Archive for July 2005

7 July 2005

TGWU conference: Building a fighting union

THE TGWU'S CONFERENCE will begin this year with a rally for activists and delegates...

7 July 2005

National rail strike looms

RMT conference: THE RAIL union RMT Annual General Meeting in Exeter last week called a ballot for a national rail strike affecting the whole of Network Rail...

7 July 2005

Heathrow workers fight pay and job cuts

WORKERS AT Gate Gourmet - a catering company at Heathrow which works for various international airlines - have decisively rejected a company plan which would lead to huge job cuts and worsening of conditions...

7 July 2005

International solidarity - more than a slogan

RECENTLY, WORKERS for the Mondi Company in Slovakia, who were fired by management for setting up a genuine trade union and demanding higher wages, won an important court case...

7 July 2005

Iranian hardliner's victory stuns Western leaders

Iranian elections: MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD, an Islamic conservative and former revolutionary guard, has been elected president of Iran...

7 July 2005

Workers bring Melbourne to a halt

OVER 100,000 workers marched through Melbourne on 30 June, against the imminent attacks of the Federal Government of John Howard under the new Industrial Relations legislation...

7 July 2005

Block Bush in the streets!

Stop the right-wing takeover of the US Supreme Court: WITH THE resignation of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the most contentious political battle of Bush's second term has begun...

7 July 2005

Pride 2005

WAS THE London LGBT Pride more political this year? An event which takes place to remember the 1969 Stonewall riots and the birth of the gay rights movement...

7 July 2005

Worldwide attack on higher education

THE G8 Summit claimed that helping people in the 'developing world' was top of their agenda...

7 July 2005

Don't scrap our school!

TWO HUNDRED angry school students, parents and teachers from two secondary schools marched and then demonstrated outside a board meeting of Hackney Learning Trust last week...

7 July 2005

Climate change: Big business writes agenda for Bush

GEORGE BUSH still hasn't accepted that global warming exists, but he accepts that scientists say it exists...

7 July 2005

"We need to change the system"

ON SATURDAY 2 July about 250,000 demonstrated through the streets of Edinburgh to protest against the G8 summit and to call for an end to poverty...

7 July 2005

Millions demand an end to poverty

AS THE leaders of the G8 imperialist powers began to assemble in Gleneagles, Scotland (where hotel rooms are £685 per night) millions of people around the world took to the streets and attended concerts to...

7 July 2005

Organise to make capitalism history

14 July 2005

Distribution staff fight for pay and conditions

TRADE UNIONS representing Morrison's retail distribution workers are considering strike action to secure meaningful negotiations with the company...

14 July 2005

Defend Saudi workers

SWANSEA TRADE Union Council is supporting the 'Campaign for Democratic Trade Union Rights in Saudi Arabia'...

14 July 2005

Save our education

COVENTRY'S COMPREHENSIVE education is under attack. Coventry city council recently announced proposals to turn three of our secondary schools...

14 July 2005

Mao - the story is known

Review: Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday: Peter Taaffe reviews Mao The Unknown Story - an exposé of the leader of the Red Army and the ruler of China for 27 years...

14 July 2005

A new challenge from the left in Germany

POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS in Germany are speeding up. In January a new left-wing party was formally launched called "Work and Social...

14 July 2005

ISR -  getting our message across

INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST Resistance (ISR) members have just returned from a week of protests at the G8 talks...

14 July 2005

No to terrorism – No to war

For mass united working class action against imperialism and capitalism: Committee for a Workers' International (CWI) statement, Friday 8 July 2005...

14 July 2005

Fight racism and Islamophobia

PAUL MACKNEY, general secretary of NATFHE, the college and university lecturers' union, has spoken out against the dangers of an Islamophobic backlash after the London bombings...

14 July 2005

London bombings and Iraq

THERE IS a huge wellspring of sympathy and solidarity – shared by the socialist – for the victims of the London tube and bus bombings...

14 July 2005

Horror on our doorstep

CAMDEN COUNCIL worker HUGO PIERRE works close to Kings Cross station. He reports:...

14 July 2005

No to terrorism, No to war

AS MILLIONS of us in London go about our daily lives the nightmare of Thursday 7 July still looms over us. The horrific killing of ordinary people, of all ages and from every ethnic group, has shocked and saddened millions in London and beyond. The socialist utterly condemns these attacks as we did those of 9/11, the Madrid bombings and all similar attacks aimed at indiscriminate slaughter.

21 July 2005

National finance meeting success

Around thirty members attended the national finance meeting on 16-17 July, with the aim of developing our finance organisers across England and Wales...

21 July 2005

Delegates fight to defend democracy at TGWU conference:

THE PROPOSED merger of the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) with two other unions - Amicus and the GMB - was the predominant issue at the TGWU conference in Blackpool last week...

21 July 2005

Defending civil service jobs

NEW LABOUR'S civil service cuts programme is in crisis. Up to seventy civil service IT projects have received secret "red warnings"...

21 July 2005

Ted Heath, Tory premier who took on the workers and lost

THE DEATH of former Tory prime minister Edward Heath has produced a series of gushing eulogies celebrating his 'one-nation', 'caring' premiership...

21 July 2005

Judge lets rail bosses walk free

Hatfield disaster: A JUDGE has thrown out manslaughter charges against five rail executives from Railtrack and Balfour Beatty, accused of killing the four people who died in the October 2000 Hatfield train crash...

21 July 2005

Hands off our housing

Brighton: AFTER MANY years of delays, obfuscations, U-turns and about-turns, Brighton and Hove council is finally going to decide on the future of council housing locally...

21 July 2005

Karl Marx: the greatest philosopher of all time

"PHILOSOPHERS HAVE interpreted the world the point is to change it." This was the opening of Melvin Bragg's Radio 4 programme In Our time, broadcast on 14 July...

21 July 2005

Stop the War Coalition's missed opportunity

SOCIALIST PARTY members on the Stop the War Coalition (STWC) steering committee moved a resolution at its meeting this week...

21 July 2005

al-Qa'ida: US imperialism's deadly legacy

THE LONDON bombings have drawn attention to the Islamic terrorist training camps operating in the Afghanistan/Pakistan border areas...

21 July 2005

Iraq: War and occupation bring growing misery

WHILE PEOPLE in Britain and Europe stood silent in respect of the victims of the London bombings, the families of the 27 Iraqis, including 18 children, blown up in a suicide car bombing in Baghdad buried their...

21 July 2005

Workers maintain class unity

WHEN I read newspaper stories of the arrests in West Yorkshire, I realised that the Dewsbury bomber was the son in law of Farida, a Unison member I visited only three weeks ago...

21 July 2005

Hospital workers condemn terrorism and war

SINCE THE bombings, the Socialist Party has been calling for an emergency demonstration to be organised with the clear message: 'No to terror, no to war, no to racism'...

21 July 2005

No to terror! No to war!

After the London bombings: THE MAIN reaction of working people to the horror of the London bombings has been a mood of unity against terrorism...

21 July 2005

Troops out of Iraq

For a united demonstration against terrorism and war.
TONY BLAIR has attempted since the London bombings to claim there is no connection between the appalling events in London on 7 July and his government's involvement in the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

28 July 2005

Strike ballot to defend Rolls Royce convenor

A NATIONAL dispute between the workers and management at aircraft engine-maker Rolls Royce looks likely after the sacking of one of the Amicus convenors at the Bristol plant...

28 July 2005

Unions prepare for new pension attacks

THE THREAT of united strike action before the general election forced the Labour government to back down temporarily on its plans to cut public-sector workers' pension rights - particularly the planned...

28 July 2005

Fighting the low pay scandal

About 50 predominantly young journalists at the Coventry Evening Telegraph, part of the Trinity Mirror Group, are striking over low pay...

28 July 2005

Brazil: Lula government in crisis

PRESIDENT LULA'S government is undergoing its deepest political crisis since coming to power in January 2003...

28 July 2005

Book now for Summer Camp

The 2005 Socialist Party summer camp is only weeks away - it takes place each year on the summer bank holiday, 26 - 29 August 2005...

28 July 2005

Book your stalls for the Freshers' fairs now!

Socialist Students: In September, thousands of young people will be starting at universities across the country...

28 July 2005

Workers' unity needed against war, terror and racism

THE SECOND wave of attacks in London on 21 July fortunately did not cause any injuries and deaths...

28 July 2005

Tube drivers say safety is paramount

FOLLOWING THE 21 July attacks, members of the RMT union on the Piccadilly line refused to drive trains on those parts of the line that had been kept open after 7/7...

28 July 2005

Jean Charles de Menezes: Angry marchers demand justice

AFTER THE killing of Jean Charles de Menezes on 22 July, Stop the War Coalition (STWC) called a peace vigil...

28 July 2005

Repression won't prevent terrorism

RECENT EVENTS have dramatically heightened the atmosphere of insecurity and tension in Britain, and particularly London...

28 July 2005

Workers' unity against war and terrorism

TONY BLAIR sent British troops into Iraq with the words that it would make the world a 'safer place'....