Europe Follow

I’VE SPENT the last nine months helping to organise the next European Social Forum (ESF) in London on 14-17 October. It’s six weeks away, and the signs are it will be big. At last year’s ESF in Paris, and the year before in Florence, we had 40,000. This year we’ve had twice as many proposals—for 900 meetings and 180 cultural events.

NEW AND old hands in cinema united in support of October’s European Social Forum (ESF) at the premiere of Ken Loach’s Ae Fond Kiss.

WHO DEMANDED this week that workers should work longer hours, saying, "An obsession with the 35-hour week is now part of Europe’s economic problem, and not the solution"?

THE CWU postal and telecom workers’ union is encouraging members to come along to the European Social Forum to be held in London from 14 to 17 October.

RESPECT ACTIVISTS in Hartlepool have begun their campaign for the forthcoming by-election. The election was sparked by the appointment of Peter Mandelson as a European Commissioner.

NOT EVEN 10 Downing Street can pretend that democracy is working in Britain. Just 59 percent of those eligible to vote did so at the last general election—the second lowest figure in Europe.

MORE THAN 180 trade union activists from across London and the south of England met at the TUC on Thursday of last week to launch a campaign to build union support for the European Social Forum (ESF).

TONY BLAIR shocked even his own New Labour colleagues last week by appointing his crony Peter Mandelson, the twice-disgraced former minister, to the European Commission.

THE BIGGEST and most established Labour party in Europe is going through its most serious crisis since the First World War.

THE EUROPEAN Social Forum (ESF) is coming to London between Thursday 14 and Sunday 17 October. The ESF is a festival of resistance to capitalism and war—part of the movement that has come out of the great demonstrations at Seattle and Genoa.

SOME 150 cleaners have won union recognition with one of Europe’s major cleaning companies, ISS, at Canary Wharf in east London.

THE PEOPLE of east London made sure the London Assembly and European Parliament elections will go down in history. In a result that will have shocked establishment politicians right up to Tony Blair, Respect swept across the boroughs of Tower Hamlets and Newham.