Issues

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Issue - 1838
Dated - 15 Feb 2003
Council workers

SOME 3,500 workers at Herefordshire council decided at a meeting on Friday of last week to strike against threatened job losses and pay cuts. Bosses broke off long running negotiations last week and tried to impose a pay deal. Regional GMB union organiser Roger Jenkins said the council is cooking up "a recipe for conflict".

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Council workers

SOME 3,500 workers at Herefordshire council decided at a meeting on Friday of last week to strike against threatened job losses and pay cuts. Bosses broke off long running negotiations last week and tried to impose a pay deal. Regional GMB union organiser Roger Jenkins said the council is cooking up "a recipe for conflict".
15 February 2003
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Features

‘I saw such horror in the Gulf last time’

"I WAS out in Saudi Arabia for the 1990-91 Gulf War. My job was as a dispatch rider for one of the armoured brigades. I had quite a lot of freedom to roam around on the bike. I saw the utter devastation caused by the RAF Tornadoes; carpet-bombing and the artillery. It sickened me. One day I drove my bike into a mass grave. The British army was bulldozing the Iraqi bodies into a big hole.
15 February 2003
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Real democracy

Parliament is not nearly democratic enough. We need a revolution to get genuine control, writes Paul Foot
15 February 2003
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Musicians who won’t be silenced

DAMON ALBARN, lead singer of the band Blur, explained to Socialist Worker why he supports the Stop the War Coalition.
15 February 2003
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Iraq has been in US sights for years

"IN THE hours immediately following the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld asked for plans to be drawn up for an American assault on Iraq. The following day, in a cabinet meeting at the White House, Rumsfeld again insisted that Iraq should be "a principal target of the first round in the war against terrorism".
15 February 2003
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Build our future together

WE NEED to identify what "Empire" means. Does it mean the US government (and its European satellites), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and multinational corporations? Or is it something more than that? In many countries Empire has sprouted other subsidiary heads, some dangerous by-products-nationalism, religious bigotry, fascism and, of course, terrorism.
15 February 2003
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The system of violence and fear

FOR WE who live on this planet under capitalism, there is the daily drip, drip, drip of frustration and resentment. And then, with eerie regularity, there are the horrors of famine, plague and war. The horrors have their roots in the daily apparatus of pedestrian human suffering. Thirty years ago I became a socialist and a revolutionary. Two things drove me to it.
15 February 2003
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The attack dog’s prize

TONY BLAIR is not only kowtowing to US power in acting as George Bush's poodle. Britain's rulers have their own interests in dominating the Middle East and ensuring that "rogue states" do not threaten the profits of multinational corporations. BP - one of the world's biggest oil companies - is British owned. Half of another, Shell, is British.
15 February 2003
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What Bush wants

WHY DO George Bush and Tony Blair want to attack Iraq? Colin Powell gave the official answer to the United Nations last week - Saddam Hussein either has, or plans to develop, weapons of mass destruction. Few really believe this, although Tony Blair certainly says he does. A couple of weeks ago he also suggested taking on North Korea once Saddam Hussein had been "dealt with"!
15 February 2003
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Resist the attacks on asylum seekers

TONY BLAIR wants to force the victims of war on Iraq back into the path of bombs and bullets. He announced last week that he wanted to halve the number of refugees coming to Britain by September. Iraqis are the single largest group of refugees who come to Britain.
15 February 2003
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Unison expulsion outrage

ACTIVISTS IN Unison have been shocked by the decision of a disciplinary appeals panel to expel Candy Udwin, London Region deputy convenor and University College London Hospital (UCLH) branch secretary, and Dave Carr, UCLH branch chair, from union membership.
15 February 2003
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Civil servants

ACTIVISTS ACROSS the PCS civil servants' union have been organising to win the union's ballot for more democracy. They are fighting to win annual conferences and annual national executive elections.
15 February 2003