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For all of us working at Lloyds, the announcement that the bosses would
be throwing 15,000 (or 14% of the 104,000 strong work force) people onto
the street came not from our employer but from the press release that
was made to appease the stock markets – they were only too happy to hear
we’d be bearing the brunt of the effort, as ever, to drag Lloyds out of
the mess the bosses got it into in the first place.
The phone-hacking scandal that has rocked the British establishment in the past week is not only bad news for Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World and its parents NewsCorp and News International,
who have now had to sacrifice their main paper, it is bad news for the
politicians, the police and the capitalist class as a whole.
Over
the recent period, splits and divisions have opened up within sections of the
ruling class, which reflect a deepening unease over the crisis and the effects it
is having on British society. The
outspoken attack in the New Statesmen on the Coalition government by the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan
Williams, was an indication in some quarters of the effects of the austerity
programme.
As I write these lines the destinies of Greece are being decided in a
titanic struggle in which the Greek working class is confronting the big
banks and capitalists of all Europe. The EU is subjecting Greece to the
most shameless blackmail. They say: either accept draconian cuts in
your living standards, or else we will refuse to hand over the next
tranche of 12 billion euros.
Cambridge saw all the four striking unions out in the city,
with PCS members on strike at the job centre and the local HMRC offices, the
UCU out at Anglia Ruskin University and the Cambridge Regional College, and NUT
and ATL members shutting down a number of schools in the area. Armed with our
solidarity chocolate, we visited a number of picket lines to chat to workers
and offer our support.
PSNI sources as saying that
there was no “paramilitary” involvement in Friday night’s rioting in
Belfast’s Castlereagh Street and Albertbridge Road, but it’s
clear also that events a couple of weeks ago in the Short Strand have
contributed to what looks like an explosive situation moving into the
marching season, no matter whether the loyalists were there or not.
The scathing remarks of Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against Barak Obama for suggesting that the
‘two state solution’ should be based upon the pre-1967 borders, just
before boarding the plane to Washington for a state visit, exposed the
diplomatic weakness of the imperialist leaders.
From Psychology to Hair & Beauty the response from
ATL & UCU lecturers to the strike call was overwhelming in all departments
at Worcester Technology College
PORTSMOUTH: Guildhall Square
resounded to loud shouts against the Government’s attack on the pensions and
conditions of millions of Public Sector workers.
Yesterday
the Greek parliament approved the austerity measures required to get
further lending from the European Union. The PASOK government is
determined to force through its austerity measures, even though 75% of
the population is totally opposed to any further austerity being imposed
on them.
Thousands of trade unionists hit the
streets of London and other cities all over Britain today in a national
strike called by the Public and Civil Service Union (PCS), the National
Union of Teachers (NUT), the Lecturers’ union (UCU) and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers
(ATL) to protest the government’s plan to vandalise pension schemes.
This was an important turning-point for the British labour movement.
JUNE 30th: Thousands march in London against the Tory attacks on public sector pensions.