London Follow

WORKERS AT the BBC are fighting against the sacking of journalists Adli Hawwari and Adbul Hadi Jiad from the World Service. The journalists are Iraqi and Palestinian. Around 60 reps from the journalists' NUJ union met in London last week. They voted unanimously to condemn the management's dismissal of the two workers and to call for action.

"WE'RE ASKING the members whether they support the claim for £4,000 London weighting and also whether they are prepared to take whatever action is necessary to win it. Unfortunately the national union leaders are refusing to sanction such a ballot, despite us asking them to do so.

SCHOOLS AND libraries in parts of London faced possible closure this week because of a strike by council workers in a long-running dispute over pay. Caretakers and other support staff at 70 schools in the capital walked out on Monday for a week as part of a union campaign for the London weighting allowance to be raised to £4,000.

Around 120 staff and students came to an anti-war meeting on one site of London's Metropolitan University on Friday. The speakers included Tariq Ali, Paul Mackney, leader of the Natfhe lecturers' union, and Jean Geldhart, a local Unison branch secretary.

FOR THE first time in 18 years a proportion of the Sun and News of the World will be printed by unionised labour. This follows a great victory by print workers in the GPMU union at Newsfax International in east London, who have won trade union recognition.

CONTROL STAFF in the London Fire Brigade have voted unanimously to ballot for a work to rule and strike action over congestion charges. An angry mass meeting last Sunday left GMB and Unison union officials in no doubt of the strength of feeling. A claim was submitted for compensation for congestion charges over a year ago.

THE CAMPAIGN against racism and the victimisation of union stewards in Hackney, east London, received a boost on Tuesday of last week. Hackney council has lifted the suspensions of two of the three Unison union stewards.

AN INSPIRATIONAL evening of poetry took place on the eve of the great London demonstration against the war. Adrian Mitchell and Michael Rosen performed the poems we print here at the packed event which took place in London.

FIREFIGHTER SYD Platt received nearly 5 percent of the vote for the Socialist Alliance in a council by-election in the Haverstock ward in Camden, north London, last week.

ACTIVISTS IN the unions covering university workers are campaigning hard against accepting a terrible offer on London allowance payments. The insulting offer only came after two one-day strikes. It amounts to just £130 a year extra in inner London, £90 in outer London, and just £30 in the surrounding areas. Negotiators in the Natfhe and AUT lecturers' unions were set to recommend accepting the deal.

AMICUS-MSF health workers in London voted overwhelmingly last week to oppose the government's new pay package, Agenda for Change. The meeting of the Health Service Advisory Committee (the body representing health workers in London) was the largest and angriest for years.

BLAIR'S PLAN to cut the number of asylum seekers is shocking. One way the government justifies its plans is to say children's education suffers if they are taught with children who don't speak English. I am a parent governor at my daughter Sorcha's school, in a very deprived area of central London.