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Now it's Waterloo sunset for Blair's New Labour IN AN important development last week, the Waterloo Branch of the RMT rail workers' union has agreed to support Respect candidates standing in the London Assembly and European elections. The decision reflects the deep disgust members have with a Labour Party that has turned its back on working people.

'ENGLAND EXPECTS every man to do his duty." So runs the motto of lead character Ray in this new BBC drama, appropriated from Nelson's battle cry at Trafalgar. This duty is apparently to ensure that all ethnic minorities are forcibly removed from his east London community. Steven Mackintosh gives a convincing performance as a security guard with latent fascist beliefs that resurface when his family is refused a council house.

ISRAEL'S ASSASSINATION of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin has provoked fury among Palestinians and across the world. But British foreign secretary Jack Straw's main response was to call the killing a tactical error that was "very unlikely to achieve its objective". George Galloway MP, who heads the Respect coalition's list for the European Parliament in London, said, "The murder of Sheikh Yassin is an act of criminal insanity from the criminally insane prime minister Sharon.

SOCIALIST Worker supporters threw themselves into publicising last Saturday's anti-war demonstration-and at the same time they sold the paper. Leafleting in the run-up to the demo, over 140 papers were sold in just one hour at Tottenham Court Road in London. On the march itself around 2,500 copies were sold.

A mass of anti-war protesters packed the streets of London last Saturday. Exactly one year after the invasion of Iraq, 100,000 people had come to tell Tony Blair that the movement is here to stay. They stretched from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square chanting "No justice, no peace" and "Blair out".

THE WARS in Iraq and Afghanistan were built on many lies, but the terrible massacre on Madrid's railways highlights one of the biggest-the world is not a safer place. As RMT members on London Underground we are only too aware of the vulnerability of the tube network. The same newspapers that supported the war regularly run stories with lurid headlines telling us how the bombers are out to get the Underground.

ONE OF the proudest moments of my life was compering the 200,000-strong Anti Nazi League carnival in south London in 1994. It was the perfect combination of politics and music. And, oh boy, did we need it!

KEVIN CURRAN, the general secretary of the GMB union, disgracefully praised Gordon Brown's job cuts plans. Curran said, "The chancellor has bravely negotiated cuts in Whitehall departments that will ensure that public service investment reaches communities where it can most help individuals and families." Paul Kenny, head of the London GMB, said he was "mystified and angered" by the comment.

TONY BLAIR got a few conversations he hadn't bargained for when he arrived in Enfield, north London, last week for the latest of his "Big Conversation" meetings. MICHAEL, an anti-war protester, tells how he confronted Blair:

AROUND 150 people attended a showing of the film Injustice at the Prince Charles cinema in central London last week. The powerful film shows families in Britain who have been fighting for justice after their loved ones died in police custody.

PROTESTS BY staff and students at the London School of Economics (LSE) have forced pro-business director Howard Davies to turn down a directorship at the TotalFinaElf oil multinational.

COUNCIL WORKERS in Newham, east London, were due this week to start a ballot on industrial action to defend their union branch. The New Labour council has renewed its threat to axe the Unison union branch's full time officers, and to force it out of its existing union office in a council building.