Issues

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Issue - 1774
Dated - 10 Nov 2001
Will bombing liberate women in Afghanistan?

"It was necessary to destroy the town in order to save it." They were the words of an American major in 1968 after the US military demolished the town of Dentre in South Vietnam. The same crazy logic that was used to defend the Vietnam War is being used again today.

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In this issue

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Comment

Will bombing liberate women in Afghanistan?

"It was necessary to destroy the town in order to save it." They were the words of an American major in 1968 after the US military demolished the town of Dentre in South Vietnam. The same crazy logic that was used to defend the Vietnam War is being used again today.
10 November 2001
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World Turned over to Business

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.
10 November 2001
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We suffer while bosses coin it in

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.
10 November 2001
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Socialist Alliance

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.
10 November 2001
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Bus workers

Anger is bubbling among Stagecoach bus workers, who face long hours and low pay while the company reported an operating profit of £197.8 million earlier this year. Over 100 Stagecoach workers in Hastings went on a one-day strike on Friday of last week to fight a management-imposed 3 percent pay rise. The workers, members of the TGWU union, had demanded a 10 percent rise and a reduction in shift hours.
10 November 2001
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Medical secretaries: Back on all-out action

Furious medical secretaries in Glasgow have walked out again on indefinite strike action after management reneged on their recent offer. The 300 secretaries, all low paid women workers, had unanimously voted to suspend their strike two weeks ago.
10 November 2001
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In brief

Stewards reject deal Shop stewards at Scottish Power have rejected management's latest offer. However, the new offer will be put to a ballot of union members. The workers, who are members of the AEEU, GMB and TGWU unions, have been fighting management's plans to transfer workers in the "wire business" to a new company.
10 November 2001
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UNISON United Left

Up to 150 members of the UNISON public sector workers' union met in Manchester last weekend to launch UNISON United Left. The organisation brings together all those on the left within the union, and represents a significant step forward. There were speakers from Sefton, where union members have won a victory in a fight over care home closures, and from the Glasgow medical secretaries' strike.
10 November 2001
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Council workers

Council workers in Newcastle have been boosted in their fight to beat off threats of privatisation. One of the key companies involved in the privatisation has pulled out.
10 November 2001
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Postal workers: Striking back at harassment

Postal workers across much of east London poured out in an angry unofficial strike on Tuesday. By midday workers at the giant EDO mail centre in Whitechapel, and at offices in Bethnal Green, Hackney, Homerton, Bow, Clapton, Poplar and elsewhere, were out in a brilliant act of solidarity with strikers at South Woodford.
10 November 2001
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Taking on Blair’s strikebreaking

Strikers in the government's new Pathfinder job centre and Benefits Agency offices are continuing their determined action. New Labour has launched attempts at strikebreaking and union busting. Around 2,500 civil servants in the PCS union are on all-out strike against the government's plans to remove screens in the new amalgamated offices. Screens are important for staff supplying benefits because of the increased harshness of the government's system.
10 November 2001
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Reviews & Culture

Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy: radical reads on the horrors of war

The Regeneration trilogy by Pat Barker is a powerful set of novels based around the real experiences of individuals during the First World War. Regeneration begins in Craiglockhart Military Hospital. It is the job of army psychologist Dr Rivers to rehabilitate officers who are shellshocked. The high profile poet and officer Siegfried Sassoon has been sent there because he has publicly denounced the war.
10 November 2001