Archive for February 2004

7 February 2004

Venezuela: Workers Struggle Against Reaction

ON A recent Miami television programme, a group of Venezuelan ex-military officers openly called for a US invasion to overthrow the twice-elected radical, nationalist government of President Hugo Chávez...

7 February 2004

Brazil - Movement For A New Workers' Party Is Launched

ONLY ONE year after the Presidential election victory of "Lula" (Luiz Inacio da Silva) of the Workers' Party (PT) a new movement has been launched by former PT activists, trade unionists and socialists...

7 February 2004

Stop These Council Cuts

Southampton: "I USE the centre because it's convenient for me and my family and friends. We're not rich, we can't afford to join posh health clubs where the fees are very high. Soon there'll be nowhere to go and the young will be back on the streets getting...

7 February 2004

Leicester Lecturers On Indefinite Strike

LECTURERS AT Leicester College are out on indefinite strike. The FE College is imposing new contracts that cut holidays, push through Saturday working and worsen conditions of service...

7 February 2004

Strike threat forces negotiations in civil service pay battle

OVER 5,000 members have been recruited to civil service union PCS since our pay campaign started. It has inspired a new layer of members and activists. Members see their willingness to take action has forced management to make concessions, writes Rob Williams, PCS National Executive (NEC), personal capacity...

7 February 2004

Civil Service Strike: Around the Picket Lines

High Court, London: DEPARTMENT FOR Constitutional Affairs (DCA) staff outside the Royal Courts of Justice, picketed all the main entrances...

7 February 2004

Trade Union Left Convention

THE ISSUES being debated by the RMT are likely to surface at the Convention of the Trade Union Left, which takes place the day after the RMT special conference...

7 February 2004

The Trade Unions And The Labour Party

TRADE UNION links with the Labour Party will be under intense scrutiny this week...

7 February 2004

BBC Workers Angry At Hutton Attacks

IT TAKES a perverse talent to achieve what Hutton, Blair and Campbell et al did within the BBC last week. At a stroke they united tens of thousands of BBC workers in support of their multimillionaire former bosses who were initially seen as 'Tony's...

7 February 2004

We demand a real investigation

Extract From a Socialist Party Leaflet:

We want an inquiry that actually looks at the real reasons why more than 10,000 Iraqi civilians have been slaughtered; why more than £5 billion of our money has been spent on a bloody war and occupation rather than the services we need...

7 February 2004

War Crimes and Whitewashes

AS ANY inept DIY bodger could tell you, whitewash, applied carefully and thinly will last years. Too thick and it will flake off in no time." (Letter to the Guardian, 29 January)...

7 February 2004

No More Lies

ONCE AGAIN lapdog Tony is following behind his master Bush. Having said last week that there was no need for an inquiry into weapons of mass destruction (WMD), Tony Blair is now setting one up...

14 February 2004

Pakistan's Nuclear Secrets Scandal

HAVING PREVIOUSLY arrested Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan - Pakistan's "father of the Islamic bomb" - for selling nuclear secrets abroad, president Pervez Musharraf has now pardoned him...

14 February 2004

Socialist Alliance Trade Union Convention: No way forward

ON 7 February around 700 activists attended a trade union convention on the political funds, organised by the Socialist Alliance...

14 February 2004

RMT Makes Historic Break With New Labour

LAST WEEK a special conference of the railworkers' union, RMT, voted by 42 votes to eight to reject Labour Party intimidation and reaffirmed its decision to support other political organisations, including affiliation to the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP)...

14 February 2004

Fighting Low Pay

Civil service strike: JOBCENTRE AND benefit office staff will be on strike against low pay on 16 and 17 February, whilst Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) management's plans to cut 18,000 jobs have been exposed...

14 February 2004

"Pinocchio" Blair's Lies Unravel

BUSH AND Blair's charade that their imperialist war on Iraq was provoked by Saddam Hussein's possession and threatened use of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) has exploded in their faces...

14 February 2004

"Victims Of Cowboy Capitalism"

THE HORRIFYING tragedy that took place on Morecambe Bay, resulting in the deaths of 19 Chinese migrant workers, exposed the exploitation of capitalism at its worse...

14 February 2004

RMT Expulsion Signals Time For A New Workers' Party

BLAIR HAS never been more unpopular. 51% in an opinion poll in The Independent said it's time for him to go. This was just a matter of days after the Hutton report was supposed to have cleared him of any wrong doing. In reality, nobody...

21 February 2004

Socialist Party conference 2004: Socialism On The March

Exactly one year after 2 million people took to the streets of London to oppose the Iraq war the Socialist Party held its national conference. After a year of intense activity some 250 delegates and visitors came together to assess the Socialist Party's...

21 February 2004

Privatisation Kills

Cumbria rail disaster: ONCE AGAIN, Britain's privatised, split and profit-obsessed rail system has led to deaths on the track. On 14 February, four rail repair workers were killed by a runaway wagon on a mountainous stretch of line in Cumbria...

21 February 2004

Unions Mobilise Against BNP

AROUND 250 members of many different trade unions gathered in a demonstration to defend the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) headquarters on 16 February...

21 February 2004

Belfast Airport Workers Win Trade Union Inquiry

THREE SHOP stewards from Aldergrove Airport, Belfast, who were sacked for daring to strike in support of a pay rise, have won an important part of their battle for justice...

21 February 2004

"Jack is walking!"... but the system is failing

ONLY AT the age of nine was Jack seen to be walking for the first time. It was with the aid of the water in the school baths but his achievement inspired the whole school and all his family...

21 February 2004

Fighting to change the NUT

SOCIALIST PARTY member Martin Powell-Davies is campaigning to stand as general secretary of the National Union of Teachers (NUT)...

21 February 2004

Strike action is not truancy

PAULA MITCHELL wrote the following letter to the east London Walthamstow Guardian after comments in an article on 29 January: "Political groups are leading pupils astray, girls' teacher warned"...

21 February 2004

Socialist Party Councillors Say No To Top-Up Fees

RECENTLY SOCIALIST Party councillors Chris Flood and Ian Page put forward a motion calling on Lewisham council and the three local Labour MPs to oppose top-up tuition fees. Here is part of Chris's speech...