ABOUT 100 reps and activists from the RMT union’s tube workers’ section met last week to plan the next stage of our fight over pay, conditions and job cuts.

Some 120 angry but buoyant Unite Against Fascism supporters saw off the National Front in St Albans last week. The Nazis were trying to disrupt the appointment of gay cleric Jeffrey John as the new Dean in St Albans. Respect candidate Maz Cook, among other speakers, made it totally clear that Nazi bigotry wasn’t welcome here or in any other city.

Haringey council running scared as tenants turn down private options

HARINGEY COUNCIL in north London got a shock from the results of its roadshow to promote housing privatisation.

999 staff meals row

AMBULANCE workers in the Unison union in the north east of England are still in dispute with their management over changes to their meal breaks.

Spirit is strong 20 years on

THIS YEAR’S Durham Miners’ Gala took place last week themed around the 20th anniversary of the Great Strike.

84 percent for action at BBC

MEMBERS OF the Bectu broadcasting union at the BBC have voted overwhelmingly for strikes against the privatisation of the corporation’s information technology operation, BBC Technology.

An assault on all our safety rights

WORKERS AT the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) are continuing their programme of industrial action after management imposed a pay offer.

Firefighters must keep up the pressure to turn good conference resolutions into action

FIRE BRIGADES Union (FBU) members across Britain and Northern Ireland are debating how to take forward their campaign against huge attacks on their conditions.

New strategy is urgently needed now

HUNDREDS OF civil servants in the PCS union were set to lobby parliament on Wednesday of this week as part of our long-running dispute against low pay.

International

Comment

Germany: birth of a left party

THE BIGGEST and most established Labour party in Europe is going through its most serious crisis since the First World War.

Multinational is fermenting discontent

THE US brewer Anheuser-Busch (A-B) makes the world’s biggest beer brand, Budweiser. It accounts for 50 percent of total beer sales in the United States, while Anheuser-Busch brews more beer than the entire British brewing industry put together.

Features

Engaging with the political mood

MANY longstanding Socialist Worker supporters are finding that Socialist Worker fits the political mood in their workplace more than ever before.

'We make a difference'

THE MAINSTREAM parties were all desperately scrambling for every vote as campaigning drew to a close in the Leicester South and Birmingham Hodge Hill by-elections this week.

'We are getting a great response from the people the other political parties ignore'

NEW LABOUR is terrified of losing the Leicester South by-election.

Buzzing with ideas and enthusiasm

"EVERYONE IS here to get involved." That was the comment of Jody McAviney, one of several thousand who attended the opening weekend of the Marxism 2004 festival of ideas in London.

Successful revolution depends on organisation

REVOLUTIONS DO not break out just because of the efforts of groups of socialists, I pointed out last week. They occur because great social crises create situations in which, as the Russian revolutionary Lenin put it, "the lower classes do not want to live in the old way" and "the upper classes" are "unable to live in the old way" any longer.

London Calling

THE EUROPEAN Social Forum (ESF) is coming to London between Thursday 14 and Sunday 17 October. The ESF is a festival of resistance to capitalism and war—part of the movement that has come out of the great demonstrations at Seattle and Genoa.

Every campaign can help to set the agenda

LONDON IS a capital of international finance. One of the things the ESF is about is looking for alternatives to, and looking at the impact of, a world of corporate globalisation.

Islam and racism

"Fanatic", "terrorist", "fundamentalist", "extremist", "suicide bomber" or just plain "evil". Those are some of the terms placed next to the word Muslim in the media in the last few days alone.

‘The US is still running Iraq’

THE ROAD to Baghdad airport used to be lined with date palm trees stretching for miles. "The date palm is a national symbol of Iraq," Haifa Zangana explains. "It’s something that takes farmers 20 to 30 years to grow."

Civil servants’ rage as 104,000 jobs axed

GORDON BROWN launched an incredible assault on public sector workers in his spending review on Monday. He wants to sack one in five civil servants, axing 104,000 jobs.

Reviews

The bad news that just isn’t reported

ANYONE WHO has campaigned for the Palestinian people will have come across some bizarre arguments explaining why the Israeli government should pursue its policies of repression against the Palestinians.

Bringing us all together

One Plus One Is One Badly Drawn Boy

Photo exhibition

A PHOTO exhibition opened last week in Hackney, east London, remembering the campaign for justice which followed the death of Colin Roach in January 1983.