This Friday 20 March at 13.00 hours, cleaners employed by Mitie at
global insurance brokers the Willis Group will be demonstrating again
outside the Willis Building, 51 Lime Street EC3 7DQ (tube: Liverpool
Street or Bank)
Please come and support, and bring anything visible (banners etc) and anything noisy!
At the beginning of this month comrades
from up and down the country met in London for the National Conference of the
Socialist Appeal, the British group supporting the International Marxist
Tendency.
The British Marxist tendency met last year
as the economic crisis had begun to affect British capitalism. This year the
system in Britain and internationally shows no sign of emerging from the
recession it has plunged into, overshadowing the bourgeoisies’ celebrations of
the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin wall, which they saw as the ‘final
victory’ of capitalism.
Comrades left
in high spirits determined to build the forces of Marxism throughout Britain,
as our part in the fight for socialism internationally.
The chances of a referendum on Scottish independence appear increasingly distant following a Scottish parliamentary vote in favour of a resolution condemning moves towards one. This is a huge blow to the SNP self-declared Scottish Government that is committed to holding a referendum before the current parliament ends in 2011. However the vote has also done little for a Labour Party that has lost all sense of direction, as its leadership exposes itself as utterly unable to capitalise on the SNP’s fall from grace.
As has already
been reported on marxist.com and socialist.net, the workers at the PRISME packaging
plant in Dundee have been in occupation since the 4th of March. The workers
decided to occupy the factory after they were each given a letter informing
them of their immediate dismissal without any of the pay they were owed from
the first of March. They demanded a letter outlining the payments they were
due, which when the received outlined all they payments they were entitled to,
however it scandalously concluded with the sentence “Unfortunately, we do not
have enough money to make these payments to you.”
An enthusiastic group of British trade unionists, Socialist Appeal
members and IWSN activists, gathered outside the Iranian regime’s
embassy in London at 12:30 on March 14. After assembling on the other
side of the road, where pickets are normally held, the protesters moved
to the pavement outside the embassy to chant slogans like "Free all
political prisoners in Iran!", "Independent workers’ unions now!" and
"Iranian workers are not alone!". The pickets even tried, with some
success, to chant "Kargaran-e iran tanha nistand" ("Iranian workers are
not alone!").
With repeated cries of “Royal Mail, Not for
Sale” and echoes of the 1980s with “Mandy, Mandy, Mandy, Out, Out, Out!” more
than 1,000 CWU members and their supporters settled down in a meeting hall in
Bilston near Wolverhampton on Saturday afternoon March 14th to
listen to a range of speakers opposing the threat to privatise up to 49% of the
postal services.
• D Simpson: 60,048
• Jerry Hicks: 39,307
• K Coyne: 30,603
• P Reuter: 28,283
Thank you all those who nominated, those who campaigned and
those who voted for me in the election for General Secretary of Unite / Amicus.It was due to your efforts and generosity that our campaign
was able to reach out and touch and win the hearts and minds of tens thousands
of our members who returned this magnificent vote.Our message was clearly and proudly taken into workplaces
and homes, across every industry and in every part of the country and inspired,
motivated and gave hope to the many thousands who heard it and responded to it.
The result is a clear vindication of the relevance of the election and appeal
of our policies.
The 36-year struggle for justice by the famous Shrewsbury pickets brought about 50 supporters, construction workers and trade unionists outside Westminster to protest against convictions brought against the pickets in 1973 for their role in the historic national construction workers’ strike.
As we know there are indeed 40 shades of green in Ireland, but as the comrades of Labour Youth and the Connolly Youth Movement have explained in their open letter to the Green Party there is another one. The shade of green, that is, which justifies the Green Party’s ongoing support for the Fianna Fáil – which allows the latter to continue to hold a majority in the Dáil.
In a sign of the increasing anger at job losses, workers at BMW’s Mini factory in Cowley, Oxford threw fruit at union officials when they heard they were to be sacked with one hour’s notice on Monday 16 February. Management at the Mini factory had minutes earlier told the weekend shift of 850 workers that they were being made redundant.
“The threat of privatisation is the biggest issue that members are talking about in the canteen- bigger than the April pay award – bigger than Man United win in Europe.” It is with this background that Brendon Allen CWU Branch Secretary Worcester told of how postal workers in Worcester are preparing to go the National CWU Demo in Wolverhampton.
On February 21 some 200,000 workers and their families took to the streets in Dublin, to demonstrate their opposition to the government’s decision to impose a pension levy (€ 2 billion) on 300,000 Public sector workers. The huge success of the march however, resulted from various factors such as the deepening economic crisis, rising unemployment, the ditching of the social contract by the employers and the government and savage government budget cuts. But what most concerns the majority of workers is that the situation is likely to worsen.