Issue: 2155
Dated: 13 Jun 2009
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Gordon Brown’s government is in meltdown after the MPs’ expenses scandal and the disastrous Labour vote in last week’s elections.
The radical left won impressive votes in many parts of Europe. The results show what is possible when the left is organised and can give a clear alternative.
Labour’s vote collapsed to a historic low in last week’s elections as the right made gains. The Tories under David Cameron are now set to win the next general election.
Thousands of people reacted with anger and dismay when the news broke early Monday morning that the fascist British National Party (BNP) had made a major breakthrough into mainstream politics – picking up two seats in the European parliament.
This year’s EIS (Scotland’s teaching union) annual general meeting in Perth last week took place against a backdrop of massive budget cuts combined with a major overhaul of the curriculum from nursery to secondary.
Walkout at Tower Hamlets college Around 200 teachers, support workers, youth workers, admin staff and students walked out at Tower Hamlets college, east London, on Monday.
Around 1,300 Glasgow council parks, street lighting and street cleaning workers are due to begin an all-out indefinite strike at 5am on Friday of this week.
Refuse workers in the Unite union in Bristol have called off a planned all-out strike over pay, which was due to start on Wednesday of this week.
Around 150 dock workers, their families and supporters marched through Grimsby last week in protest against threats of compulsory redundancies and attacks on terms and conditions by the Associated British Ports (ABP).
Workers at the Linamar (former Visteon) plant in Swansea, south Wales, were set to begin an all-out strike from 6am on Thursday of this week in defence of their sacked Unite union convenor Rob Williams.
The van-maker LDV went into administration this week, causing hundreds of redundancies at its Birmingham plant and threatening thousands of jobs in its supply chain.
Left activists in the NUJ journalists’ union are calling for mass action to support local authority workers who refuse to work with the fascist BNP members elected as councillors in last week’s elections.
Firefighters in the FBU union in Essex are to ballot for industrial action over plans to cut fire services in the county.
An industrial relations crisis is developing at British Airways (BA) as the impact of the recession hits the company hard. It faces losses in excess of £400 million.
The Unite and GMB unions are expected this week to begin a national ballot of tens of thousands of construction workers for strikes over pay.
There are two vital elections happening in the National Union of Teachers (NUT).
The CWU union met in Bournemouth this week amid uncertainty over the government’s plans to privatise Royal Mail, a wave of management attacks on the union, and a political crisis that is gripping the government.
Postal workers are preparing for strikes at a number of offices across Britain – and are likely to be soon voting on national action.
Dennis Kilgariff from Oxford moved a motion calling on the union to withdraw support from MPs who have not backed the union’s Early Day Motion against privatisation.
Union reps and activists from the Burslem delivery office in Stoke-on-Trent who have been victimised by Royal Mail organised a well-attended fringe meeting to tell delegates about their case.
Postal workers in Watford have voted to strike in defence of the union’s area safety rep Bob Kennedy, who has been suspended without charge for nine weeks.
Another theme at the conference was the CWU’s efforts to win new members in businesses outside of postal services and British Telecom, which provide the bulk of the union’s membership.
Low turnout meant that no party’s votes rose on any significant scale in last Thursday’s European elections.
The Green Party made a number of gains in last week’s elections.
The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) polled over 17 percent nationally in last week’s European elections, coming second to the Tories.
Thousands of tube workers in the RMT transport union brought the London Underground system to a halt from 7pm on Tuesday with a 48-hour strike over pay, job cuts and management bullying.
Opposition to the Nazi British National Party (BNP) brought hundreds onto the streets on Monday evening – just hours after the news that the BNP had picked up European Parliament seats in the North West and in Yorkshire & the Humber.
Several of the British National Party’s Nazi allies across Europe made a breakthrough in the elections.
Sarah Hewitt, CWU rep Doncaster delivery office ‘Hearing that the BNP had won a big vote in Doncaster and an MEP in my region left me feeling shocked and betrayed.
Gordon Brown stumbles from crisis to crisis. Every day the headlines scream news of new resignations and tales of the fresh challenges to Brown’s leadership – which are then followed by breathless announcements that he is safe for now.
Ten ministers have gone from Gordon Brown’s corrupt government – so far.
Glenys Kinnock has replaced Caroline Flint as the new Europe minister.
The bosses’ desired solution to the recession is to make workers pay for it. The political class agrees, but is unsure how far and how quickly it can try to make this happen.
Last Thursday’s elections saw the right win the largest share of the vote in the majority of European Union states.
Despite Labour’s vote collapsing, overall the radical left did not register gains in last Thursday’s elections.
A solid strike by thousands of members of the RMT transport union at London Underground and Transport for London severely hit tube services from 7pm tonight.
Rob Williams, the sacked Unite union convenor at the Linamar (ex-Visteon) plant in Swansea, South Wales, has been reinstated.
The first full day of a strike by thousands of members of the RMT transport union at London Underground and Transport for London had a big impact on tube services in the capital today.
Tube workers in the RMT transport union responded to Tory mayor Boris Johnson and management’s bluster by ensuring that their strike had an even bigger impact on its second day.
Students and workers at the School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas) have organised an emergency protest for 8.30am on Monday 15 June to defend cleaners at the site who are facing imminent threat of deportation.
Students at the School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas) in central London have occupied the director's offices at the university in protest at the detention and deportation of nine cleaners.
When you step out on the streets of Baghdad you notice immediately that all is not right in Iraq.
The governing coalition in Lebanon swept back into power in the general election last Sunday.
The sight of a US president receiving a standing ovation from students at Cairo university is not one we could have imagined a couple of years ago.
Europe and Britain are shifting right, that is one common sense explanation for the meltdown experienced by Labour and its European counterparts.
Every trade unionist who attempts to stand up for their rights comes up against the threat of the law.
Newspapers report that Labour Party members conspiring to end Gordon Brown’s leadership have taken to quoting the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky’s phrase – "March separately, strike together".
More than 200 delegates from SWP branches across the country attended a special conference last Sunday to reassess and renew the party’s structures.
As a climate activist I hate Exxon Mobil and General Motors (GM). But now GM has gone bankrupt and, the TV tells us, Barack Obama has stepped in to "rescue" the company.
‘The government has been putting a position, ably assisted by the mainstream media, that it had somehow got rid of the problem of unemployment. But in many areas unemployment never went away.
The Fight for the Right to Work conference is an important opportunity for employed and unemployed workers to come together to build a real campaign for jobs.
The level of unemployment in Britain is growing faster every month. It is not hitting everyone in the same way.
Where are jobs being lost? Every month there are fewer jobs. Between February and April job vacancies fell by 51,000 – or
17 February 1992 was a busy day for Mario Chiesa, the manager of a old people’s hospice in Milan. His second appointment that day was with a cleaning company boss who wanted to win the hospice contract.
You’re probably best known as a writer for Casualty and the musical drama Blackpool. Occupation is a long way from that. What made you decide to write a drama about British troops in Iraq?
Congratulations to Clare Solomon, James Nowlan, Chris Breen, George Thompson and Dyana Rodriguez.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera Cosi Fan Tutte (All women behave that way) was first performed in 1790, the year after the French Revolution.
The BFI’s new season contains films that explore the Spanish Civil War of 1936-9.
Sugar follows the life of a 19 year old baseball player from the Dominican Republic in the US. The film takes its name from the "sweet" way he pitches a knuckle curve.
Looking for Eric combines a comedy with a story about postal workers and former Manchester United star Eric Cantona.
How festival stoked-up the anti-racist cause Since the recent Love Music Hate Racism festival in Stoke there has been a noticeable change in the mood in the city – a change for the better.
"The Labour Party does not want a new leader. There is no vacancy, there is no challenge."David Miliband, foreign secretary, speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday