The Socialist Alliance is to contest a by-election in Ipswich. The parliamentary seat was made vacant by the recent death of Labour MP Jamie Cann.
Job cuts and pay cuts for us, bonanza for the bosses. That's the reality of what's happening across Britain as the recession gathers pace. Thousands more workers learned last week that they face the dole. Tens of thousands more were told their pay will be cut. Yet Britain's bosses were celebrating a year of record pay rises, and City money men cheered as shares in many firms pushing through job and pay cuts surged upwards.
US and British government representatives will make decisions this week which will kill poor people as surely as they are doing in Afghanistan. The key votes will come at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks in the Middle Eastern state of Qatar. This is a meeting designed to defend and extend the multinationals' stranglehold on production and trade.
Patients are waiting longer than ever to be seen in hospital accident and emergency departments. That is the shocking state of the NHS after five years of the New Labour government, according to official figures released last week. Health secretary Alan Milburn's equally shocking response was to signal a major drive to privatise healthcare in Britain.
As Blair demands support for US war Picture of slaughter At last this week some sections of the British press gave a glimpse of the real horror of the war on Afghanistan. The Mirror, the Herald and the Daily Record showed pictures of the slaughter in Kabul when Gul Ahmed and his seven children were killed. Two youngsters were also killed in a nearby house.
A brutal massacre carried out by a death squad. That is the only way to describe the Israeli army's attack on the Palestinian village of Beit Rima last week.
The rising opposition to this war has forced itself even into sections of the mainstream media. That should encourage everyone to redouble their efforts to build the anti-war movement.
Some 1,700 people marching through Sheffield, 2,000 demonstrating in Glasgow, 500 on a Preston march, around 1,600 at a public meeting in Birmingham. Those are just a few of the anti-war protests that have taken place in the last week.
"The fact is that, whether the government likes it or not, the people of this country remain distinctly unconvinced that bombing the hell out of Kabul will stop Bin Laden carrying out more atrocities." Those words were part of a Mirror editorial on Monday of this week which voiced growing doubts about the war.
Medical secretaries in Glasgow have won a brilliant victory. The 300 low paid hospital workers, all members of the UNISON union, won because they were prepared to stand up and all take indefinite strike action. The all-women workforce refused to be cowed by a management that issued threats and treated them as second class.
Post Office management suffered another humiliating blow last week when an employment tribunal ordered bosses to reinstate sacked worker Mick Doherty and pay him £15,000 compensation.
The strike for safety in job centres around Britain is hitting New Labour. The government is so worried about the effects of the strike that Tony Blair had to meet PCS leaders on Monday of this week.
