THE FIRST effort by the British National Party (BNP) to use their place on an English council to stop immigration ended in failure last week. The two BNP councillors for Tipton in the West Midlands proposed at a Sandwell council meeting that migration to the area to be "halted at the earliest opportunity".
THE NEWLY formed Westgate-on-Sea Socialist Alliance last week helped win an important victory. Kent County Council had sent letters to the parents of three pupils at St Crispin's infants school telling them they could not be offered a place at the local junior school, St Saviour's, because of lack of resources. The parents had approached their local councillor and their Tory MP for support but heard nothing more.
SOME 450 RMT union members working for ferry operator Caledonian MacBrayne's Clyde and Western Isles divisions started balloting this week for strike action over pay and hours.
BALLOT PAPERS were due to be sent to Amicus members at Fujitsu Services in West Gorton in Manchester on Wednesday of this week. The workers are fighting against attacks on their union recognition and redundancy agreements, and for sick pay, an equal pay audit, and a pay rise. Media coverage of the workers' recent rally has already lifted spirits.
UNION recognition victories at the Daily Telegraph and the latest by 200 journalists at Trinity Mirror in Wales - after a 15-year fight - show the transformation going on in the media industry. The latest issue of Better Read, the rank and file newspaper for media workers, analyses the progress made by the journalists' NUJ union and other unions in the last 12 months.
THE DRIVERS and support staff, all members of the RMT union, escalated action with a four-day strike beginning on Friday of last week. On the day the strike started over 400 Stagecoach workers staged a lively and very noisy march through the streets of Exeter to a mass rally addressed by Bob Crow, RMT general secretary.
STRIKE ACTION by different groups of workers in London councils continued this week. The battle is over a demand for £4,000 London weighting. Unison announced this week that it is extending future actions wider than the original boroughs targeted.
THE BRITISH Airways (BA) workers at Heathrow were right to walk off their jobs two weekends ago. This small group of low paid, mainly women workers defied the rich suits that run a huge multinational company.
'They don't want them to come home. They actually want them to get killed so their stories do not get out.' This is how Azmat Begg, father of Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg, sees the government's attitude to his son's plight.
WINIFRED HUMPHREY has died after she was evicted from her private care home in Kent. The 102 year old was forced to leave Bradley House after its owners demanded Kent County Council coughed up more in fees, as Socialist Worker reported at the time. Winifred was transferred to another care home on 20 June. She died just over two weeks later.
A "SHOCKING catalogue of failure" led to the murder of a 19 year old Asian man bludgeoned to death by the racist sharing his prison cell. This is how a third report by the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) describes the events leading up to the brutal murder of Zahid Mubarek. In March 2000 Zahid was placed in the same cell as racist skinhead Robert Stewart, also 19, in Feltham Young Offenders Institution.
