Archive for April 2004

3 April 2004

CWI Appeal: Nigeria Members Arrested

Members of the Democratic Socialist Movement, our section in South Africa contacted us yesterday to report the violent breakup of a peaceful protest against housing conditions and the subsequent arrest of 14 demonstrators from Mount Moriah, outside Durban.

3 April 2004

Scottish Socialist Party Conference

MORE THAN 400 delegates and visitors attended the 2004 Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) conference on the weekend of 27 and 28 March in Edinburgh. This was the fifth, and largest, SSP conference and the first since the SSP's election success of last...

3 April 2004

Raffarin's 'Reforms' Decisively Rejected

THE RIGHT-WING Chirac-Raffarin government in France is in political meltdown following disastrous regional election results. Its share of the vote slump to 36%...

3 April 2004

Defending trade union rights in Newham

OVER 4,000 UNISON members in Newham, east London, are balloting this week to take strike action. The council is attempting to evict the union from its premises and withdraw full-time facilities from the three main branch officials...

3 April 2004

Council Workers Enjoy The Fruits Of Victory!

Hours cut in Knowsley: OVER 1,200 local authority employees of Merseyside's Knowsley council are moving this month from a 37 to a 36 hour week, with no loss of pay, in the first of a two-part move which will result in a 35-hour week across the council workforce...

3 April 2004

The New Satanic Mills

There are 5,500 UK call centres employing 400,000 workers, many of whom have no union representation and work in appalling conditions. These workers are now threatened with "off-shoring" or "out-sourcing"...

3 April 2004

Don't Let The Market Rule Education

ON THE eve of the crucial parliamentary vote on the final reading of the Higher Education bill, several Labour 'rebel' backbenchers were still threatening to oppose government plans to bring in top-up tuition fees (which the government calls 'variable fees')...

3 April 2004

NHS: Superbugs, superdrugs and dirty hospitals

A MASSIVE rise in reported cases of the 'superbug' MRSA in children must be a cause for concern to everyone...

3 April 2004

"We're Not Settling Until We Get A National Deal"

MORE THAN 4,000 nursery nurses across Scotland are entering their fifth week of all-out strike action as we go to press. With 80% still out on strike, the local government employers, New Labour-dominated CoSLA, completely miscalculated the energy...

3 April 2004

Fighting Back Against New Labour's Job Cuts

THE CIVIL service union PCS National Executive Committee (NEC) met last week. The news of Brown's "day of the long knives" budget statement, announcing massive job cuts across the civil service, was ringing in our ears...

3 April 2004

Stop The Council Tax Rip-Off

"WHAT WE are saying is that we are going to have a go," Nancy Taaffe told the socialist. Nancy, a member of Waltham Forest Unison and the Socialist Party in northeast London is helping to organise a local demonstration...

10 April 2004

Fighting Back Against Low Pay And Government Attacks

PCS strike: MEMBERS OF civil service union, PCS, gave a clear message to Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) management in our solidly-supported strike on 16/17 February, writes Rob Williams, PCS national executive, personal capacity.

10 April 2004

Support Scotland's Nursery Nurses

The nursery nurses' strike in Scotland is still holding firm. Over 4,000 nursery nurses are now in their sixth week of strike action...

10 April 2004

Immigration: Fact And Fiction

TONY BLAIR'S latest government crisis has been over immigration policy. As this issue hit newspaper headlines, New Labour MPs went into shock at the prospect of it spiralling out of control and the possible electoral consequences...

10 April 2004

Sri Lanka: Election To End Crisis Ends In New Crisis

THE GENERAL election in Sri Lanka on 2 April failed to give either of the major party alliances a parliamentary majority. But the United Socialist Party (USP), the Socialist Party's counterpart in Sri Lanka, scored its highest ever number of votes...

10 April 2004

Rwanda's Killing Fields: A Legacy Of Imperialism

IT IS now ten years since the extremist Hutu power elements of the Rwandan military, business and landowning sectors launched a genocide that lasted three months and left around a million people dead, mostly Tutsi people killed because of their perceived "race". ...

10 April 2004

Iraq: Coalition Plans In Chaos

THE US led-occupation forces in Iraq are sinking deeper into a political mire. Far from "pacifying" the dissident population groups, armed attacks on coalition forces and street demonstrations are growing...

10 April 2004

Military Families Speak Out Against Bush's War And Lies

BUSH'S occupation of Iraq is facing increasing questioning and resistance within the US...

10 April 2004

Left Candidate Defeats Blairite For Presidency

National Union of Students -: AT THE 2004 NUS Annual Conference in Blackpool (29-30 March) support for the Left continued to grow...

10 April 2004

NUT conference: Time For A Change

TEACHERS ARE facing a series of vicious attacks from this government over pay, pensions, workload and the threats to teachers' jobs. The main challenge of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) conference, must be to agree the necessary action to defeat...

10 April 2004

Fight The Low Pay Scandal

BLAIR'S GOVERNMENT has declared war on its own workforce. 70,000 civil servants in the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP, mainly job centres and benefit offices) are being forced to strike against low pay for a further two days directly after Easter,...

17 April 2004

Austria: Court Victory Against Extreme Anti-Abortionists

LAST MONTH a Viennese court made a final ruling in favour of Claudia Sorger, the spokesperson for women's affairs of the Socialist Left Party (SLP, the Austrian section of the CWI) in a case brought by extreme anti-abortionists...

17 April 2004

Welsh Assembly: Re-Arranging Titanic's Deckchairs

AFTER A two-year investigation, the Richard Commission has recommended that the Welsh Assembly should be given primary law-making powers by 2011. ...

17 April 2004

Come to Socialism 2004

War, terror, poverty... there is an alternative: Forget Glastonbury! Readers of the socialist should keep the weekend of 26 and 27 June free in their diaries, in order not to miss Socialism 2004...

17 April 2004

Getting Organised In The Fast Food Industry

THE FAST food industry is one of Britain's biggest employers of young people. We print below an article on working for the McDonalds hamburger chain in London...

17 April 2004

Low Pay, No Way!

WHILE FAT-CAT bosses get richer, many young workers are exploited in low paid jobs, often with very little security. In 2003 executive directors of the UK's top 100 companies received an average pay increase of 23% while average earnings rose by a...

17 April 2004

NUT conference: Building A Fighting Leadership

THE KEY question at the National Union of Teachers (NUT) conference was: "Can we elect a leadership that will fight against government attacks on teachers?"...

17 April 2004

Civil service strikes: Fighting Low Pay

NEARLY 100,000 civil servants were on strike on 13 and 14 April. Members of the PCS union in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the Prison Service were striking against low pay...

17 April 2004

End The Occupation Of Iraq

OVER 600 Iraqis slaughtered in just one city. The corpses of children, women and elderly as well as young men lying in the streets. ...

24 April 2004

UNISON health conference: Reject Agenda For Change

THE UNISON Health conference meets on 26-28 April in Glasgow. The main issue facing health workers is the Agenda for Change (AFC) pay/grading and restructuring package. Although this will be the backgroud to the conference, the final decision...

24 April 2004

Eleven Months On Strike - Sacked Electricians Fight On

ELECTRICIANS SACKED by DAF Electrical remain on strike, nearly a year after they walked out in defence of their union reps. DAF attempted to break the union but has dismally failed...

24 April 2004

South Africa: ANC wins Overwhelming Majority

THE AFRICAN National Congress's (ANC) overwhelming majority in South Africa's general election - nearly 70% of the vote - has predictably been hailed by its leadership and most of the media as a ringing endorsement of its policies...

24 April 2004

1974: Revolution In Portugal

A HALF-CENTURY of fascist rule was swept aside in a day. It started at 12.25 am on Thursday 25 April 1974 when the rebel song, Grandola Vila Morena, played on the radio...

24 April 2004

Make The Police Accountable

Christopher's CASE (see "A Lonely Death With No Dignity") is no surprise to Black and Asian people who for decades have seen the authorities covering up for each other in cases of custody deaths and institutional racism...

24 April 2004

"A Lonely Death With No Dignity"

CHRISTOPHER ALDER is one of 81 black people who have died in police custody since 1990 in England and Wales. Christopher's death, however, is unique - his final eleven minutes was shown to millions in BBC's Rough Justice programme...

24 April 2004

Wanted: A Living Wage For Young Workers

THE SUNDAY Times Rich List tried to make us drool last weekend over the colossal fortunes amassed by Britain's wealthiest people, like Roman Abramovich, the multi-billionaire who bought Chelsea football club with spare change out of his £7.5 billion fortune...

24 April 2004

Bush Gives Green Light To Ariel Sharon

AS SOON as Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, returned home from a triumphalist meeting with US President Bush, he turned his mind to the assassination of the newly appointed leader of the Islamic Palestinian organisation, Hamas...

24 April 2004

Bush And Blair's Lies About Handover

AFTER THEIR meeting over the weekend of 17-18 April, Bush and Blair declared their unwavering commitment to the transfer of power to Iraqis by 30 June. But this is a lie...

24 April 2004

The Real 'Axis Of Evil'

Bush, Blair, Sharon: IN A Forrest Gump moment, George W Bush admitted "They're not happy they're occupied. I wouldn't be happy if I were occupied either."...