Kingston upon Thames has become the latest target in ongoing attacks against the National Health Service.
Segments of the NHS are to be subject to renewed cuts and transfers
that will see medical care placed in the hands of the private sector.
The University of Leeds has proposed cutting up to 700 jobs, according
to the University and College Union. This is part of the university’s
attempt to cut its annual budget by £35 million. The Vice Chancellor,
Michael Arthur, has engineered these cuts, and the student union
refuses to oppose them. Leeds University is just one of dozens of
higher education institutes that will be crippled by a reduction in
funding. These attacks on jobs and education are the most severe since
the Thatcher years and must be resisted.
1980 saw the steelworkers become one of the first group of workers to
take on the new Thatcher Tory government, which had been elected in
1979. A union member involved at the time looks back at the action
which marked the start of the new decade.
Socialist Appeal recently published an appeal from IT workers at
Japanese-based multinational Futitsu, who have been taking strike
action up and down the country in Britain’s first ever national strike
of IT workers. The workers and their union, Unite, are incensed that
the highly-profitable IT services provider is attempting to scrap the
pension scheme and putting thousands of staff at risk of redundancy.
The news that Cadbury, the iconic chocolate making firm, has accepted a hostile bid from US based Kraft is clearly not good news for Cadbury workers given the huge debt Kraft is currently carrying. In an article wriiten just before the news broke we look at what all this could mean.
The
trade union campaign against the wage cuts announced in Lenihan’s
December budget will begin to escalate over the next few weeks as
different groups of workers across the public sector take action in
what is being portrayed as an ongoing campaign of selective action.
Today 20th January, the air traffic controllers are coming out, which will have a dramatic and very public effect on air travel. It’s
likely that the workers concerned in the various selective actions will
receive strike fund support in many cases and as such the campaign
could continue for a considerable time. But what is the underlying
situation and what are the issues for the movement?
Just about a month ago in
Coventry we were treated to a public meeting on the Road to Peace in
Afghanistan with local MP Bob Ainsworth, MoD, versus Bruce Kent of CND. For Bob
the issue was simple. We are there to help the Afghan people, to stop the
country becoming a failed state, to protect British interests, to fight
terrorism and to stop Pakistan collapsing as withdrawal of UK forces would mean
precisely that. Members of the audience asked a number of questions, all of
which failed to get an adequate answer.
Mick Brooks reviews a new play by David Hare which deals with the events surrounding the start of the great financial crisis.
Exploitation and robbery – colonial style – is alive and well and now, more than ever
mercenary soldiers are doing the dirty work. Unaccountable and secretive,contracted armies are the preferred method powerful western states use to destabilize governments and secure control of natural resources. With state complicity, soldiers for hire are uninhibited by fear of prosecution and use what ever means necessary to undermine national liberation movements and impose imperialist chains and the rule of Western big business.
The history of the Russian Revolution is intimately associated with the names of Lenin and Trotsky, its two great leaders. They attracted all the praise and they bore all the hatred. The reason for this is not difficult to understand. The October Russian Revolution, led by the Bolshevik Party, was the greatest event in history. For the first time, the workers and peasant took power into their hands, swept aside the landlords and capitalists, and proceeded to organise a democratic workers’ Soviet Republic.
The authority of the new Soviet government rested upon a congress of soviets (workers’ committees) elected from factories and barracks.
The deepest and longest economic recession in the advanced capitalist economies since the 1930s is more or less over. But it won’t be long before capitalism plunges into another. That won’t happen in 2010, but there will be another economic slump before the new decade is out.
The international police organisation INTERPOL has posted wanted alerts on a number of Iranian political dissidents. This revelation follows in the wake of the December 26-27th protests in Iran which drew millions onto the streets nationwide. Clashes with police led to military units being ordered to fire on demonstrators, an order which is alleged to have been disobeyed.