Archive for December 2013

3 December 2013

Universities: second coordinated strike over pay

UCU, Unison, Unite and EIS in Scotland take second day of strike action, this time joined by UCU members in FE colleges

4 December 2013

Them & Us

Robbery not recovery: When government ministers trumpet an economic recovery they must be referring to the amassed fortunes of the super-rich rather than the other 99%

4 December 2013

Workplace news in brief

Grangemouth: Grangemouth workers are facing 200 job losses in spite of recently agreeing cuts to pay and working conditions to keep the plant open

4 December 2013

Film review: Catching Fire

Mary Finch reviews Catching Fire, part two of the popular Hunger Games trilogy

4 December 2013

London TUSC groups plan for 2014 elections

TUSC groups and committees are meeting all over London to put plans in place for the elections next year

4 December 2013

Support the fightback in Con-Dems' Dickensian Britain

Socialist Party Christmas appeal: While wage cuts and fuel price rises are the norm for us, we can at least console ourselves that Britain is leading Europe in the number of bankers earning over €1 million

4 December 2013

Is workfare coming to Morrisons?

The government's various workfare schemes force jobseekers to work for a company while being paid only their benefits

4 December 2013

Civil service union calls for an end to violence in Jobcentres

A PCS union branch in Lincolnshire has appealed for an end to violence in local Jobcentres after a man was arrested following an incident involving a meat cleaver

4 December 2013

The fight against low pay in the United States

Black Friday and beyond: In the US, low-wage workers, from fastfood to retail, have protested, picketed, and gone on strike multiple times this year to demand higher wages and rights on the job

4 December 2013

Npower job cuts must be fought!

Npower have now announced that its call centre in Fenton, Stoke-on-Trent, will close next June as part of a total of 1,400 workers being thrown on the scrap heap nationally

4 December 2013

Why I believe in socialism

Seventeen year old Matt, a new member of York Socialist Party, gave a speech on 'why socialism' at his school

4 December 2013

Support striking St Mungos workers

Workers at St Mungo's in Hitchin are staging a seven-day strike, the first strike in the hostel's history

4 December 2013

Fracking comes North...

Fracking has come to the Tories' 'desolate North' - and with it the anti-fracking movement, which is beginning to strike roots in Salford, Greater Manchester

4 December 2013

Build action to save our NHS!

Health service in crisis: The public health service is facing another severe crisis this winter as the Con-Dems' and previous Labour governments' policies continue to wreak havoc in the NHS

4 December 2013

SNP's white paper will not deliver decisive change

Yes to an independent socialist Scotland, no to a continuation of capitalist austerity

4 December 2013

Boris - it's the system, stupid

Boris Johnson, the London Tory mayor, thinks working class people are poor because they are of low intelligence. These kinds of views are common among Tories as they need to justifiy the grotesque inequality that their system, capitalism, causes

4 December 2013

Kent: Unions and parents unite against all the cuts

Sixty people gathered outside County Hall in Maidstone on Monday 2 December, in protest against cuts to children's centres across Kent, writes Dave Semple.

4 December 2013

Save our fire service!

Hundreds are planning to march behind the Save Our Services banner on a demonstration on 7 December to save fire stations in Surrey

4 December 2013

We need mass house building

Not more subsidies for lenders and landlords! All the politicians say we need more housing. But new home ‘completions’ in England fell 8% to 107,910 in the year to September, according to figures issued last month

4 December 2013

Corporate Killers! End fuel poverty

Bosses of the ‘big six’ energy firms should be in the dock. 31,000 extra people, mostly pensioners, died last winter. With 3.2 million households in fuel poverty and one in four families choosing between eating and heating, how many more will die this winter?

5 December 2013

Students condemn police repression and call for a demonstration to defend democratic rights

Socialist Students condemns repression

5 December 2013

Reactions to the Autumn Statement

Millionaire Osborne: 'The plan is working' - Working class people: 'Oh no it isn’t!' 400,000 people are using foodbanks, hundreds of thousands have lost their jobs and households are struggling under historic levels of debt. Only the super-rich could seriously think things are improving

5 December 2013

Sussex: Suspended occupation student speaks to Socialist Students

Five students have been suspended at Sussex University for taking part in an occupation. One of the five spoke to Socialist Students NUS executive member Edmund Schluessel on 4 December

6 December 2013

London students demonstrate against police repression

300 students are demonstrating this afternoon around central London campuses in defiance of police repression

6 December 2013

After Nelson Mandela - continue the struggle for freedom and equality

The worldwide tsunami of responses to Mandela's death reflects the almost universal disgust at the system of apartheid

6 December 2013

Cops Off Campus leaflet and posters

http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/txt/304.pdf

8 December 2013

MPs' 11% pay rise condemned by Socialist Party

Speaking to the BBC when the proposed 11% pay rise for MPs first caused an outcry in July, Dave Nellist, Socialist Party member and the 'Coventry MP who gave away half his pay' to workers' struggles while representing his constituents, called the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority [Ipsa]

9 December 2013

Surrey: march against fire station closures

Over 200 people marched between Sunbury and Staines Fire Station to a chorus of supportive car horns and waving pedestrians

9 December 2013

Bristol: Parents and children protest to save play park

150 people marched around the park, including many children. Over 10,000 signed up to the Facebook campaign

11 December 2013

#CopsOffCampus

Following the vicious crackdown on student protests last week, students around the country protested today

11 December 2013

Floods: "Daddy, there's water on the floor"

Health workers and Socialist Party members Liz and Keith had their homes flooded out on 5 December in Rhyl, north Wales

11 December 2013

Royal Mail agreement: Defend our right to strike!

The CWU has announced a "landmark agreement" with Royal Mail. But tucked away under is a No Strike deal

11 December 2013

Swansea councillors: which side are you on?

Which side are you on? That question should be asked of every Labour councillor in Swansea as they prepare to vote on butchering £45 million of jobs and services, writes Ronnie Job, Swansea Socialist Party.

11 December 2013

Building TUSC in byelections

Liverpool: In spite of a media blackout, with the Liverpool Echo only publicising the TUSC Riverside ward candidate on election day, John Marston received 49 votes, a respectable 3.6% of the vote

11 December 2013

Why I've donated to the Socialist Party Christmas appeal

Following the launch of the Socialist Party Christmas Appeal in issue 792 of the Socialist, Portsmouth Socialist Party member Sarah Welch explains why she has donated £1,000 to the appeal

11 December 2013

Obituary: Joel Lane, 1963-2013

It is with great sadness that I report of the death of our comrade Joel Lane

11 December 2013

Message to our readers and contributors

The Socialist thanks our readers and subscribers for your support during 2013. Without your continued financial support it would be difficult to maintain the weekly paper, writes In solidarity,.

11 December 2013

Fight for our NHS: Public health, not private profit

The latest measure of the cuts crisis in the NHS is the revelation that some patients are being forced to wait in ambulances outside hospitals because there is no bed for them and no staff to treat them, writes Alison Hill.

11 December 2013

Struggling workers say 'fight poverty pay'!

MPs' pay rise scandal: MPs are set to receive a bumper pay rise of 11% in 2015, bringing a backbencher's annual salary up to £74,000, writes April Ashley, assistant branch secretary, Southwark Unison (personal capacity).

11 December 2013

Austerity and the new working poor

The privileged position of these establishment politicians is even more galling in that news of their forecast pay rise coincided with a report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) charity which shows a big increase in the numbers of working poor in Britain (see below)

11 December 2013

Them & Us

Universal fiasco: Universal Credit (UC), the brainchild of work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith, is in meltdown even before its launch

11 December 2013

Cops Off Campus: NUS must call a national demonstration now!

The shocking brutality meted out against peaceful protesters at the University of London (UoL) has sent shockwaves through the student movement

11 December 2013

Cameron 'kowtows' to Chinese dictatorship

Western capitalist leaders put business before lofty 'principles': David Cameron, like many other Western leaders visiting China, abandoned any pretence of defending 'democracy' or 'human rights' in order to secure new profitable deals for British capitalism, writes Vincent Kolo, chinaworker.info.

11 December 2013

Osborne's budget statement - work 'til you drop or fight back!

The Tories brayed, shouted and cheered as multi-millionaire Osborne, the self-styled 'Iron Chancellor', rained hammer blows on the living standards of all but the super-rich

16 December 2013

Angry pickets in Leeds

Firefighters held a further two stoppages of four hours each time on Friday and Saturday as part of their ongoing dispute over changes to pensions

18 December 2013

Tamil Solidarity holds 2013 AGM

On Saturday 14 December 2013 Tamil Solidarity held a very successful annual general meeting in London

18 December 2013

Visteon pensioners protest

With legal action pending in 2014, the Visteon pensioners have organised protests against Ford during December, including outside Ford HQ in Brentwood, Essex on Wednesday 18th December

18 December 2013

Unite: strike threat gets UPS rep reinstated

Unite members at the UPS delivery firm depot in Camden have won an important victory

18 December 2013

Knowsley college strike to defend union steward

Unison members in Knowsley Community College took strike action in support of sacked senior steward Barry Dunne

19 December 2013

Pilger's film on ITV tonight

A new feature-length documentary by film-maker and journalist John Pilger explores the story of the Australian Aboriginal people, against a background of the country's economic boom built significantly on wealth from natural minerals

19 December 2013

Stop cruel care cuts

Support staff in Doncaster received an early Christmas present in the form of a letter outlining 'proposed changes to service' by their new employer Care UK

19 December 2013

Modern-day Scrooges in a Tory council

It seems that Charles Dickens' fictional heartless boss, Ebenezer Scrooge, has been surpassed by the ruling Tory group on Hammersmith and Fulham council

19 December 2013

Protests yield results for CoNEL college cleaners

Cleaners at the College of Haringey, Enfield and North East London (CoNEL)have won an important victory in their fight against 23% cuts to their working time and for the London Living Wage

20 December 2013

Firefighters' strikes on Xmas eve and after

Firefighters in England and Wales will be on strike again over pensions on Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve and 3rd January

21 December 2013

South Africa: NUMSA's historic decision

23 December 2013

RMT responds to rail price announcement

Just as the private train companies are closing down services due to adverse weather they are publishing fare increases which massively outstrip wages and which will once again hit low to medium earners where it hurts

31 December 2013

European Revolutionaries and Algerian Independence, 1954 - 1962

Letter sent by Keith Dickinson to "Revolutionary History", 11 August 2013

31 December 2013

New York Times article on Kshama Sawant