Qana al-Assi in Syria’s northern countryside of Homs on Thursday. SANA’s reporter in Homs said that terrorist groups fired a number of rocket shells on Qana al-Assi in the northern countryside of the province. Two workers from Daraa General...