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MORE THAN 200 people joined last Sunday’s protest at the Dungavel detention centre in South Lanarkshire, called by the Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees.

ABOUT 5,000 people marched in Greenock, near Glasgow, last Saturday against proposals to downgrade Inverclyde Royal Hospital (IRH) and to close Ravenscraig Hospital.

Support kept our strike going strong GLASGOW'S NURSERY nurses returned to their workplaces on Monday of last week, heads held high and retaining the dignity they have shown throughout their 14 weeks of strike action. Many were in tears, some were relieved, but the overwhelming emotion was one of anger at having been bullied and starved back to work by a Thatcherite Glasgow city council threatening to sack us with anti-union laws!

GLASGOW'S Labour-run council has used the worst rogue employer tactics to force 700 striking nursery nurses back to work. It threatened to sack every one of the low paid workers last week using Labour's notorious anti-union law that allows an employer to dismiss strikers after eight weeks of action.

A 27 year old man was found dead at his flat in the Dennistoun area of Glasgow on 18 May after apparently committing suicide. He was Zekria Ghulam Mohammed, an Afghan asylum seeker. The papers that are normally so keen to splash pictures of refugees over their pages ignored his death.

DESPITE THE financial hardship of nearly three months on strike, the resolve of the nursery nurses was still strong at the start of this week. Over 300 strikers in Glasgow demonstrated outside one of the main council buildings on Thursday of last week. A group of nursery nurses hung a banner from the roof of the car park opposite the building saying \"Support your nursery nurses\".

A MASSIVE blast last week destroyed a four-storey factory in seconds. Nine workers at Stockline Plastics in Maryhill are dead and 40 others have been maimed or badly injured. The carnage happened in a densely populated part of Glasgow. It has stunned the city.

THOUSANDS OF civil servants have defied anti-union laws to unofficially walk out of work in the last two weeks against a management offensive. The action was sparked by management suspending 28 union members for refusing to carry out a performance-related pay assessment scheme. The one-day walkouts took place in Scarborough, the Glasgow Appeals Service and Sheffield on Thursday of last week, and Manchester Rusholme social security office on Friday.

HEALTH WORKERS in the Unison union assembled in Glasgow on Monday for the union's health sector conference. It discussed issues that could lead to a major confrontation with the government in the autumn.

AROUND 2,000 protesters marched through Glasgow last Saturday calling for an end to the council tax. The demonstration marked the launch of a national \"Axe the Tax\" campaign and was led by Scottish Socialist Party MSP Tommy Sheridan. He told the rally at the Barrowland Ballroom, \"The council tax has a death warrant issued. Let's establish 'Axe the Tax' committees in every part of the country in trade unions, communities and pensioner groups to establish a campaign that puts the interests of ordinary workers and pensioners before the wealthy and big business. Let's stop taxing the pensioners and start taxing the rich.\"

UNION MEMBERS at Glasgow's Southern General Hospital have provided a superb example of the solidarity 4,600 nursery nurses need as they approach six weeks of all-out strike action. The Unison union branch at the hospital donated £3,000 to the strike fund and activists are taking collection sheets round the wards.

AFTER 28 days on hunger strike, and at the urging of their friends and supporters, the "Glasgow Three", Faroq Haidari, Fariborz Gravindi and Mokhtar Haydary, have ended their hunger strike. The three, Kurdish refugees from Iran, have been heartened by the growing support for their fight against deportation from across Scotland and beyond. They were also strengthened by a protest in their support at the Scottish Parliament last week.