"WE STOPPED the BA juggernaut in its tracks." That's how a Heathrow worker described the end of the dispute that erupted with spectacularly effective walkouts on 17 and 18 July. British Airways check-in workers are delighted that just a few hundred of them forced the bosses of a huge multinational to back down.
BERNARD Manning, who has made his name out of telling racist "jokes", says he will not play the British National Party's "festival" in August. Manning was booked by his manager to play at the BNP's "Red, White and Blue" annual event, to be held in a field on the edge of Sawley village, Lancashire. Manning's manager claims, "it's just the same as playing at a Labour or Tory event." But Manning claims he knew nothing of the booking.
ON WEDNESDAY of this week strikers from 30 London Unison union branches were due to march through central London to a rally. This action came at the end of their latest four week long round of selective strike action in pursuit of a London weighting allowance of £4,000. The latest strike has seen the highest involvement of strikers, with 1,500 members bringing a range of council services to a standstill. The employers have been left in no doubt about their workers' determination to win the full claim.
NURSERY NURSES in Central Scotland and in Dundee took three days of strike action last week. This was the latest phase of action in the fight of nursery nurses across Scotland for a decent pay rise and recognition for the valuable job they do. At its height the fight has involved up to 6,000 nursery nurses in strike action, with noisy protests in Glasgow and Edinburgh.
CAMDEN TENANTS are in the midst of a battle against the council, who are trying to bring in an ALMO (Arms Length Management Organisation) to run council housing. ALMOs are the government's strategy for privatising council housing where they can't get tenants to accept stock transfer.
Court frees Lewisham two ALL OF the charges against two of the Lewisham Three, Rene Bravo and Marcela Massingnotti, were thrown out by the magistrate at Belmarsh last week. Rene and Marcela are the parents of a student and all three were taking part in peaceful anti-war activities on the day war broke out.
SEVEN hundred Stagecoach bus workers in south and east Devon are set to take four more days of strike action in their fight to win £6.50 an hour. Strikes were planned for Thursday and Saturday of this week and Monday and Wednesday of next week.
AN INDUSTRIAL tribunal found that trade unionists who have been on strike against the William Cooks foundry business for over two years had been "unfairly dismissed". The 80 workers, in the GMB and Amicus-AEEU unions, were sacked in 2001 when they were involved in an official strike. Eddie Grimes, Amicus-AEEU member and striker, spoke to Socialist Worker about the result:
PROTESTERS ARE organising to challenge Britain's biggest arms exhibition, due to be held in London on 9-12 September. More than 600 companies and suppliers have already booked stands at the fair, which is funded by the Ministry of Defence.
In all the flurry of little lies we need to concentrate on the main question. Did the government, in particular the prime minister, the foreign secretary and the defence secretary, deceive the people in the run-up to the war?
Tens of thousands of protesters marched against the US occupation of Iraq in Najaf last weekend. They chanted slogans such as "No Americans after today", "No to America. No to colonialism" and "Down with the invaders".
"TELL DONALD Rumsfeld the 2nd Brigade is stuck in Fallujah, and we're very angry," Sergeant Siphon Pahn told a major US news programme last week, in an extraordinary scene. Anger boiled over when the troops learnt they were staying in Iraq indefinitely after being told they would be home by September. The outburst gave a glimpse of the bitterness building up among US troops serving in Iraq.
