Manchester Follow

"NO WAR! Blair out!" was the chant as thousands of protesters converged on Manchester city centre from three separate starting points on Saturday of last week. Some 15,000 people defied appalling weather to join the protests, which coincided with International Women's Day.

"THE GREATER Manchester Coalition to Stop the War is coordinating an antiwar demonstration on 8 March. This will involve three separate marches converging on the city centre. On the city centre stall on Saturday 5,000 leaflets and hundreds of posters were distributed.

VIRGINIE is at Parswood Technical College in Manchester. "I want to study medicine so the idea of top-up fees really worries me. After three years you could have £20,000 of debt, but I might be at college for four, five or six years. I could be in debt for the rest of my life. I knew it would be hard just to live for three years at university-now it is worse, because it's not just living expenses but fees as well.

THE MOST right wing and privileged forces in society are trying to create hysteria over people fleeing persecution to come to this country. They are even trying to turn the death of a policeman in Manchester into a campaign against asylum seekers. The logic is barking. The fact that the three suspects arrested at the Manchester house had claimed asylum says nothing about the overwhelming majority of asylum seekers.

THE MEDIA have whipped up hysteria against refugees from Algeria after last week's killing of a police officer in Manchester. They paint a picture that those coming here from the North African country are all potential killers, linked to a dangerous network of Islamist terrorists. This is racist nonsense. And the real reasons people are fleeing Algeria are rarely even discussed.

PROTESTERS AGAINST the government's brutal new laws on refugees took to the streets of London, Glasgow and Manchester last week.

HEARTLESS CREW are one of the leading acts behind the Anti Nazi League's Love Music Hate Racism organisation. They played at the carnival in Manchester in September and at the London launch party on Friday last week.

AROUND 500 people came to a brilliant Love Music Hate Racism club night in Manchester last Saturday. "It was a fun and defiant event against all the racist and Nazi crap," said one clubber.

ON THE anniversary of the declaration of Human Rights last Saturday, 100 asylum seekers and their supporters joined the annual "speak-out" in Manchester. Young asylum seekers read articles from the declaration, and through poems and songs, dance and drumming showed their strength of spirit. This government excludes many asylum seekers from even the most basic rights - a home, family life, work and refuge.

SOME 80 people attended a conference in Manchester organised by the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs on Saturday. The morning session was boosted by about 200 firefighters who turned up for what was billed as a rally in support of their strike.

AFTER THE huge success of the anti-racist carnival in Manchester in August, the Anti Nazi League (ANL) is launching Love Music Hate Racism as a national campaign. We want to use it to target the areas where groups like the Nazi BNP and NF are trying to grow. Music is a very good way of getting people involved in the fight against the Nazis. Lots of people are getting in touch and saying, "Manchester was great - we want to do something in our area." There have been gigs in Barrow-in-Furness and Oldham. There are others coming up in Huddersfield, Burnley and Blackburn. The leader of Sunderland council has approached us to set something up there. Trade unions are getting involved.

BRITAIN'S BOSSES were under siege at their annual conference in Manchester this week. Hundreds of anti-war and anti-capitalist protesters stormed the conference centre on Sunday. That was just one of a wave of protests that greeted the conference. The fat cats of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) gathered in Manchester's plush GMEX centre.