A POWERFUL open letter to Tony Blair recently appeared in two authoritative medical journals-the Lancet and the British Medical Journal. Some 500 staff, students and academics from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine had signed the letter, which urged Blair not to go to war.
AROUND 1,800 council tenants and trade unionists descended on parliament from across Britain last week. The lobby and accompanying rally had been called by the Defend Council Housing organisation, which is at the heart of the fight to stop New Labour privatising council housing.
POLICE OFFICERS racially abused and violently assaulted a black man in Brixton, south London, a judge ruled last week. Sylbert Farquharson, aged 57, was awarded record damages of nearly £250,000. Judge Dean said Sylbert was "subjected to explicit racist abuse in the street, and a particularly vicious and cowardly form of racist abuse at the police station.
OVER 270,000 members of the PCS civil servants' union were to start a crucial vote over the future of their union from Friday this week. The vote is on whether to increase democracy in the PCS by having annual national executive elections and conferences.
UP TO 200 local people marched round Halifax shopping centre last Saturday in protest at last week's election of a British National Party (BNP) councillor, Adrian Marsden. Asian teenagers led the march. Workers from a community arts project brought down life-size puppets made by local schoolchildren.
UNIVERSITIES and higher education colleges across London were closed on Tuesday as lecturers and admin and manual workers continued their campaign for a decent London weighting payment. The unions involved-Natfhe, AUT, Amicus and Unison-are claiming a London weighting payment of £4,000.
JOURNALISTS AT the Bradford titles of Newsquest-a division of the giant US media firm Gannett-walked out over low pay on Thursday and Friday of last week. The members of the NUJ union are to strike again on 10 and 11 February, and then on 19 and 20 February. The action involves staff at local papers in Bradford, Shipley, Otley, Keighley, Skipton and Ilkley.
ASIANS IN Bradford who were charged and imprisoned after the 2001 riot went to the court of appeal last week. Four had their sentences reduced-so much for David Blunkett's attack on campaigners as "maniacs" who were "whining" about high sentences. But Lord Justice Rose ruled a further 11 would keep their sentences of between four and six and a half years.
DRIVERS ON English Welsh & Scottish Railway (EWS) struck solidly last Saturday and plan another strike this Saturday. They run freight trains and are members of the Aslef union. EWS drivers are demanding what they have been campaigning for over the last three years-a proper pay rise, a 35- hour week, all of pay to count towards pensions, and a maximum ten-hour day.
A DEBATE on the government's funding plans for higher education was held on Monday of last week. The education minister Charles Clarke and Oxford University student union president Will Straw were to be the headline acts. Clarke seems happy to preside over the most serious attacks on students since the introduction of top-up fees and the abolition of the grant.
FIREFIGHTERS ERUPTED in fury last week over the government's intervention in their pay dispute. The government hoped that by using the big stick of the law it would intimidate firefighters. But the effect was the precise opposite.
"THIS IS about modernisation in the Blairite sense-things are going to get a lot worse for health workers and patients." That's how health worker Gill George explained why it is a priority for all health workers to campaign against the government's new package "Agenda for Change".
