Issues

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Issue - 1784
Dated - 26 Jan 2002
Now even loyal MPs like Frank Dobson are turning on Tony Blair

LAST WEDNESDAY Tony Blair jetted in on a brief visit to England. While quite at home in the company of dictators, warlords and George W Bush, Blair soon felt in need of protection from his own backbenchers. One minute you can be a great international statesman, a war leader in almost freakish control of your party.

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Now even loyal MPs like Frank Dobson are turning on Tony Blair

LAST WEDNESDAY Tony Blair jetted in on a brief visit to England. While quite at home in the company of dictators, warlords and George W Bush, Blair soon felt in need of protection from his own backbenchers. One minute you can be a great international statesman, a war leader in almost freakish control of your party.
26 January 2002
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Features

From Porto Alegre to New York

Peter Hain, former anti-apartheid activist and now minister for Europe, attacked the anti-capitalist movement last weekend. He claimed that the 300,000 people who protested against the G8 richest countries in Genoa last July were the "violent elements of Europe's middle class".
26 January 2002
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Fury reaches right to the top of the union

Alan Milburn's plan to ram through even more privatisation in the NHS sent shock waves through the Unison executive last week. A meeting of the union's health executive was so stunned that its business was suspended to allow people to take stock of Milburn's plan and discuss our response.
26 January 2002
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Councils

Sit-in rattles Mersey bin bosses BIN WORKERS in Liverpool staged a sit-in at their depot on Monday, furious at the way they were being treated by bosses. The 250 workers at the Fazakerley depot work for the private firm Onyx, which has the contract for the city's rubbish collection. Their bosses had made a cock-up and paid the workers double pay at Christmas. Workers had themselves pointed this mistake out to the company and understood that they would pay it back in instalments.
26 January 2002
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Wider focus key to making strike bite

Tens of thousands of civil servants are set to strike next Monday and Tuesday. The workers are PCS union members in benefits offices and job centres. They are striking against New Labour's plans to remove safety screens in the amalgamated benefit agencies and job centres being set up.
26 January 2002
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Vote on pay fight starts

Some 150,000 postal workers started a national strike ballot this week over pay. They are fighting management's attempt to hold down pay and to squeeze even more work out of fewer people.
26 January 2002
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Cat walks in Durham

WORKERS AT the Caterpillar factory in Peterlee, County Durham, staged their third one-day strike on Tuesday. They are fighting a plan by the US multinational to freeze their pay, impose flexible shift patterns and undermine other longstanding agreements.
26 January 2002
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Shorts Engineering

Workers at the Shorts aircraft plant in Belfast are to ballot on strikes against compulsory redundancies. Shorts, owned by the Canadian Bombardier Aerospace group, wants to cut some 2,000 jobs out of the 7,500-strong workforce.
26 January 2002
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Meetings

A CENTRAL London meeting organised by Globalise Resistance last week saw some 150 people attend a discussion on the crisis in Argentina.
26 January 2002
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Guildhall University

A campaign has been set up at London Guildhall University after management pressurised the student union president and a vice-president into resigning. The university then replaced them with its own unelected appointees.
26 January 2002
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Ambulances

Ambulance workers in Liverpool are voting on whether to strike after two paramedics in the Ambulance Service Union were suspended for alleged gross misconduct.
26 January 2002
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GMB leader: ‘Gravy train runs on time’

THERE WAS a real taste of anger at New Labour at a conference in Liverpool last weekend. Some 200 people attended Saturday's "Keep public services public" conference organised by the Liverpool joint trade union committee.
26 January 2002