OFFICIALS OF Hackney's Learning Trust were confronted by over 250 angry parents, children and supporters at Craven Park School last week. The Trust aims to shut the school, claiming that pupil vacancies and falling standards mean it is no longer viable. But hundreds have attended six consultation meetings, demanding to know the Trust's real agenda.
TEN WOMEN workers at Cadbury World are threatening to strike in a dispute which could see pickets on the gates of the Birmingham tourist attraction. The workers run one of the shops at Cadbury World and were horrified to discover that they are paid £2 an hour less than men who work at the shop across the road from them. Cadbury has ignored the problem for two years.
LONDON: Up to 3,000 people marched through London on the annual protest called by the Greater London TUC and backed by Globalise Resistance and other groups. The march brought together trade unionists, anti-capitalist protesters, pensioners, Turkish and Kurdish political activists, and students. Speakers at a rally in Trafalgar Square denounced the use of torture by the occupying armies in Iraq. Many spoke out against the fascist BNP. London Mayor Ken Livingstone said, \"Whoever you are planning to vote for on 10 June, make sure you use your vote against the BNP.\"
THOUSANDS OF civil servants have defied anti-union laws to unofficially walk out of work in the last two weeks against a management offensive. The action was sparked by management suspending 28 union members for refusing to carry out a performance-related pay assessment scheme. The one-day walkouts took place in Scarborough, the Glasgow Appeals Service and Sheffield on Thursday of last week, and Manchester Rusholme social security office on Friday.
A SCROUNGER and a criminal sneaks into another country to escape justice. Doesn't that sound like the sort of case the anti-refugee press love to splash on the front page? Except it is the Tory Dame Shirley Porter, heiress to the Tesco empire. Porter was the leader of the Tories' flagship Westminster council in the 1980s. Porter, along with nine other councillors, was found guilty of selling off council houses in marginal wards to potential Tory voters. The scheme cost £42 million. She was supposed to pay every penny of that back.
THE BRITISH National Party's attempt to hold a fundraising event with the French Nazi leader Jean-Marie Le Pen spectacularly backfired last Sunday. A campaign organised by Unite Against Fascism trashed any hope the BNP had of favourable press coverage for their \"respectable\" black-tie dinner with Le Pen.
RESPECT CAMPAIGNERS in the West Midlands are having a big impact in the local media. They have shown Respect supporters everywhere how to get the message across. The Birmingham Post is the city's daily morning newspaper. The paper was forced to publish a letter by two leading Respect candidates in the West Midlands, John Rees and Salma Yaqoob, on Thursday of last week.
SCHOOLS, LIBRARIES and offices in Newham, east London, were closed on Thursday of last week as members of Unison struck to defend their union. The one-day strike is the first blow in a campaign to force the council to recognise our democratic right to be represented by the union officers we elect, to decide what we put in our newsletters and to defend facility time.
AS OPPOSITION mounts to the presence of troops in Iraq last Saturday's national council of the Stop the War Coalition decided to focus campaigning energies on opposing the continuing occupation. Some 65 representatives from local groups, who met in Birmingham, decided the following:
WHAT A caring employer! Managers pushed the single delivery through in my office in three weeks using staff taking early voluntary redundancy to help train people. After two weeks these staff were told that they could go. There was no send off, no invitation to meet up in a pub or anything for people with up to 40 years service.
GLOBALISE Resistance, the anti-capitalist network, held its annual conference in London last Saturday. The discussion was dominated by preparations for two important mobilisations. In October the European Social Forum (ESF)-a gathering of tens of thousands of anti-capitalists, trade unionists and campaigners-will be hosted in London.
