THE FIRST Europe-wide assembly in the run-up to the 2004 European Social Forum (ESF) took place on Saturday and Sunday of last week.
HIGH PROFILE people in trade unions, campaigns and celebrities are signing up to support the Unite Against Fascism coalition.
TRAIN DRIVERS on the Gatwick Express were set to strike on Christmas Eve and again on New Year's Eve as Socialist Worker went to press. There have already been two strikes by the 60 drivers in the Aslef union over pay.
SOME 40 striking bus workers, members of the TGWU, formed an excellent and lively picket line in Worthing, West Sussex, last Saturday morning-despite very cold and wet weather. The drivers were on a 12-hour strike over a derisory pay offer made to them by the Stagecoach company.
THE ELECTIONS for the Amicus union executive last week indicated how much has changed in Britain's second largest union. Members of the left wing Unity Gazette slate won 23 out of 48 positions, almost a majority.
BAGGAGE HANDLERS at Liverpool John Lennon Airport are set to hold their second five-day strike on Monday.
THE TERROR laws introduced by New Labour are being used to target ordinary people.
IN A damning report Amnesty International has accused the government of creating a "Guantanamo Bay in our own back yard".
"THAT IS the way the world is today. The best thing government can do is not offer a false prospectus to people that we can prevent those changes. We live in an economy which is global, in which there is going to be a lot of churning of jobs, in which the old concept of nine to five jobs is changing."
