England Follow

THE BLACKOUT that hit London and the south east of England last week was another vivid reminder of the madness of privatisation and spending curbs.

SOME 120 people turned up to a meeting on Sunday of the coalition mobilising from England to the European Social Forum (ESF) in November.

THE Socialist Alliance has called a national day of action in Brent, north west London, on Sunday 31 August. We are urging activists from across England to come into the constituency on that day to help campaign for our candidate in the forthcoming Brent East by-election.

THE FIRST effort by the British National Party (BNP) to use their place on an English council to stop immigration ended in failure last week. The two BNP councillors for Tipton in the West Midlands proposed at a Sandwell council meeting that migration to the area to be "halted at the earliest opportunity".

THIS YEAR is the hundredth anniversary of the birth of the writer and socialist George Orwell. BBC2 is showing documentary - drama George Orwell: A Life in Pictures this Saturday, which charts both his artistic and political development. The most intriguing question about Orwell is how an Eton schoolboy went on to become perhaps the greatest critic of class privilege and tyranny writing in the English language.

OVER 1,000 brick workers are set to walk out on strike on 9 June in the first of a series of planned one-day strikes. Hanson Bricks employs the workers. They are members of the TGWU, GMB and Amicus unions and work at 14 plants across England and Wales. The workers voted by over 60 percent to take strike action after rejecting the company's revised pay offer of 3.45 percent spread over 15 months.

A SURVEY this week by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation confirmed what millions of people know - house prices in Britain are beyond the reach of most working people. The survey, by Steve Wilcox of York University, compared prices of small houses with average incomes of working households, aged between 20 and 39, across England.

To Kill a King is an interesting new film about the English Revolution in the mid 17th century. A revolt, led by parliament, broke out against the tyranny of Charles I's regime in 1642. After years of civil war and attempts to compromise broke down, revolt became a full-blooded revolution.

IT'S NOW time to build a mass campaign, uniting all those who want to stop the Nazis. The BNP stood 54 candidates in the north east of England and poured in massive resources. They failed to win a seat but the Nazis still managed to get over 13,000 votes in Sunderland and 3,000 in Gateshead.

I SUPPOSE I must be an educational failure. I sat the English test. I failed to get full marks - and I had written the story on which the test was based. Presumably I had failed to fully understand the intentions of the author. The story was from my book A Chest of Stories for Nine Year Olds, but being in the folk tale style it was indeed suitable for the 11 year olds taking the test.

"NUT NONSENSE". That is how Tony Blair dismissed the decision of teachers in the NUT union to ballot on boycotting tests for seven, 11 and 14 year olds. Blair's testing mania is damaging the health of young children. Research this week found that over one third of seven year olds in England were seriously stressed by the SATs tests.

THE US is succeeding in uniting Iraqis in hatred of the invasion. On Friday of last week around 20,000 people left Baghdad's Abi Hanefah Nouman mosque. They marched through the streets waving Korans and carrying banners in Arabic and English reading, "Leave our country. We want peace".