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HUNDREDS OF college workers, members of the Unison union in 11 pre-1992 London universities, took strike action last Thursday as the first step in their campaign to win an increase in London weighting to £4,000. Faced with a freeze on London weighting for the eleventh consecutive year, workers demonstrated that they had had enough.

NOT A single London tube train ran on Wednesday of last week as RMT and Aslef union members staged the most effective strike anyone can remember. It was a humiliation for London Underground management, which had claimed there was little support for the unions' fight over pay.

HUNDREDS OF thousands of people took over central London last Saturday to march against war on Iraq and for freedom for Palestine. The size of the demonstration stunned many people. Marchers waited around four hours to leave Embankment, while speakers at the end rally were already addressing demonstrators as they poured into Hyde Park. Thousands more joined splinter demonstrations that spilled out into other parts of central London, including a march up Oxford Street.

IT WAS not just in London that people took to the streets to protest against war last weekend. Other demonstrations around the world included 5,000 marching in Washington in the US, 50,000 in Madrid in Spain and 3,000 in Athens in Greece. In Rome in Italy 100,000 took part in a demonstration which had a major anti-war theme.

IT'S AMAZING how differently the media and police treated the rural rich's march through London last Sunday compared to protests over real horrors like war. The police closed down central London for the march. They eagerly accepted the organisers' claim of how many marched and policed the demonstration with a tiny number of officers.

THE POST Office has announced it is going to privatise another major section. Management wants to hand over the CHD cash handling and distribution business to Securicor. The move will affect 3,000 workers. Around 200 CHD staff at Canning Town in east London walked out in protest on Monday after the plans were unveiled.

London weighting

TUBE DRIVERS and station staff struck for 24 hours from Tuesday into Wednesday of this week, and are to strike again next Tuesday. The action is over pay. But it has brought to the surface increasing arrogance and bullying by management as the government prepares to privatise the tube through its PPP scheme.

THE RURAL rich's club, the Countryside Alliance, was due to march in London on Sunday to demand the right to hunt foxes. One of the march's slogans is "The countryside works - keep it working." This is a cruel comment on the life and death of a 54 year old gamekeeper, Anthony Wensley.

The Countryside Alliance will be marching through London on Sunday. March organisers say they are standing up to "unite rural Britain, for liberty, and for all those whose jobs are based in the country". In fact those at the centre of the Countryside Alliance and the march represent some of the richest and most reactionary people in Britain. Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith will be there, and Britain's richest landowners are backing the march.

Tuesday 22 October will be a global day of solidarity with the Kensington 87, the protesters who were arrested in Johannesburg, South Africa, for demonstrating against water and electricity cutoffs. The defendants include Trevor Ngwane. They will go before a court on 23 October to face serious charges. Globalise Resistance has called a demonstration outside the South African embassy in London at 5pm on 22 October.

PAUL FOOT, the Socialist Alliance candidate for mayor of Hackney in east London, has helped to expose manoeuvres linking the election process and the council's strike-busting operation against library workers.