OVER 450 people crammed into a Stop the War Coalition meeting in the Gladstone Hotel in Liverpool on Thursday of last week. The meeting condemned the threat of attacks on Iraq. It was sponsored by playwright Jimmy McGovern, Mirror columnist Brain Reade, Liverpool NUT and NUJ branches, and the Merseyside Peace Council.
A SECOND group of council tenants have rejected north London's Haringey council's plans for the privatisation of their homes. Some 86 of the 105 tenants on the Leven Drive estate in Waltham Cross took part in the ballot. The result was 57 against and 29 for the transfer to the Aldwyck Housing Association.
PROTESTS AND meetings in support of Palestine took place around Britain last week. A superb 5,000 people joined the Scottish Coalition for Justice not War demonstration in Glasgow last Saturday. Feeder marches from Southside and the West End of the city arrived in George Square to huge applause from fellow demonstrators.
THIS MONTH could see escalating action over pay. Around 150,000 Royal Mail workers are set to strike for 24 hours from next Wednesday evening. Management is insisting that postal workers accept new delivery arrangements as part of a pay deal.
"An insult." "Taking advantage of our goodwill." "This government does not appreciate us." They were some of the reactions of health workers to chancellor Gordon Brown’s refusal to offer them decent pay after his recent budget. The workers were speaking on the first day of the health conference of the public sector Unison union.
THE NAZI British National Party is hoping to repeat the success of Jean-Marie Le Pen. Local council elections take place on Thursday of next week. Anti-Nazis in the areas targeted by the BNP are stepping up their campaign. They are appealing for support from across Britain. That support needs to flood in to isolate the Nazis.
A CARNIVAL of resistance to privatisation and war is set to take place on Wednesday of next week. That is the 1 May march through the streets of central London. The campaign to "Make May Day our day" has been taken up by thousands of trade unionists, anti-capitalists and anti-war campaigners.
THE SCOTTISH Trades Union Congress (STUC) met in Perth last week against a background of rising bitterness with New Labour. The conference opened with a stage managed attempt to paper over the cracks between the unions and the government.
"IT'S BEEN fantastic," was how one of the striking journalists in the Guardian Media Group in Manchester summed up the start of a round of strikes over pay last week. Some 27 journalists who work on weekly papers across north Manchester and Salford were on strike again on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week.
