Issue: 2160
Dated: 18 Jul 2009
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AS politicians vie with each other to express their sympathies for British soldiers who have been killed in Afghanistan – soldiers that they all voted to send – a brave young man stands ready to be jailed for refusing to fight.
Veterans of Kenya’s Mau Mau independence struggle came to Britain in June demanding compensation for atrocities committed by the British. Ken Olende tells their story
The future of Britain’s steel industry is in jeopardy. The multinational Corus announced plans for another 366 job cuts at its Scunthorpe plant last week.
Former workers at Visteon face a new battle to protect their pensions.
More than 60,000 people attended the 125th Durham Miners’ Gala on Saturday.
The campaign against the closure of the Vestas wind turbine factory on the Isle of Wight swung into action with mass leafleting and petitioning last Saturday.
London Underground workers in the RMT transport union are discussing the next stage of their fight against thousands of jobs cuts, management bullying and attacks on pay.
Printers at the Newsfax company and the Guardian Print Centre, who share the same building in Stratford, east London, are set to ballot for action over different issues.
More than 300 PCS civil service workers’ union members working in three debt management and banking centres for the Revenue and Customs department struck for half a day on Friday of last week.
There was a lively demonstration of up to 200 people in Great Yarmouth on Thursday of last week against plans to casualise the jobs of 11 dockers at the port.
Bosses at the Delphi car component firm want to cut one in four jobs at their Kirkby plant in Merseyside.
The High Court has ordered that Northamptonshire police allow Mikey Powell’s family access to 4,000 documents relating to the police investigation into his death.
Refuse workers in Leeds were to hold a mass meeting on Thursday of this week to discuss resistance to the council’s plans to cut their pay by up to £6,000 – around a third of their annual wage.
Members of the Unison union at Kirklees council, West Yorkshire, were set to meet this week to discuss their industrial action ballot. Their conditions of service are being attacked as a result of single status.
Members of the Unison and GMB unions held an angry protest outside Bolton Town Hall on Wednesday of last week against cuts to adult care.
The contractors at the Lindsey oil refinery, which saw determined strikes last month, are attempting to roll back on the agreement that brought the action to an end.
Building contractor PC Harrington has been given longer to pay a £150,000 fine for the death of a worker on the Wembley construction site after a judge said that the contractor had been "very greatly affected by the downturn".
A hard-hitting report on deaths in construction is being used by the government to give the appearance that it is doing something about safety on sites.
Nick Griffin, the Nazi leader of the British National Party (BNP), has continued to defend comments he made last week calling for boats with migrants on them to be sunk.
The Socialist Party has always supported genuine left unity, on open, pluralistic terms. An effective challenge in the general election is an urgent task facing the workers’ movement and the left, not least in order to combat the far-right British National Party (BNP).
Dealing with the Nazis in the BNP It’s time for the left to "get its act together" and stop the petty bickering which has bedevilled us for far too long.
Teachers in the NUT union at Edmonton Boys School, Enfield, north London, have voted to be balloted for strike action next term. They oppose moves by school management and the borough to turn their community school into a trust.
NUT teachers’ union members at Haggerston school in Hackney were to strike again on Tuesday and Thursday of this week following a solid strike on Thursday of last week.
A campaign against cuts at a Hackney primary school has ended in the Learning Trust promising to reverse a decision to cut £70,000 from next year’s school budget.
Hundreds of workers in the UCU and Unison unions at London Metropolitan University took joint strike action on Tuesday this week against a vicious plan to axe up to a quarter of the workforce.
In June management at Tower Hamlets college presented a cost saving "efficiency" document to workers and their UCU and Unison unions.
All over the country firefighters in the FBU union are battling to defend jobs, working conditions and services.
Ballots for industrial action are breaking out across London bus garages. London bus drivers have had enough.
Striking bus drivers at First South Yorkshire were jubilant after the courts kicked out the firm’s bid to stop their walkout on Friday of last week.
The report into the policing of the G20 protests was released last week. The 106 page Adapting to Protest document was produced by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary.
The G8 summit of world leaders held in L’Aquila in Italy committed itself to reduce carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050.
Anti-war protesters surged to the gates of Downing Street on Monday evening after the prime minister’s office refused to take delivery of a letter calling for troops to be brought home from Afghanistan.
Shocking images of British soldiers abusing Iraqi civilians were shown for the first time at the start of a public inquiry into the death of Baha Mousa.
Opposition to spending billions of pounds to replace the Trident nuclear weapons system is growing across Britiain.
Britain’s failed enterprise in Afghanistan has been exposed. Fifteen British soldiers have died in the past two weeks, along with countless numbers of Afghanis.
The fight by postal workers against Royal Mail bosses and the government that stands behind them is at a crucial stage – and the stakes could not be higher.
The attacks that postal workers are facing are being driven through by Royal Mail bosses who know they have the backing of the Labour government.
Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling have run up a huge debt in bailing out the Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Bank.
Unions showed that militant action can win when BAA airport management at Heathrow were forced into a major climbdown last week.
British Airways (BA) workers are furious at management plans for job and pay cuts at the airline.
‘In 2006 my regiment was posted to Afghanistan for seven months. And if I had to describe my feelings about the tour in one word, I would say "confused".
A whole town united on Saturday in a fight for jobs. Around 5,000 people marched through Redcar in the north east of England in bitter anger at Corus’s threat to axe their steel plant.
A group of workers have occupied the Vestas plant on the Isle of Wight. Their brave stand is in defence of 600 jobs under threat and to keep production going at almost the only British producer of wind turbines.
Workers from the occupation have issued the following statement.
Your solidarity can make a difference!
The eyes of Europe were focused on Greece after the revolt that broke out here last December.
Pro-democracy protests in Iran have continued despite a bloody crackdown by the authorities.
Violent clashes in the Xinjiang region of China have thrown a spotlight on ethnic divisions in the country and the role of the heavily militarised Chinese state.
"It is like he was dancing on my brother’s grave." That is the response of Dominique Walker to fascist British National Party (BNP) leader Nick Griffin’s claims that the murder of her brother, Anthony, was not a racist attack.
Forty years ago Neil Armstrong became the first human to walk on the surface of the moon. I was only five years old on 20 July 1969 but I still remember the thrill of staying up to watch the event on television.
FURTHER EVIDENCE has appeared this past week about how corrupt British politics is. No, this isn’t about MPs on the take or reporters phonetapping. It’s about Afghanistan.
The shocking scenes of poor people violently attacking each other in the Xinjiang region in the west of China will surely have added to the feeling that there is something inexplicable about national and ethnic tensions.
A meeting that may be a sign of things to come took place in London a few weeks ago. Two former Liberal government bureaucrats from Canada – Jocelyne Bourgon and Marcel Massé – met with leading British Tories and senior civil servants.
The delegation of three men and two women veterans presented their case to the high court in London at the end of June.
The British arrived in East Africa in the 1890s and took what is now Kenya by savage military conquest. The invaders took the best farming land for themselves. This became known as the White Highlands where no African could own land. Much of the area had previously been home to the Kikuyu people.
British-Iraqi rapper Lowkey penned this hard‑hitting assault on the British National Party (BNP) in response to their election to the European parliament.
In 1974 a roster of the top soul acts in the US travelled to Kinshasa, Zaire, (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) to play a three-day concert timed to coincide with Muhammad Ali’s world championship challenge to George Foreman.
Pub landlord Paddy has barred the local gangster’s son and so put his life in danger.
If Dickens was around today what social issues would he be writing about? If he were a children’s author would he shy away from the controversial subjects or tackle them head on?
Paolo Pasolini was a dissident communist, expelled from the Italian Communist Party because of his sexuality.
Letters
"This is hard fighting and, as we have seen, the risks are considerable. But we are making progress."British defence secretary, Bob Ainsworth on the war in Afghanistan