THE SCOTTISH nursery nurse dispute has reminded activists like myself of the tremendous energy, endeavour, imagination, determination and inspiration of the Timex strike some 12 years ago. The Timex strikers were another group of mostly women workers who showed no regard for the accepted limitations of trade union struggle.
Now it's Waterloo sunset for Blair's New Labour IN AN important development last week, the Waterloo Branch of the RMT rail workers' union has agreed to support Respect candidates standing in the London Assembly and European elections. The decision reflects the deep disgust members have with a Labour Party that has turned its back on working people.
THE WARS in Iraq and Afghanistan were built on many lies, but the terrible massacre on Madrid's railways highlights one of the biggest-the world is not a safer place. As RMT members on London Underground we are only too aware of the vulnerability of the tube network. The same newspapers that supported the war regularly run stories with lurid headlines telling us how the bombers are out to get the Underground.
I HAVE recently begun again to read Socialist Worker, and I must tell you how refreshing it is to see the truth in print once again. During my career in the armed forces under both Conservative and Labour administrations I would regularly read and reread my copy of the paper in full view of the hierarchy.
Don't believe police thugs on any strikers LAST WEEK I watched a good documentary on BBC2 on the Grunwick strike of 1977. The programme openly admitted that the strike was sabotaged by right wing trade union leaders who did not want to divert attention away from the prospects of Labour winning the 1979 general election.
THE 20th anniversary of the 1984-5 miners' strike has reunited the miners in the Nottinghamshire area who dared to support the NUM union throughout the bitter dispute. After all these years the focus by some of the media is on why the NUM would not hold a national ballot. Over 80 percent of miners were already out on strike. They had voted with their feet.
SO MICHAEL Howard had his day out in Burnley. The local Conservatives gathered together all the Asian and black people they could muster, about 12 in total, and placed them where they would be on camera.
MY FRIEND and I were discussing your article on how much (or little) things have changed since the 1840s (Socialist Worker, 31 January). The following day I went into my workplace (telesales) to find that the company had gone into liquidation that very morning and that we wouldn't be paid for the previous week's work.
1,400 school students left without hot food I recently started work in one of 27 schools in the London borough of Tower Hamlets which is part of a £127 million Private Finance Initiative (PFI) scheme. It was claimed that this would provide much-needed new buildings and urgent repairs throughout the borough. But it has proved to be a complete disaster.
RECENT NEWSPAPER headlines screamed that four out of ten whites did not want to have a black neighbour, after a poll by MORI. We live in a racist society. But if the headlines were accurate we would have taken a significant backward step to a more segregated society. The problem is not what people were asked or what people said. It is the way the findings were reported.
I AM speaking on behalf of a large group of women who have suffered an injustice in our fight for equal pay.
