Issue: 2156
Dated: 20 Jun 2009
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There is a new popular power sweeping Iran. In one of the biggest mass demonstrations since the toppling of the US-backed Shah in 1979, some one million people descended onto the streets of the capital Tehran to protest at an election widely seen as rigged.
The open letter to the left is a good move. We desperately need to make the things that unite us count more than the things that divide us.
Thousands of RMT transport union members on London Underground and Transport for London responded magnificently to a series of attacks on them by taking part in a solid 48-hour strike last week.
The RMT and London Underground management are to hold talks over the dispute in the coming days.
Jobs London Underground is cutting 1,000 jobs while Transport for London could slash 3,000 jobs. Neither company has ruled out compulsory redundancies.
Leaders of the Aslef train drivers’ union told their members to continue to work as normal during the strike.
For the first time in many years delegates to the CWU union’s telecom conference threw out a proposal from our executive.
It was standing room only as 120 tenants from the Regents Park Estate in Camden, north London, attended a meeting called by Keep our NHS Public last week about plans for a new so-called "GP-led health centre".
Members of the Unison union at London Metropolitan University are balloting for industrial action over planned job cuts.
Activists in Barrow, Cumbria, opposed to turning comprehensive schools into academies have called a protest on Friday of this week.
An angry protest against the threat of job losses at Hackney Community College took place on Thursday of last week.
Around 30 lecturers in the UCU union at Leeds College of Art and Design (LCAD) picketed their college on Wednesday of last week as part of their union’s "IOU" campaign to win the implementation of a nationally agreed pay rise.
Teachers in the NASUWT union at Yale College in Wrexham have voted for strike action in protest at planned redundancies. Around 20 jobs are under threat.
The threat of strike action at Northumberland College has forced management to guarantee no compulsory redundancies. Workers in the UCU union have withdrawn their strike plans as a result.
Workers at the City of Bristol College are balloting for strike action over job losses.
Lecturers at City College Birmingham took strike action on Tuesday of this week against job cuts.
The crisis in the Labour Party dominated early debates at the annual GMB union conference in Blackpool.
Rob Williams, the Unite union convenor at the Linamar (ex-Visteon) plant in Swansea, South Wales, has been reinstated after being sacked in April.
Workers at Total’s Lindsey oil refinery in Lincolnshire went out on unofficial strike on Thursday of last week after some were threatened with redundancy.
Secret documents seen by Socialist Worker show how building bosses are planning to prevent a successful vote for action in the national engineering construction ballot.
Gordon Brown renewed his attack on the Tories’ plans to slash public spending if they win the next general election at the GMB union congress in Blackpool this week.
Students and workers at Tower Hamlets College, east London, are involved in a rollercoaster campaign to stop education cuts and defend jobs.
Over 300 trade unionists, students and unemployed workers came together in London last Saturday to build a united response to the crisis that threatens millions of people with unemployment, job insecurity, low pay and poverty.
Business secretary Lord Mandelson’s plans to hand a chunk of the Royal Mail to a private equity firm are set to receive a blow on Friday, as 10,000 postal workers in London prepare to strike.
Royal Mail’s challenge to some of the London strike ballots means that three big offices – Nine Elms, Mount Pleasant and Rathbone Place – will not be on strike this week.
Solidarity from other workers is critical to the fight against post privatisation, says CWU rep Mark Dolan.
Boat workers at the Port of Liverpool who were on the verge of striking have been threatened with losing £5,000 and further redundancies if they take action.
A 600-strong rally against the Nazi British National Party took place in Leeds on Saturday of last week. Trade unionists, community representatives, LGBT and disabled groups and Unite Against Fascism all addressed the rally.
Workers at the Stead McAlpin textile factory in Cummersdale, near Carlisle, have voted to accept cuts to their pay, and terms and conditions to keep the factory open.
Last week’s planned indefinite strike action by 1,300 GMB, Unison and Unite union members in Glasgow council’s land and environmental services department was called off after concessions were made.
Delegates to the Unison union’s national conference met in Brighton against a backdrop of political turmoil, economic crisis and a profound threat hanging over the future of public services.
The government should call time on the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), which will cost £217 billion in repayments over the next 25 years, says a report from the Unison union.
At the beginning of conference a number of delegates challenged the standing orders committee over motions and amendments that had been ruled out of order.
The scandal surrounding the victimisation of Yunus Bakhsh, the widely-respected black trade unionist from Newcastle, has plumbed new depths.
With journalists sighting "green shoots of economic recovery" everywhere, Socialist Worker lists a few sobering facts about youth unemployment and poverty that present a different story
Anti-war campaigners protested on Monday as Gordon Brown announced that the government’s inquiry into the Iraq war will be held in secret.
Were bosses of one of the most multicultural colleges in London complicit in an immigration raid that led to cleaners being deported to a country under a brutal regime?
The immigration raid at the School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas) has raised many questions. But there is one you might have expected would have a clear answer – who employed the cleaners?
Migrant workers are particularly vulnerable, as fear of deportation often means they put up with worse pay and conditions.
The British Tamils Forum has called a March to defend the Tamils in Sri Lanka, to remember the tens of thousands killed in the government offensive earlier this year and the hundreds of thousands now locked in government displacement camps.
The elections in Iran, and the mass protests against fraud that followed, have revealed the deep divisions at the heart of Iran’s ruling class.
Iran is a country ravaged by corruption. Ordinary people have to pay bribes for services to policemen and state officials.
The Islamic Republic of Iran was created by a mighty, popular revolution 30 years ago that overthrew the Shah.
Around 25 cleaners and their supporters lobbied Tory mayor Boris Johnson at City Hall in London today to demand that he fulfils his promise to guarantee the London Living Wage of £7.60 an hour to all cleaners working on Greater London Authority (GLA) and Transport for London (TfL) contracts in the city.
Students occupying at the School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas) have won an important victory in their campaign to win justice for deported and detained cleaners from the school.
Email messages of support to the chair of the Anti-racism network in Belfast <a href="mailto:Bmuldoon2000@yahoo.co.uk">Bmuldoon2000@yahoo.co.uk</a>
The simmering sectarianism that still dominates Northern Ireland has boiled over this week with more than 100 Romanians forced out of their homes in a series of racist attacks in Belfast.
The sacking of 900 workers at the Lindsey Oil Refinery (LOR) is an attack on every trade unionist in the country.
Striking postal workers in London and Edinburgh have delivered a blow to bullying Royal Mail managers and their attempts to undermine the union by ramming through “cost saving” measures.
The Stop the War Coalition has called a protest outside parliament at 2pm this Wednesday, demanding "No Whitewash, No Cover Up", in the Iraq enquiry.
Add your name online to the statement in support on the 900 sacked construction workers.
In an out of court settlement oil multinational Shell has paid £9.5 million to the family of Nigerian author and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa. The family had taken the company to court in New York, accusing it of complicity in the execution of Saro-Wiwa in 1995.
Striking students, staff and professors have faced brutal police repression at the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil, the largest university in South America, with more than 75,000 students.
According to Peruvian president Alan García, the Amazonian peoples "are not first class citizens".
There are depressing similarities between the case of the two young French students Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez, brutally murdered in south London last July, and the case of Baby Peter, who died a slow and painful death in 2007 at the hands of his carers.
New Labour’s devastation in the European and county council elections has led some commentators to speculate whether the party is finished as a political force in Britain.
The media reacted with surprise and some satisfaction as it proclaimed the right were the big winners of the recent European elections.
Thousands of anti-fascists were cheered to see the British National Party’s (BNP) leader Nick Griffin driven from an attempted press conference by some well-aimed eggs last week.
The election of two fascist BNP MEPs has led to predictably craven reactions from some quarters.
Reporting the BNP Meeting for journalists at National Union of Journalists (NUJ) headquarters, 308 Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1X 8DPThursday 18 June, 6.30pm Events are also being organised outside London, for details email <a href="mailto:campaigns@nuj.org.uk">campaigns@nuj.org.uk</a>
Hundreds of thousands of leaflets for the fascist British National Party (BNP) went undelivered during the recent elections after many postal workers used a "conscience clause" agreement with Royal Mail and refused to handle them.
Can’t afford to go out this Saturday night? Don’t worry.
This special season of free film screenings provides a unique opportunity to follow the revolt that 20 years ago liberated Polish society from Stalinist dictatorship.
Imagine you are sitting on a sun-kissed beach and playing in the background is one of those "Chilled Ibiza" soundtracks.
"We want to glorify war – the only cure for the world – militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman."
Resistance against fascism is on the rise The media seized on the election of Sharon Wilkinson, a fascist British National Party (BNP) member, as a county councillor in Burnley, Lancashire, as evidence of the onward march of the BNP and its consolidation in the town.
‘I am looking for every single part of the company to take part in some way in this cash-effective way of helping the company’s survival plan. It really counts.’British Airways chief executive Willie Walsh asks staff to work for free for up to a month