THOUSANDS OF people across Britain have taken to the streets to show their anger against Israel's military onslaught against Palestine. In London hundreds gathered outside the Israeli embassy, the US embassy and Downing Street nearly every day last week.
TEACHERS IN England and Wales are on course for a major conflict with the government. Their three TUC-affiliated unions, the NUT, NASUWT and ATL, all passed a joint resolution at their Easter conferences pushing for a 35-hour week and drastic cuts in workload.
Saturday 13 April Demonstrate for the Palestinian people. Assemble 2pm, Hyde Park, London, for march to Trafalgar Square.
Blowing the horn for refugees SOME 80 campaigners protested outside Dover Young Offenders Institution on Monday of last week. This was the day it was taken over by the Immigration Service to become Dover Removals Centre.
HOSPITAL BOSSES in South Durham crumbled in the face of a threatened three-day strike by medical secretaries last week. Bosses gave in to the women workers' demand for regrading. Workers accepted the deal at a mass meeting on Friday of last week. This is the second NHS trust to back down.
WORKERS AGAIN halted flights out of Manchester airport on Friday of last week when they began a 24-hour strike over pay and conditions. This was the latest in a series of strikes by 350 security workers at the airport against plans to introduce new security contracts that cut workers' wages and conditions.
A NATIONAL lobby of parliament by around 1,000 post workers was scheduled to take place this week. It came as heated arguments split the union's leadership over the response to the Post Office's announcement of mass job losses. The CWU union's top leaders support a deal to accept up to 30,000 job cuts as long as they are "voluntary".
"WE ASKED them nicely for a living wage and they replied with a big stick. We've got to take that stick off them and beat them with it." That's how young journalists on the newspapers in Greater Manchester owned by the Guardian Media Group described their decision to hold three two-day strikes over pay and derecognition.
Domestics and porters at Glasgow Royal Infirmary won a swift and important victory on Tuesday of last week over the multinational company Sodexho. Some 120 workers, members of the Unison union, walked out in a mass unofficial protest.
WE ARE building support across London for a yes vote in the forthcoming strike ballot over pay that will begin on Friday of next week. We could be out on strike on 14 May. There has already been a six to one vote in a consultative ballot by London council workers, who are members of the Unison union.
GOVERNMENT MINISTERS were "stunned" and their housing policy was "hurled off course" this week when Birmingham tenants voted by 67 percent to 33 percent against housing privatisation. This was a key test case for New Labour's policy of destroying council housing. The vote shows how the gut feeling that people have against privatisation can be mobilised and focused by a strong campaign.
Tony Blair planned to jet off to Texas this week to meet US president George Bush and prepare for a new war against Iraq. Such a war would unleash death and destruction on an even greater scale than the murder and chaos the US and Britain are still inflicting on Afghanistan. The US is already building up its troop levels in the Gulf region on an unprecedented scale.
