Brief as it was woeful, Wendy Alexander’s
leadership of the Labour Party in Scotland has come to an end.
Alexander was forced to resign after being given a one day ban from parliament
for breaking rules regarding donations for her campaign to become Labour Party
leader. Her actions were illegal – no doubt about it. No one is quite sure why
such large sums of cash were needed for what in effect became a coronation,
given the lack of an opposition candidate.
Mansour Osanloo, the leader of the Vahed Bus Company drivers, has serious
health problems and yet the Iranian authorities show no mercy, treating him as
if he were a dangerous criminal. He needs the solidarity of workers around the
world.
In the Mental Health Trust
where I work, now a Foundation Trust, the primary anxiety for workers is not
about pay but about the future of their jobs. Of course, rising prices and
a lousy pay deal – coupled with the Trust’s intention to hold an across
the board ‘banding review’ – piles on the pressure, but the fact that
repeated structural changes, resulting in cuts in the management structure,
have saved no real money and, now, all vacant posts have been abolished
(rather than frozen, as has been usual in the past) has drawn attention to
a very pressing threat to jobs.
An undercover police officer tried to provoke violence at the ‘Stop
Bush’ demonstration. These are the allegations made by George Galloway
MP. We publish below his letter to the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith. We
find his evidence compelling and the allegation disturbing. Is the
British state using provocateurs against us? The labour movement will
want an answer.
THE TYNE and Wear Metro is a public-sector success story and should be
kept that way, delegates at the annual conference of Britain’s biggest rail
union insisted today. As RMT’s AGM called on the government to implement Labour policy on
public ownership, RMT general secretary Bob Crow and Northern TUC secretary
Kevin Rowan issued a joint plea for an end to the threat to fragment and
privatise the northeast’s Metro network.
The government is trying to push a proposal through Parliament to
increase the length of time a suspect can be detained without charge to 42
days. What argument does the government use as excuse for eliminating rights
and liberties we have defended for hundreds of years? Not much. The authorities
present the ‘war against terror’ as one that demands secrecy on their part.
They hint darkly that lives are at risk if they tell us what they know, but
that the situation is grim. Trust us!
PCS union reps in the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
(Efra) Group are currently gearing up for an industrial action ballot in the
Rural Payments Agency (RPA), the civil service body that is responsible for
making subsidy payments to farmers. The RPA is based at several large offices
in Exeter, Reading, Northallerton, Newcastle, Workington and Carlisle.
Members are angry that they are having a flawed reporting system
imposed on them without agreement of their union.
In Part One Alan Woods analysed the
meaning of Dubcek and the reform movement
within the Czech bureaucracy.
Part Two explains why the
Russian bureaucracy
intervened and how the Czech workers
were left leaderless in
the face of military
intervention.
This
Friday, the national UNISON Industrial Action Committee meets to discuss their
response to the 55% vote in favour of strike action in local government over
pay. The vote is a clear rejection of Gordon Brown’s pay restraint and reflects
the impact that the economic crisis is having on thousands of UNISON members.
Yet the outcome of this ballot wasn’t a racing certainty by any means. In fact
the initial position of the Local Government Service Group Executive was
particularly muted.
The death of Manuel Marulanda, the legendary leader of the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), reopens a debate over the perspectives
for the FARC and for the class struggle in Colombia.
In the recent local elections the BNP won 2 council seats in Nuneaton and Bedworth. Despite the work in some of the wards with leafletting against the BNP, wards that the BNP did not win, the LP deputy leader Harriet Harman saw fit to castigate local LP members for not working hard enough to prevent the BNP winning seats. So the blame is put on the members – not government policies. Secondly, prior to the local elections, the local LP MP Mike O’Brien, advised the LP members not to campaign against the BNP as such action would raise their profile! […]
AROUND 700 RMT Tube cleaners working
for four private contractors are to stage a series of strikes after voting by a
landslide 125-to-one margin for action to win the London living wage and decent
working conditions. Cleaners working for ISS, ITS, ICS
and GBM will not book on for shifts that commence during the 24 hours between
18:50 next Thursday, June 26 and 18:49 on Friday June 27.