AROUND 100 people attended the Stop the War Coalition activists' conference in central London last Sunday. Activists from 25 local Stop the War Coalition groups discussed continuing to organise against the so called "war on terror" and the US's plans for an attack on Iraq.
THE MOOD for a fight for decent pay for public sector workers marked the conference of Britain's biggest trade union this week. So too did the growing feeling for united action over pay across the public sector. The main conference of the Unison union took place in Bournemouth after Socialist Worker went to press on Tuesday.
APARTHEID FOR children-that is what David Blunkett pushed through the school system this week. The government wants refugee children educated separately from the rest. They will be treated as second class and labelled as "problems", and then blamed for the crisis in schools.
RACISTS HAVE been going on the rampage in a series of shocking attacks in Burnley and Oldham in north west England. These attacks are the direct result of the Nazi British National Party encouraging racist hatred in the area.
A price on your life THE government's National Institute for Clinical Excellence is denying life saving treatment to cancer patients, say top consultants. The government advisory body limited doctors' ability to prescribe some colon cancer drugs two months ago because they were not "cost effective".
A NURSE recruited to help NHS staff shortages is the latest victim of the government's crackdown on immigration. Edina Mukwaira spent three years at Middlesex University studying to become a nurse. She was due to start a job at the beginning of this week at the Royal Free Hospital in north London.
THE COMPANY Jarvis, which was responsible for track maintenance in the area of the Potters Bar rail crash, had a sharp increase in profits just before the crash. The firm raked in £45.8 million for the last financial year.
THE GOVERNMENT is in a panic over its plans to flog off council housing. New Labour made a public commitment to get all homes up to "decent homes" standard by 2010. It wanted to push the responsibility for improving homes onto the private sector by privatising council homes.
"SOME people coming to Britain are denounced as economic migrants, yet economic migrants from all over the world are encouraged to be doctors and nurses to fill the gaps." So says former Labour MP TONY BENN.
WHILE THE British media was obsessed with the jubilee and the World Cup, global stockmarkets started sliding again last week. They did so after two major companies suddenly ran into trouble. The treasurer of El Paso, an American gas firm, recently committed suicide. The circumstances were remarkably similar to those of the suicide of the finance director of Enron last year.
A KEY New Labour policy was roundly attacked at the conference of the MSF section of the Amicus union that began in Blackpool last weekend. Amicus is Britain's second biggest union. It was created this year after the merger of the MSF and AEEU unions.
THE FRICTION Dynamics workers and their supporters marched through the North Wales town of Caernarfon last Saturday. The 87 workers, members of the TGWU union, were sacked over a year ago during an official strike. Friction Dynamics' owner, boss Craig Smith, used New Labour's anti-union laws to sack the workers.
