"WE NEED an end to the premiership of Tony Blair. On 20 March we will be demanding that Blair must go." That call from George Galloway MP was made to the 600 delegates from across the country at the Stop the War Coalition conference in London last Saturday. The conference came against the background of the build-up to the 20 March national Stop the War Coalition demonstration, and with the war once again plunging Blair's government into crisis.
STRIKING NURSERY nurses were greeted with a wave of support from parents and the public. But they received staggering contempt from their employers, COSLA-the Labour-dominated Confederation of Scottish Local Authorities. "We are in a decisive dispute," says Carol Ball, the Unison union convenor of the nursery nurses' campaign. "All we want is for COSLA to talk to us about a national deal. Yet it's come to an all-out strike. We are calling for support from across the movement."
LONDON'S ASTORIA club rocked last week with 2,000 people determined to beat the British National Party. The event was the London launch of the new Unite Against Fascism coalition. It is campaigning against the British National Party, which is targeting the elections on 10 June. Both the audience and those on stage marked this out as no ordinary political meeting.
"WE WERE behaving like a proper trade union." Such comments came from university lecturers' picket lines across Britain and Northern Ireland last week. The pickets behaved exactly as any other group of trade unionists on strike-making up ditties about overpaid bosses, persuading people not to cross their picket lines, and generally hitting "production" in the workplace. But, of course, these are academics-tutors, researchers, course coordinators, thinkers.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT 1759-1797 'HOW MANY women thus waste life away the prey of discontent, who might have practised as physicians, regulated a farm, managed a shop, and stood erect, supported by their own industry, instead of hanging their heads surcharged with the dew of sensibility, that consumes the beauty to which it at first gave lustre.
THE continuing incarceration of people at Guantanamo Bay is an outrage, and last week's sales of Socialist Worker expressed that. Ruairidh, Martin and Helen have put together a report on their campaigning success in south London:
Guantanamo-style 'justice' comes to New Labour Britain "I LIE awake at night searching...searching for the answer to the constant question, why me?" These are the words of a prisoner held in Belmarsh prison- Britain's Guantanamo Bay. He is one of 14 foreigners locked up under David Blunkett's anti-terrorism laws.
RESPECT HAS been in existence for just over a month, and we have a mountain to climb in a short time if we want to make an impact. There are just 100 days to go to the 10 June elections. We are focusing on the European and Greater London Assembly election on 10 June because they are run on a proportional system rather than the traditional "first past the post" system.
'OUR ARMED forces have taken 14,000 casualties in Iraq," says retired colonel David Hackworth. That is the truth George Bush is desperate to hide. The US has pitted the most powerful army in the world against a country devastated by sanctions. The Iraqi people have, of course, suffered the most from the war. But Bush and his gang care little more for the overwhelmingly poor white, black and Hispanic soldiers they pitch into the hell of Iraq.
I CAN'T get out of my mind the photo that appeared on the front page of the New York Times on 30 December. It showed a young man sitting facing a class of sixth graders in Blairsville, Pennsylvania.
COUNCIL TAX has shot up by almost half since New Labour came to power. This has shifted the tax burden from the rich and onto ordinary working people. The tax rose by an average of 13 percent last year, and is expected to go up another 7 percent this year. This would bring the total increase since 1997 to 49 percent-far more than earnings have risen over the same period.
A GRUBBY row has broken out among government ministers over immigrant labour from the Eastern European states that are set to join the European Union (EU) in May. On the one side stands the Blair camp, which feels the most urgent priority is to cave in to the racist rantings of the right wing press-owned by such migrant billionaires as Rupert Murdoch.
