DEPUTY PRIME minister John Prescott has thrown down the gauntlet to every trade union by moving to impose a terrible pay offer on 55,000 firefighters and control staff. He announced the introduction of legislation to allow him to do that on Thursday of last week, just hours after bombs started raining on Baghdad. The following day he published the bill in parliament.
San Francisco, Rome, Buenos Aires, Vienna, London, Sydney, Dhaka, Brussels, Madrid, Athens, Seoul, Tokyo, Mexico City, Edinburgh... and hundreds more
ALL THROUGH Thursday people marched, protested, blocked roads, occupied buildings. At the heart of the protests was a magnificent mobilisation of school and further education college students.
On the day that war broke out towns, cities and even villages across Britain were brought to a standstill by militant anti-war protests
Protests broke out across the globe last Thursday, the day Bush and Blair launched their war against Iraq. Here are just some of the reports we've received.
GEORGE BUSH'S spokesperson Ari Fleischer says the "Coalition of the Willing" the US has mobilised represents 1.2 billion people from countries with a combined national output of $21.7 trillion a year.
THE US and Britain have lied and stamped on every attempt at diplomacy to ensure their brutal war on Iraq goes ahead. George Bush and Tony Blair tried to pose as peacemakers who were foiled at the United Nations (UN). Foreign secretary Jack Straw resorted to blaming the French government for a war on Iraq.
THE BRITISH press tried to claim last week that the French government was responsible for war on Iraq. It said that France's opposition to immediate war meant that it was part of an isolated minority.
Over 1,500 delegates packed into an inspiring "People's Assembly for Peace" in Westminster Central Hall last week. It centred around unprecedented demands about what to do when the war starts. Delegates called for a campaign of mass civil disobedience, strikes and direct action to stop the war.
WORKERS AT 34 BT call centres were to stage protests on Thursday of this week over the company's plans to axe 2,200 jobs and transfer work to India. The battle goes to the heart of debates over capitalist globalisation. Some commentators have argued that opposing BT's plans will hit Indian workers, and so is based on a narrow nationalist outlook. The workers' CWU union has rightly rejected this argument.
