Issue: 2192
Dated: 13 Mar 2010
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The battle against cuts is on across Europe—and Britain is no exception.
Over 150 workers at the Pearl Continental Hotel in Karachi,Pakistan, are continuing an occupation against the sacking of four union reps and around 100 other workers. They have held the basement of the 5-star hotel for 15 days, despite police raids and bullying threats by security guards.
Lecturers at Leeds University are set to strike on Thursday 18 March. They will be striking on the same day as lecturers at Sussex University.
Bosses have raised the stakes for students and lecturers struggling against cuts at Sussex university.
"I have campaigned for justice from the day Paul died. Losing a child is heartbreaking enough, but losing a child while they are in the care of the state gives an added dimension to the grief.
Lord Ashcroft, who effectively owns the Tory party, hit the headlines as he admitted that he didn’t live here in order to avoid paying tax.
The Scottish Labour Party has been shaken by the resignation of the leader of Glasgow City Council, Steven Purcell.
Management at Sussex university have been stuffing their faces in the company of high-paid business executives—while pushing through cuts that will devastate education.
Anti-war soldier Joe Glenton has been imprisoned for his refusal to fight in Afghanistan.
Children in the Iraqi city of Fallujah are still being born with severe birth defects.
An inquiry into allegations that British soldiers tortured and killed people in Iraq began this week.
Over 100 people met last Tuesday to build solidarity for people jailed after protesting at Israel’s assault on Gaza last year.
More evidence is emerging that the British government is allowing its territory of Diego Garcia to be used for torture.
New Labour is determined to continue its cover-up of MI5 collusion with Guantanamo Bay.
Up to 10,000 teachers, pupils and campaigners poured onto the streets of Glasgow to protest against cuts in education on Saturday.
Four hundred people attended a meeting in north London to defend Accident and Emergency services under threat at the Whittington Hospital.
Around 250 council workers joined a march and rally in Neath, South Wales, last Saturday to protest at the New Labour council’s plan to cut more than 750 jobs.
Over 600 people took to the streets of Brighton demanding jobs, services and no bail outs for the rich last Saturday.
Around 150 workers and students rallied in support of Leeds university lecturers on Thursday of last week.
The Anti Academies Alliance is organising a series of meetings in the run-up to the general election.
Workers from AB Connectors at Abercynon in South Wales began a continuous overtime ban on Tuesday of this week over a pay freeze.
The campaign for the reinstatement of sacked cleaner and Unite union activist Alberto Durango held a protest outside the UBS building in London last Friday.
The Unison union’s Higher Education conference voted unanimously for a 4 percent pay claim.
Around 60 people came to the launch of Unite Against Fascism (UAF) Wales last Saturday in Cardiff.
More than half of people aged 17 to 25 are not registered to vote, figures from the Electoral Commission revealed last week.
MondayOrganising meeting with people from the local theatre, trade unionists from the CWU and Unison, students and residents. TuesdayMet women representing Kosovan Albanian, Rwandan, Turkish, Chinese and Asian groups. We agreed to produce leaflets in different languages and speak at a 400-strong Kosovan Albanian meeting.WednesdayAttended a London Metropolitan University lecturers’ meeting. They agreed to organise support. Students there are organising weekly UAF stalls.ThursdayFifty students attended University of East London UAF meeting. The president of the Isla
"We are writing to call upon all your readers to come to Bolton on 20th March and take part in a national demonstration against fascism and racism.
The state allowed 250 followers of the racist English Defence League (EDL) to march on parliament on Friday last week.
Greek workers have stepped up their resistance to cuts while politicians and bosses are demanding more.
Hundreds of thousands of Portuguese workers took part in a general strike on Thursday of last week.
Local election results in the Netherlands are a serious warning to the left.
The French CGT union has threatened "fire and blood" after oil giant Total announced the closure of its refinery in Dunkirk.
A dockers’ strike has paralysed large parts of Finnish industry.
Trade union leaders in Ireland have been forced to announce a new series of strikes over pay cuts, job losses and attacks on pensions.
Voters in Iceland have overwhelmingly rejected the terms of a deal to compensate British and Dutch banking customers for their losses after the bank Icesave collapsed in 2008.
Lecturers at the University of Sussex are set to strike on Thursday 18 March.
Over 200,000 civil service workers struck on Monday and Tuesday in the first major national battle against the government’s cuts programme.
The new agreement is called, in a phrase both ominous and bland, Business Transformation 2010 and Beyond. It’s a dog’s dinner of a document—hard to make sense of, with strings of letters representing previous agreements, and a general attempt to hide its message behind obscure language.
Birmingham
Senior reps meeting in Bournemouth this week will be told how significant the new national agreement is. They will be reminded that Royal Mail wanted to impose its own vision of the future without the union.
Two new candidates have joined the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) to stand in the upcoming general election.
Crucial talks between British Airways (BA) bosses and the Unite union were due to end as Socialist Worker went to press.
The bosses and right wing rags say BA cabin crew are well paid. They claim workers earn £29,000 a year.
LOSS: Up to £30 a week for delivering junk mail, and £12 a week early shift allowance
A ballot of 15,000 Network Rail maintenance workers ends this week. It follows a scathing official report into the company’s plans to change its structure and cut 1,500 jobs.
More than 550 guards and drivers at First Scotrail were set to strike for the third time this Saturday against plans to impose driver-only trains on the new Airdrie-Bathgate line.
Booking office staff operating the new ticket issuing system on Virgin West Coast are balloting for industrial action.
South Yorkshire firefighters have accepted a deal after almost after two years in dispute.
Unison officials raided the offices of the union’s Bromley, Greenwich and Housing Association branches without notice last Friday morning.
An employment tribunal this week heard shocking evidence in the case of Yunus Bakhsh, a nurse and leading black activist in Newcastle.
Tenants and Defend Council Housing activists staged a mock auction of councillors’ homes last Saturday in Kentish Town, north London.
Around 45 members of the RMT union’s London Underground engineering branch attended a meeting last week to discuss the best way to organise a militant fightback in the workplace.
The man in this picture is Chris Renton. He was photographed on the racist English Defence League (EDL) march on parliament last Friday.
Election results for the national executive committee and national officers of the UCU lecturers’ union are due on Wednesday. But elections for higher education members for London and the East continue until 17 March. Socialist Worker is backing UCU Left candidates Mark Campbell, Jane Hardy and Jim Wolfreys in this section.
Some 80 people demonstrated outside the UK Border Agency offices in Govan, Glasgow, yesterday after the deaths of three asylum seekers on Sunday. Up to 300 people joined a commemoration in the evening by the Red Road flats where the three died.
The leadership of the racist English Defence League continue to claim it is a "peaceful" organisation—but the arrest and conviction of key members paints a different picture.
The BBC has announced that it is going to give another platform to Nazi British National Party (BNP) leader Nick Griffin.
BNP leaders are planning to introduce an apartheid-style membership system to keep ethnic minorities from being involved in key areas of the party.
Network Rail maintenance workers have voted overwhelmingly in favour of striking against bosses’ plans to cut 1,500 safety-critical jobs. The RMT union members voted by 77 percent to strike over the cuts and by 89 percent for action short of a strike in a 65 percent turn-out. The TSSA union is also balloting its members for action at the company.
Around 200 Sussex students have occupied a lecture theatre demanding the reinstatement of the "Sussex Six". A high court injunction banning protest on campus has failed to crush militancy.
The PCS civil service workers’ union has set a further strike day on Wednesday 24 March, budget day. This follows a successful two-day strike on Monday and Tuesday of this week, when over 200,000 workers walked out, severely hitting government services.
Union leaders hailed today’s general strike as a complete success. Public services ground to a halt in all major cities from Alexandroupoli in the north to Sitia in the south. Public and private sector workers both joined the action.
Everything is changing. Many people worry that we’re "losing the British way of life".
We are witnessing a frenzy of climate "scepticism". Following the hacking of emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, the right are arguing that the science of human-caused global warming is wrong.
Schools minister Ed Balls insulted all teachers when he agreed that it is OK for Nazi BNP members to teach in our schools.
The hypocrisy of the British media can still surprise. Look at the warmth with which they bade farewell to Michael Foot when he died last week, after they had vilified him while he was leader of the Labour Party between 1980 and 1983.
Earthquakes are events that expose what is hidden in a society. They are crises that reveal the best and the worst of people.
‘Thirteen years since Labour came to power promising ‘Education, education, education’ we face cuts of more than £1 billion in colleges. Funding for my college is being slashed by £2.5 million. English for Speakers of Other Languages (Esol) and Adult Education are particularly badly hit.
Guerilla artist Banksy has a film out, Exit Through The Gift Shop. It looks at the links between grafitti, art and advertising.
The Niger Delta in Nigeria is a battleground.
This film is set in a rural German village on the eve of the First World War.
This is a striking new play about the growth of the fascist British National Party (BNP) in an east London borough – a very thinly disguised Barking.
A new exhibition in Manchester that focuses on the history of protest in Britain is a must-see.
The End of the PartyAndrew Rawnsley, Viking £25
DIVIDE AND rule is a key weapon in the bosses’ armoury. We must not let them use it in their battle to impose cuts.
The return of Jon Venables to jail for breaching his parole licence has created a storm in the right wing media. Venables and Robert Thompson killed two year old James Bulger in 1993, when they were just ten.
BBC cuts: a victory for the bland and boring BBC director general Mark Thompson announced major cuts at the corporation this week. Rupert Murdoch and every other media mogul will be rejoicing.
"As a director of Bond Street stationery firm Smythson and daughter of aristocrat Sir Reginald Sheffield, Mrs Cameron is not a natural Labour supporter—but she was a black-clad ‘goth’ in her teens."The Daily Mail newspaper’s sharp understanding of Labour voters helps it explain why David Cameron’s wife may have once voted for the party