Protesters arrested for defying the ban on demonstrations within one kilometre of parliament were in court this week. Police arrested Aquil Shaer, Maria Gallastegui, Stephen Blum and Alwyn Simpson on 1 August last year, the day the ban came into effect.
Christos Markogiannakis, the Greek deputy minister for public order, was forced to resign on Tuesday of this week in the wake of the scandal over the kidnap and torture of 28 Pakistani immigrants by Greek secret services and MI6 last year.
A demonstration has been called against Tower Hamlets Council's move to sack Eileen Short this Friday. She has been waiting for redeployment since October 2005 when she was made redundant from her job in the press office. Fifty two MPs signed an early day motion in her support. Campaigners believe her redundancy was linked to her activism in Defend Council Housing.
Battles over pensions are unavoidable in the coming months if workers are not to suffer huge blows to their living standards.
A delegation from Sheffield, including several Respect members, recently visited Pakistan and Kashmir, a region of south Asia occupied by India, Pakistan and China.
New Labour’s plans to privatise council housing suffered a series of major setbacks in the run-up to Christmas. Defend Council Housing (DCH) campaigns run by council tenants and trade unionists fought off attempts to privatise housing in the east London borough of Tower Hamlets, Waverley in Surrey and Edinburgh.
Following the magnificent walkouts and protests in Ireland last December, Irish Ferries workers, who were occupying two ships in Welsh ports for 21 days, forced a stunning climbdown from the company.
Campaigners are stepping up efforts to save jobs at the Army Base Repair Organisation (Abro) workshops at Donnington in Telford.
Thousands of members of the PCS and Prospect civil service workers’ unions working in magistrate’s courts across England and Wales, held a national strike on 20 December.
London Underground bosses were given a bloody nose when thousands of stations and revenue staff in the RMT union walked out on New Year’s Eve to defend the deal we’d won for a shorter working week.
More than 300 guards in the RMT union on Virgin Cross Country struck on New Year’s day and are set to be out again each Sunday in a dispute over the erosion of Sunday pay rates.
