FIREFIGHTERS' union leaders decided on Tuesday not to call any further strikes in order to get talks going with the employers and the government. The decision is a serious mistake. The employers have not ditched the Bain review. They have not dropped their agenda of 4,500 job losses, "modernisation" and station closures.
March in London, 15 February, assemble 12 noon, Embankment and Gower St
THE GOVERNMENT is trying to break the firefighters. Everyone needs to fight to make sure its assault fails. The threats and intimidation came as firefighters struck for 48 hours this week and planned another strike starting from 9am on Saturday.
A WAVE of outrage has greeted the government's white paper outlining plans to make students pay more for university education. Universities will be allowed to charge students top-up fees in three years time. The fees will be limited to £3,000 a year, but only until the election after next.
NEW LABOUR'S privatisation scheme for London Underground came within a hair's breadth of killing dozens of people last Saturday. A motor fell off a Central Line tube train, knocking it off the rails as it entered Chancery Lane station. The train smashed into the platform, and its doors were ripped off as some carriages slammed into tunnel walls.
A WAR on Iraq will not just cost the lives of many tens of thousands of Iraqi people. It will also cost billions of pounds, money lavished on US and British weapons of mass destruction, while public services are crying out for investment.
THE BIGGEST political meeting in the town I can remember in 30 years-and the first when we've had to turn people away." That was how local activist Jane Hardy described the Stop the War Coalition public meeting in St Albans last Thursday, as 350 people packed into a school hall.
Anti-war activists were out in force across the Greater Manchester area last Saturday to organise opposition to the war and a huge presence at the anti-war march on 15 February.
TRAIN DRIVERS working for freight company English Welsh & Scottish Railway (EWS) plan to strike this Saturday and three subsequent Saturdays. We have become increasingly angry at management's refusal to hold proper talks about pay, the implementation of a 35-hour week, and pensions. At present EWS drivers are on the lowest rates for any rail company.
AN IMPORTANT meeting for all health workers is set to take place in Birmingham this weekend. Every worker in the health service should try to come, whether you're a porter or a nurse, a cleaner or a receptionist, work in a hospital or in the community, are in Unison, GMB, Amicus or any other health union.
JOURNALISTS in Bradford are set to lead the action again in this year's low pay battles. Members of the journalists' NUJ union at Bradford Newsquest led the way last year with the first pay strike for a decade. They have now voted by 87 percent for a series of two-day stoppages, starting this week on 30 and 31 January.
