The four local Unity marches took place in areas where the British National Party (BNP) have won council seats. Over 300 people marched through Halifax.
A TOP US general is already comparing the occupation of Iraq to the "quagmire" the US sank into in Vietnam. The US had "failed to understand the mindset and attitudes of the Iraqi people and the depth of hostility towards the US in much of the country", admitted retired general William Nash last weekend.
OVER 600 people attended the Stop the War Coalition's activist conference held in London on Saturday. "The size of today's conference shows that the anti-war movement has not gone away," said coalition convenor Lindsey German. "That is also clear from public meetings up and down the country. They are drawing in hundreds of people. Some areas are having bigger meetings than they did in the run-up to the war. The war is also continuing in Iraq. It is continuing in that they are making threats against Iran. So our movement must continue. People feel that we were vindicated in opposing the war. Now we have to continue to build on that. They have a project for the new century. We should h
THE spectacular libel against George Galloway by the US paper the Christian Science Monitor has come crashing down. The paper admitted last week that its story about Galloway receiving $10 million from Saddam Hussein's regime was based on documents that were crude forgeries. It has apologised to Galloway. Rightly, he has refused to let the paper off the hook.
LOW PAID workers at the Royal Bolton hospital are the latest group of NHS staff to strike against private NHS contractors. The 150 workers are employed by ISS Mediclean, one of the largest private cleaning firms in Britain. The ISS group raked in £200 million profit last year. Domestics (cleaning staff) get £4.47 an hour, with porters getting £4.61. They are demanding £5 and £5.60 respectively.
"THE TEXTILE workers are like the coal miners in Britain, to make a comparison. They are a very old section of the working class and have a long history going back to the mid-19th century. They have been involved in many struggles and formed the backbone of the city for many years.
ANYONE INVOLVED in the anti-capitalist movement can only welcome the call that George Monbiot makes in his interview in Socialist Worker last week and in his new book The Age of Consent for "a global democratic revolution". Monbiot unflinchingly targets what he calls "the global dictatorship of vested interests".
How do you assess the growth of the anti-war movement and the opportunities for the left?
"MR BLAIR, we will take strike action again." This warning came from Dave Prentis last week at the conference of the Unison union. He is the general secretary of the 1.3 million strong public sector workers' union. Prentis praised the strikes the union's members have staged in the last year. He warned more would follow unless the government coughed up to tackle low pay and improve schools and hospitals.
"I KNOW it's an overused phrase, but we've been utterly sold out." With those words Fergus Richmond, a firefighter from Ayr, summed up the bitterness of Fire Brigades Union (FBU) members at the end of their pay dispute on Thursday of last week.
NEW LABOUR'S pensions minister, Andrew Smith, announced measures last week that will shatter the working conditions of millions of public sector workers. They will have to work an extra five years before claiming their full pension. Future nurses, teachers and sections of the civil service - who can now get their pension at 60 - will have to work until they are 65. Existing staff could still retire at 60 but their pension would be reduced.
FIFTY YEARS ago, on 15 June 1953, sixty workers on a hospital building site went on strike. They were faced with a new pay deal which meant wage cuts of up to one third unless they increased output by 10 percent. The employers insisted that "productivity" must come first. A familiar enough scene, repeated time and again around the world. But this was in East Germany.
