Issue: 2169
Dated: 19 Sep 2009
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Gordon Brown is planning massive cuts that will devastate working class communities across Britain.
Bosses are stealing millions of pounds from thousands of construction workers’ national insurance contributions and taxes.
Two pedestrians were seriously injured in a collision between a strike-breaking bus and a lorry in Cowes on the Isle of Wight at the weekend. Police are investigating the incident.
Unofficial action gets results. That is the lesson for drivers at bus operator Sovereign in north west London where bosses have now agreed to run a shuttle service to bring drivers back to their garage in Edgware for meal breaks.
Over 800 workers from First Bus in Bolton, Bury and Wigan struck on Friday of last week in protest at the company’s plan to impose a pay freeze.
The dispute at First Aberdeen has come to an end after workers voted to accept the latest pay offer from the company.
Some 350 defiant trade unionists, socialists and people from the community descended on Mansion House in Doncaster last Saturday in support of suspended Unison union convenor Jim Board.
The all-out indefinite strike by over 500 hundred refuse collectors and street cleaners in Leeds has entered its second week. Many depots had large picket lines with some agency workers being persuaded to turn back.
Striking workers who are fighting for jobs and education at Tower Hamlets College in east London are growing more determined by the day – and their fantastic action has forced management to backtrack.
The militancy of the strike is inspiring workers and activists around the country and support is pouring in.
An inquiry into MG Rover has revealed that the so-called "Phoenix Four" who bought the company for just £10 shared up to £42 million in the run-up to the firm’s bankruptcy in 2005.
Teachers in five schools in Tamworth, Staffordshire, were set to strike on Wednesday of this week in protest at plans to introduce an academy and a privately-run sixth form in the town.
New Labour’s academy programme has lurched into a new crisis with news that a £30 million academy school in Sheffield will be placed in special measures following an Ofsted inspection.
New figures on pensions and pay show that Britain’s top bosses are not sharing the pain of the recession. Ordinary people have seen a swathe of attacks on their pay and pensions.
Yasmin, from Southwark, south London, is an unemployed worker. She spoke to Socialist Worker about why she is planning to protest against Labour.
The rage against Labour is set to explode on Sunday 27 September as thousands march on the party’s conference in Brighton.
Thousands of activists across Britain are to hold a day of action in support of the Vestas wind turbine workers on Thursday of this week.
Juan Carlos Piedra has become the latest victim of cleaning companies’ onslaught against employees involved in unionisation.
More than 20,000 people of all backgrounds packed into a Love Music Hate Racism (LMHR) show at the second annual Freedom Festival in Hull last weekend.
The fascist British National Party (BNP) is attempting to capitalise on the two seats it took in the European elections in June by grabbing as much free publicity as possible. And, outrageously, the BBC is helping it.
One big casualty of Gordon Brown’s cuts came this week as Labour announced that it has abandoned a promise to extend maternity pay from nine months to a year because the state can no longer afford it.
Union leaders have called for a ban on fascist British National Party (BNP) members working in the public services and for a huge campaign to counter the threat of fascism.
Gordon Brown announced that he will cut public services and jobs at the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in Liverpool this week.
Workers and campaigners against the closure of the Vestas wind turbine factory on the Isle of Wight have chained themselves to cranes and boarded a barge in Southampton docks.
A wave of protest in support of the Vestas wind turbine workers took place across Britain on Thursday. The workers occupied their factory in Newport on the Isle of Wight, after bosses announced that it was to close. The occupation, and the workers’ fight for jobs and the planet, inspired tens of thousands of people.
Postal workers across much of the West of Scotland have walked out on unofficial strike after management punished drivers at Glasgow mail centre for refusing to cross their colleagues’ picket lines.
The "blockade camp" outside the Vestas wind turbine factory was smashed up by 50 police officers in a dawn raid this morning.
Postal workers at Middlesbrough sorting office walked out unofficially this morning after scores of managers from across the north of England descended on the office in an effort to break the union.
"Harrow united – no racists here" read one handmade placard on the 2,000-strong anti-fascist demonstration in north west London on Friday of last week.
The EDL has been touted as the street fighting wing of the BNP. Although both the EDL and the BNP deny such links, several of the EDL’s leading organisers are listed as BNP members.
There were groups of bus workers on the Harrow demonstration from at least four local garages.
The EDL thugs tried to threaten the al-Quds pro-Palestine march in London’s Trafalgar Square last Sunday – but they failed.
A white supremacist who was planning a campaign of terror against black and Asian people was sentenced at the Old Bailey last week.
BNP leader Nick Griffin is to be welcomed onto the BBC’s Question Time programme. Chris Bambery answers common sense views on the Nazis and free speech
‘Voters back Tories to cut public spending", screamed the Sunday Times this week. A YouGov poll shows that people want public spending cuts rather than tax increases, Rupert Murdoch’s paper claimed.
Royal Mail bosses, who are being battered from pillar to post by a series of regional strikes, now face the prospect of a nationwide strike. The CWU union this week begins a ballot of its 120,000 post worker members.
Has David Brent from BBC comedy The Office got a job as a Royal Mail manager? Two leaked letters seen by Socialist Worker suggest this possibility.
Workers at a breakfast cereals factory are to ballot on strike action over redundancies.
Workers at London Metropolitan University look set to take further strike action in their fight against job cuts.
Lecturers in the UCU union at Barnsley College are set to strike on Thursday of this week after a 76 percent vote for action.
Lecturers at Manchester College are set to strike on Thursday of next week against course cuts and redundancies.
Cleaners on the Eurostar trains at St Pancras International in London have voted by 100 percent to strike.
Activists took to the streets across Britain last Saturday to campaign against the hated Sats tests.
Firefighters across the country are engaged in a series of disputes that reflect a rising mood of anger at cutbacks in the service.
A student protest movement has exploded across Australia in recent weeks against racist attacks and the collapse of private colleges.
Trade unionists are blaming a brutal management culture at communications giant France Telecom for a spate of suicide attempts by workers.
Barack Obama’s attempt at a new "peace process" in the Middle East is already in serious trouble.
Shocking evidence has emerged that CIA medical personnel were centrally involved in torture at US detention sites such as Guantanamo.
A large chunk of the already ramshackle case for the Western military occupation of Afghanistan has now collapsed.
The horrific case of two brothers aged ten and 11 who violently assaulted two other boys has re-opened the issue of children and violence. The media coverage has sparked panic, with a sharp rise in calls and referrals to already stretched social workers.
US president Barack Obama addressed a joint meeting of Congress last week about the need to reform the US health system, which was one of his central electoral promises. This followed months of sniping from the right.
Climate change is threatening the future of the planet. Millions of people around the globe are already feeling the effects of environmental damage and are asking what we can do to stop it.
There is another "common sense" belief that has been at the heart of much discussion on the environment for many years – that there are simply too many people on the planet.
If we want to produce to meet people’s needs, we need planned production to replace the anarchy of the market.
Most socialists dream of taking part in a revolution. The revolutionary Leon Trotsky was involved in two, playing a leading role in the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917.
The anti-capitalist movement pioneered a politics of subvertising.
Science fiction and socialists have always had a relationship that derives from our shared desire to discuss possible futures.
Now something of an institution, Bob Dylan’s radio show divides the world into a series of somewhat random categories, such as work or guns, and then builds a playlist of songs around them.
This harrowing documentary follows two British soldiers who have been horrifically injured while fighting in Afghanistan.
A group of soldiers swaggers through a slum backing up callous bureaucrats as they serve eviction orders on the malnourished residents. Anyone who objects faces abuse. Anyone who resists is shot down.
Gordon Brown’s tragic hypocrisy Gordon Brown has confirmed that Britain will support compensation claims being made against Libya by the families of IRA victims.
"With or without Lehman Brothers we were headed for a crisis. But we learnt the wrong lesson. We’ve created a financial system with more institutions that are too big to fail."Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz warning one year on about problems in how the collapse of Lehman Brothers was handled