London Social Centres raided, arrests at Rat Star
Published: April 28, 2011 08:24 by beautifulsouth |
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Tagged as: free_spaces
Neighbourhoods: camberwell clapton
Published by group: beautiful south
At least two London Social Centres raided this morning - police have broken into the Ratstar and Offmarket autonomous spaces. There are about 8 arrests reported from the Rat Star in Camberwell.
At least two London Social Centres raided : If you can make it down to the Ratstar (298 Camberwell Road) near Camberwell Green or Offmarket (121 Lower Clapton Road, Clapton, Hackney) it would still be good to have a presence there.
There are about 8 arrests reported from the Rat Star in CamberwelL
Raids and arrests have taken place in others cities across the UK
Indymedia
=========================================
Friday, 29 April 2011
AUCPB UK CLASS STRUGGLE 30 APRIL
Thu 21 Apr 2011 London
Journalists strike to save 'dearly beloved' newspapers
Journalists at the North London & Herts Newspapers took their message to the streets in their first week of strikes, which began on Tuesday.
The nine workers, members of the NUJ union, who are employed at Tindle Newspapers, are striking for two weeks against the company’s policy of non-replacement of staff. They want to secure one extra reporter to help ease the workload.
The strikers and their supporters met on the picket line on Wednesday and marched into Enfield town centre to hold a rally and raise support. They organised the protest as a mock funeral for their “dearly beloved” newspapers.
=========================
26 Apr 2011 London
Tube drivers strike vote over reps victimisation
A strike ballot of all London Underground drivers in the RMT union over the victimisation of reps was to end on Wednesday of this week.
Bosses have recently sacked Eamon Lynch, an RMT Bakerloo Line drivers’ health and safety rep, and Arwyn Thomas, a driver at Morden, on disciplinary charges.
Both won “interim relief” Employment Tribunals, which is only awarded in cases where there is clear evidence that employees have been dismissed due to their trade union activities. They remain on full pay after this award.
The RMT believes that their sackings are part of a management plan to weaken the union as they try to drive through cuts.
The impact of the cuts to jobs and maintenance was seen on the service last week, in what the union described as “24 hours of tube hell”.
The Jubilee Line was plunged into chaos on the Tuesday evening after a power shutdown and faulty rolling stock and operating systems. This saw over 1,700 passengers having to leave their train and walk through sweltering tube tunnels with the assistance of station staff.
The line remained in disarray the following morning.
Later that afternoon, the Waterloo and City Line was hit by a communications fault and the Central Line was shut down during the rush hour. Other lines were also severely disrupted.
Bob Crow, the RMT general secretary, said, “London mayor Boris Johnson needs to call an immediate halt to the jobs and maintenance cuts.”
The RMT has organised a members’ meeting in central London on Wednesday of this week to discuss the ballot result against victimisations and the plan of action.
In a separate dispute on the tube, the RMT, the TSSA and Aslef unions have all rejected bosses’ multi-year pay deal.
________________________________________
Heathrow Express
RMT members on Heathrow Express are to ballot for industrial action over pay. The union has rejected a two year offer, describing it as “unsatisfactory”.
Saltend workers revive protests over lock-out
Locked out construction workers at Saltend in Hull have resumed their protests.
Some 400 of them have been locked out since 14 March.
The Saltend site is the second biggest construction site in Britain after the Olympics. A huge company, Vivergo Fuels, runs it. BP, British Sugar and DuPont own it.
The dispute began when Vivergo cancelled a contract with Redhall Engineering Solutions, the subcontractor that had employed the workers.
The bosses refused to transfer them to a new contractor.
After a number of weeks of protests against this, the pickets were lifted to enable talks to take place.
The bosses offered workers a bribe to go away. This was rejected at a mass meeting on Thursday of last week.
Keith Gibson, a locked out worker, told Socialist Worker, “This is the longest dispute I’ve ever been involved with, and the most serious.
“Vivergo tried to pay workers off—with no guarantee that they would get their jobs back. The work would be split up between different contractors and workers would have to bid for it.”
A national shop stewards meeting was called off by the unions last week, but it is set to go ahead on Wednesday of this week.
Meanwhile, the GMB is preparing to launch a legal challenge against Humberside Police after around 50 officers, some on horses, used what the union called “heavy handed” tactics against workers outside the plant.
Les Dobbs, a GMB organiser, said that the union is considering this because of “an unreasonable use of Section 14 of the Public Order Act”.
More than 100 delegates to the NUT teachers’ union conference attended a fringe meeting to hear Keith Gibson speak last week. Teachers showed solidarity by donating over £400 to the workers at the conference.
The lesson of the past week is that militancy is the key to the dispute, not talks with management.
Solidarity, and militant industrial action, can win the dispute. If the officials won’t call out other sites, then action should be taken unofficially
==========================================
Journalists strike to save 'dearly beloved' newspapers
Journalists at the North London & Herts Newspapers took their message to the streets in their first week of strikes, which began on Tuesday.
The nine workers, members of the NUJ union, who are employed at Tindle Newspapers, are striking for two weeks against the company’s policy of non-replacement of staff. They want to secure one extra reporter to help ease the workload.
The strikers and their supporters met on the picket line on Wednesday and marched into Enfield town centre to hold a rally and raise support. They organised the protest as a mock funeral for their “dearly beloved” newspapers.
=========================
26 Apr 2011 London
Tube drivers strike vote over reps victimisation
A strike ballot of all London Underground drivers in the RMT union over the victimisation of reps was to end on Wednesday of this week.
Bosses have recently sacked Eamon Lynch, an RMT Bakerloo Line drivers’ health and safety rep, and Arwyn Thomas, a driver at Morden, on disciplinary charges.
Both won “interim relief” Employment Tribunals, which is only awarded in cases where there is clear evidence that employees have been dismissed due to their trade union activities. They remain on full pay after this award.
The RMT believes that their sackings are part of a management plan to weaken the union as they try to drive through cuts.
The impact of the cuts to jobs and maintenance was seen on the service last week, in what the union described as “24 hours of tube hell”.
The Jubilee Line was plunged into chaos on the Tuesday evening after a power shutdown and faulty rolling stock and operating systems. This saw over 1,700 passengers having to leave their train and walk through sweltering tube tunnels with the assistance of station staff.
The line remained in disarray the following morning.
Later that afternoon, the Waterloo and City Line was hit by a communications fault and the Central Line was shut down during the rush hour. Other lines were also severely disrupted.
Bob Crow, the RMT general secretary, said, “London mayor Boris Johnson needs to call an immediate halt to the jobs and maintenance cuts.”
The RMT has organised a members’ meeting in central London on Wednesday of this week to discuss the ballot result against victimisations and the plan of action.
In a separate dispute on the tube, the RMT, the TSSA and Aslef unions have all rejected bosses’ multi-year pay deal.
________________________________________
Heathrow Express
RMT members on Heathrow Express are to ballot for industrial action over pay. The union has rejected a two year offer, describing it as “unsatisfactory”.
Saltend workers revive protests over lock-out
Locked out construction workers at Saltend in Hull have resumed their protests.
Some 400 of them have been locked out since 14 March.
The Saltend site is the second biggest construction site in Britain after the Olympics. A huge company, Vivergo Fuels, runs it. BP, British Sugar and DuPont own it.
The dispute began when Vivergo cancelled a contract with Redhall Engineering Solutions, the subcontractor that had employed the workers.
The bosses refused to transfer them to a new contractor.
After a number of weeks of protests against this, the pickets were lifted to enable talks to take place.
The bosses offered workers a bribe to go away. This was rejected at a mass meeting on Thursday of last week.
Keith Gibson, a locked out worker, told Socialist Worker, “This is the longest dispute I’ve ever been involved with, and the most serious.
“Vivergo tried to pay workers off—with no guarantee that they would get their jobs back. The work would be split up between different contractors and workers would have to bid for it.”
A national shop stewards meeting was called off by the unions last week, but it is set to go ahead on Wednesday of this week.
Meanwhile, the GMB is preparing to launch a legal challenge against Humberside Police after around 50 officers, some on horses, used what the union called “heavy handed” tactics against workers outside the plant.
Les Dobbs, a GMB organiser, said that the union is considering this because of “an unreasonable use of Section 14 of the Public Order Act”.
More than 100 delegates to the NUT teachers’ union conference attended a fringe meeting to hear Keith Gibson speak last week. Teachers showed solidarity by donating over £400 to the workers at the conference.
The lesson of the past week is that militancy is the key to the dispute, not talks with management.
Solidarity, and militant industrial action, can win the dispute. If the officials won’t call out other sites, then action should be taken unofficially
==========================================
BRISTOL -RIOTING
Stokes Croft Sees Second Night of Riots
Last night saw a second night of rioting in Bristol. The police claim that they were attacked, yet protesters claim the police charged into a peaceful protest. The tension is far from over: Today Stokes Croft felt like it was in a different country with the chopper overhead and lines of full riot-equipped police in a stand-off with squatters and a gathering crowd of people at the blocked sections of Stokes Croft, Nine Tree Hill and Ashley Road. So while this area of Bristol feels like an occupied zone, the rest of the UK turns it gaze to the Royal Wedding.UPDATE: OFFICIAL ARRESTS FROM THE LAST 24HRS NOW NUMBER 30
Local writes: "They're evicting telepathic heights. The street is closed to traffic, the chopper is out and there are about 10 riot vans and a paddy wagon on the street with only the Stokes Croft Jakeys and occasional passer by watching. Three lads have barricaded themselves onto the roof and there's a bit of a standoff.. They're evicting telepathic heights. The street is closed to traffic, the chopper is out and there are about 10 riot vans and a paddy wagon on the street with only the Stokes Croft Jakeys and occasional passer by watching. Three lads have barricaded themselves onto the roof and there's a bit of a standoff.."
Indymedia
Last night saw a second night of rioting in Bristol. The police claim that they were attacked, yet protesters claim the police charged into a peaceful protest. The tension is far from over: Today Stokes Croft felt like it was in a different country with the chopper overhead and lines of full riot-equipped police in a stand-off with squatters and a gathering crowd of people at the blocked sections of Stokes Croft, Nine Tree Hill and Ashley Road. So while this area of Bristol feels like an occupied zone, the rest of the UK turns it gaze to the Royal Wedding.UPDATE: OFFICIAL ARRESTS FROM THE LAST 24HRS NOW NUMBER 30
Local writes: "They're evicting telepathic heights. The street is closed to traffic, the chopper is out and there are about 10 riot vans and a paddy wagon on the street with only the Stokes Croft Jakeys and occasional passer by watching. Three lads have barricaded themselves onto the roof and there's a bit of a standoff.. They're evicting telepathic heights. The street is closed to traffic, the chopper is out and there are about 10 riot vans and a paddy wagon on the street with only the Stokes Croft Jakeys and occasional passer by watching. Three lads have barricaded themselves onto the roof and there's a bit of a standoff.."
Indymedia
THE MONARCHY
The British public – grinding under massive austerity budget cuts, unemployment, poverty wages, social deprivations and crumbling services – are thrown scraps of feelgood comfort from the much-hyped wedding between Prince William and his girlfriend Kate Middleton.
Meanwhile, the spectacles of gore and bloodlust – admittedly despite much public opposition – are located thousands of kilometers away in the Middle East, Iraq, Central Asia, Afghanistan, where over a million civilians have been killed in British-backed “wars against terror” that have yet to be sated even after eight and 10 years of butchery, respectively; and now the latest spectacle opens in North Africa, Libya, where over the past six weeks Royal Air Force warplanes have been bombing and killing civilians in the name of “peace” and “humanitarian concern”
Britain’s royal wedding: A big day for the global oligarchy
A celebration of the dictatorship of global capital over democracy
by Finian Cunningham, Global Research, 28 April 2011
The British royal wedding can be seen as a modern-day repeat of the “bread and circuses” policy of ancient Rome. In the waning days of that empire, the rulers sought to distract the masses from their grinding misery and the unwieldy wealth and corruption of the elite by sporadically throwing scraps of bread to the hungry public while saturating them with spectacles of gore and bloodlust at the Colosseum.
Today, the British public – grinding under massive austerity budget cuts, unemployment, poverty wages, social deprivations and crumbling services – are thrown scraps of feelgood comfort from the much-hyped wedding between Prince William and his girlfriend Kate Middleton. William is the grandson of Queen Elizabeth II and son of the heir apparent to the British throne, Prince Charles. Fawning media coverage will present it as a day of romance, nationhood, nostalgia and pride.
Meanwhile, the spectacles of gore and bloodlust – admittedly despite much public opposition – are located thousands of kilometers away in the Middle East, Iraq, Central Asia, Afghanistan, where over a million civilians have been killed in British-backed “wars against terror” that have yet to be sated even after eight and 10 years of butchery, respectively; and now the latest spectacle opens in North Africa, Libya, where over the past six weeks Royal Air Force warplanes have been bombing and killing civilians in the name of “peace” and “humanitarian concern”. The day before the wedding, the British government announced that troops are to be dispatched to the borders of Libya to provide “humanitarian corridors” for displaced civilians – many of whom will have been displaced by RAF ground attack aircraft.
Of course, the British Empire has long ago waned as a singular entity and its elite is not alone in lording over their masses. The same bread and circuses charade is being played out in varied ways by the other Western powers, the US, France, Germany, Italy, that comprise today’s global Empire of Capital.
But what should be appreciated from the display in Britain is the revelation – albeit unintended – of raw state power. Behind the translucent wedding veil, what can be seen is raw state power that blows away any vestige of illusions of parliamentary democracy, illusions that are not just peculiar to Britain, but to all the Western powers. In short, the empire of corporate and financial aristocracy that has emerged in late capitalism is now asserting itself increasingly and more blatantly as a dictatorship of Capital.
All political parties, whether Conservative, Liberal or Labour in Britain, or Republican, Democrat in the US etc., are seen to be willing servants of this dictatorship.
Bear in mind that London’s royal pageant is being imposed, without any public question, at an estimated cost of some $70 million, most of that for state security against any sign of popular protest. When the wider cost to the economy of the British government’s declared “public holiday” is factored in, the total cost may be $10 billion – this as the British exchequer is embarking on implementing austerity budget cuts of $130 billion. The bill for the royal wedding will be footed by the British public through future deeper cuts in jobs, education and health services, and social welfare programmes. This as the British government unilaterally adds to the public debt the cost of RAF bombing sorties in Libya, estimated at over $1 billion a month, and its other even more costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So where is the democracy in that? Austerity budgets imposed against public will, a deficit substantially increased from a royal pageant imposed without democratic consultation, and war expenses loaded on to the suffering public – even though these wars are opposed by the majority of voters.
That is dictatorship by elite government for an unelected elite. The same dictatorship manifests in the US and other Western powers. Ordinary Americans in particular may look at the British royal wedding pageant with mild fascination as some kind of “old Europe curiosity”. But in spite of its supposed revolution against European monarchs, the US has today reinvented its own corporate and financial aristocracy that rules and plunders without democratic accountability in alliance with the oligarchies of Europe.
The real world nexus for our global oligarchy is seen graphically in the power of oil companies and the transnational banking system. Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, one of the world’s top 10 richest individuals, has a personal fortune that is reckoned to far exceed her country’s $130 billion deficit cuts. She is a major shareholder in Royal Dutch Shell and British Petroleum – these companies along with Exxon and Chevron make up the “four horsemen” of global Big Oil.
As Dean Henderson, author of Big Oil and Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf, points out:
“The Four Horsemen have interlocking directorates with the international mega-banks. Exxon Mobil shares board members with JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Royal Bank of Canada and Prudential. Chevron Texaco has interlocks with Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase. BP Amoco shares directors with JP Morgan Chase. RD/Shell has ties with Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, N. M. Rothschild & Sons and Bank of England.”
Henderson continues: “Information on RD/Shell is harder to obtain since they are registered in the UK and Holland and are not required to file 10K reports. It is 60% owned by Royal Dutch Petroleum of Holland and 40% owned by Shell Trading & Transport of the UK. The company has only 14,000 stockholders and few directors. The consensus from researchers is that Royal Dutch/Shell is still controlled by the Rothschild, Oppenheimer, Nobel and Samuel families along with the British House of Windsor and the Dutch House of Orange.” [1]
Such global connections bestow on the British monarch the epithet of “the world’s ultimate insider trader”.
Scott Thompson writes: “[T]he Queen is the world's ultimate ‘insider trader’. She not only gets tips from British financiers, but also has access to all the state secrets, through the [Privy Council] ‘boxes’. Thus, if the Queen learns from among all public and private British Empire intelligence and economic warfare entities reporting to her, for example, that Nigeria is about to be destabilized, she can immediately call her broker. Under the secrecy laws of the British Empire, it would be unthinkable for anyone to consider pressing charges of insider trading and conflict of interest against the sovereign: In fact, only a handful of trusted advisers would ever know.” [2]
To put these connections of the House of Windsor to the global Empire of Capital in a real world context, we should factor in the following:
1. The war in Iraq, according to recent revelations from Wikileaks, and others, was most certainly about gaining access for Big Oil and British Big Oil in particular, despite the arrogant assertions by former British prime minister Tony Blair that such claims made at the time of the US/British invasion of Iraq in 2003 were “absurd”. [3]
2. The present NATO war in Libya has an uncanny resemblance to British and French war planning for that country several months before any sign of alleged popular uprising. [4]
3. NATO’s military intervention in Libya was precipitated by Muammar Gaddafi’s move to put a financial squeeze on Big Oil to compensate for more than $2 billion in reparations extracted from that country over a frame-up for the Lockerbie bombing in 1988, according to former US intelligence asset Susan Lindauer.
4. The subjugation and integration of Libya’s independent financial system within the global banking system, the same system in which the British monarch is a major shareholder. [5]
5. Libya’s vast untapped oil wealth – the largest in Africa – was impeded by a leader considered unreliable to the long-term interests of Big Oil.
6. The reconquest of Libya by Western militarism provides a strategic bridgehead for global Capital to thwart pro-democracy uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa – uprising that represent threats to the profit interests of Big Oil and its shareholders, including the House of Windsor.
On the last point, it should be noted that Western governments have been aided and abetted by dictatorial monarchs from the Persian Gulf, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait. The Persian Gulf monarchs are among the guest list attending the Big Day for the British royals. The delegation from the House of Saud is particularly noteworthy, given in its ongoing involvement in the vicious repression of the pro-democracy movement in Britain’s former colony of Bahrain.
But the royal wedding is not just a peculiar Big Day for the seemingly quaint House of Windsor. It is in many ways a celebration of the dictatorship of global Capital over democracy in Britain and elsewhere around the world, including the ‘Republic of the USA”. As the assorted global dictators assembled in London’s Westminster Abbey might say in harmony with the happy couple: “Till death do us part”.
www.myspace.com/finiancunninghammusic
______________________________________
Notes:
[1] http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24507
[2]
http://american_almanac.tripod.com/crown.htm
[3]
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24491
[4]
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24351
[5]
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24306
Source
Meanwhile, the spectacles of gore and bloodlust – admittedly despite much public opposition – are located thousands of kilometers away in the Middle East, Iraq, Central Asia, Afghanistan, where over a million civilians have been killed in British-backed “wars against terror” that have yet to be sated even after eight and 10 years of butchery, respectively; and now the latest spectacle opens in North Africa, Libya, where over the past six weeks Royal Air Force warplanes have been bombing and killing civilians in the name of “peace” and “humanitarian concern”
Britain’s royal wedding: A big day for the global oligarchy
A celebration of the dictatorship of global capital over democracy
by Finian Cunningham, Global Research, 28 April 2011
The British royal wedding can be seen as a modern-day repeat of the “bread and circuses” policy of ancient Rome. In the waning days of that empire, the rulers sought to distract the masses from their grinding misery and the unwieldy wealth and corruption of the elite by sporadically throwing scraps of bread to the hungry public while saturating them with spectacles of gore and bloodlust at the Colosseum.
Today, the British public – grinding under massive austerity budget cuts, unemployment, poverty wages, social deprivations and crumbling services – are thrown scraps of feelgood comfort from the much-hyped wedding between Prince William and his girlfriend Kate Middleton. William is the grandson of Queen Elizabeth II and son of the heir apparent to the British throne, Prince Charles. Fawning media coverage will present it as a day of romance, nationhood, nostalgia and pride.
Meanwhile, the spectacles of gore and bloodlust – admittedly despite much public opposition – are located thousands of kilometers away in the Middle East, Iraq, Central Asia, Afghanistan, where over a million civilians have been killed in British-backed “wars against terror” that have yet to be sated even after eight and 10 years of butchery, respectively; and now the latest spectacle opens in North Africa, Libya, where over the past six weeks Royal Air Force warplanes have been bombing and killing civilians in the name of “peace” and “humanitarian concern”. The day before the wedding, the British government announced that troops are to be dispatched to the borders of Libya to provide “humanitarian corridors” for displaced civilians – many of whom will have been displaced by RAF ground attack aircraft.
Of course, the British Empire has long ago waned as a singular entity and its elite is not alone in lording over their masses. The same bread and circuses charade is being played out in varied ways by the other Western powers, the US, France, Germany, Italy, that comprise today’s global Empire of Capital.
But what should be appreciated from the display in Britain is the revelation – albeit unintended – of raw state power. Behind the translucent wedding veil, what can be seen is raw state power that blows away any vestige of illusions of parliamentary democracy, illusions that are not just peculiar to Britain, but to all the Western powers. In short, the empire of corporate and financial aristocracy that has emerged in late capitalism is now asserting itself increasingly and more blatantly as a dictatorship of Capital.
All political parties, whether Conservative, Liberal or Labour in Britain, or Republican, Democrat in the US etc., are seen to be willing servants of this dictatorship.
Bear in mind that London’s royal pageant is being imposed, without any public question, at an estimated cost of some $70 million, most of that for state security against any sign of popular protest. When the wider cost to the economy of the British government’s declared “public holiday” is factored in, the total cost may be $10 billion – this as the British exchequer is embarking on implementing austerity budget cuts of $130 billion. The bill for the royal wedding will be footed by the British public through future deeper cuts in jobs, education and health services, and social welfare programmes. This as the British government unilaterally adds to the public debt the cost of RAF bombing sorties in Libya, estimated at over $1 billion a month, and its other even more costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So where is the democracy in that? Austerity budgets imposed against public will, a deficit substantially increased from a royal pageant imposed without democratic consultation, and war expenses loaded on to the suffering public – even though these wars are opposed by the majority of voters.
That is dictatorship by elite government for an unelected elite. The same dictatorship manifests in the US and other Western powers. Ordinary Americans in particular may look at the British royal wedding pageant with mild fascination as some kind of “old Europe curiosity”. But in spite of its supposed revolution against European monarchs, the US has today reinvented its own corporate and financial aristocracy that rules and plunders without democratic accountability in alliance with the oligarchies of Europe.
The real world nexus for our global oligarchy is seen graphically in the power of oil companies and the transnational banking system. Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, one of the world’s top 10 richest individuals, has a personal fortune that is reckoned to far exceed her country’s $130 billion deficit cuts. She is a major shareholder in Royal Dutch Shell and British Petroleum – these companies along with Exxon and Chevron make up the “four horsemen” of global Big Oil.
As Dean Henderson, author of Big Oil and Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf, points out:
“The Four Horsemen have interlocking directorates with the international mega-banks. Exxon Mobil shares board members with JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Royal Bank of Canada and Prudential. Chevron Texaco has interlocks with Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase. BP Amoco shares directors with JP Morgan Chase. RD/Shell has ties with Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, N. M. Rothschild & Sons and Bank of England.”
Henderson continues: “Information on RD/Shell is harder to obtain since they are registered in the UK and Holland and are not required to file 10K reports. It is 60% owned by Royal Dutch Petroleum of Holland and 40% owned by Shell Trading & Transport of the UK. The company has only 14,000 stockholders and few directors. The consensus from researchers is that Royal Dutch/Shell is still controlled by the Rothschild, Oppenheimer, Nobel and Samuel families along with the British House of Windsor and the Dutch House of Orange.” [1]
Such global connections bestow on the British monarch the epithet of “the world’s ultimate insider trader”.
Scott Thompson writes: “[T]he Queen is the world's ultimate ‘insider trader’. She not only gets tips from British financiers, but also has access to all the state secrets, through the [Privy Council] ‘boxes’. Thus, if the Queen learns from among all public and private British Empire intelligence and economic warfare entities reporting to her, for example, that Nigeria is about to be destabilized, she can immediately call her broker. Under the secrecy laws of the British Empire, it would be unthinkable for anyone to consider pressing charges of insider trading and conflict of interest against the sovereign: In fact, only a handful of trusted advisers would ever know.” [2]
To put these connections of the House of Windsor to the global Empire of Capital in a real world context, we should factor in the following:
1. The war in Iraq, according to recent revelations from Wikileaks, and others, was most certainly about gaining access for Big Oil and British Big Oil in particular, despite the arrogant assertions by former British prime minister Tony Blair that such claims made at the time of the US/British invasion of Iraq in 2003 were “absurd”. [3]
2. The present NATO war in Libya has an uncanny resemblance to British and French war planning for that country several months before any sign of alleged popular uprising. [4]
3. NATO’s military intervention in Libya was precipitated by Muammar Gaddafi’s move to put a financial squeeze on Big Oil to compensate for more than $2 billion in reparations extracted from that country over a frame-up for the Lockerbie bombing in 1988, according to former US intelligence asset Susan Lindauer.
4. The subjugation and integration of Libya’s independent financial system within the global banking system, the same system in which the British monarch is a major shareholder. [5]
5. Libya’s vast untapped oil wealth – the largest in Africa – was impeded by a leader considered unreliable to the long-term interests of Big Oil.
6. The reconquest of Libya by Western militarism provides a strategic bridgehead for global Capital to thwart pro-democracy uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa – uprising that represent threats to the profit interests of Big Oil and its shareholders, including the House of Windsor.
On the last point, it should be noted that Western governments have been aided and abetted by dictatorial monarchs from the Persian Gulf, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait. The Persian Gulf monarchs are among the guest list attending the Big Day for the British royals. The delegation from the House of Saud is particularly noteworthy, given in its ongoing involvement in the vicious repression of the pro-democracy movement in Britain’s former colony of Bahrain.
But the royal wedding is not just a peculiar Big Day for the seemingly quaint House of Windsor. It is in many ways a celebration of the dictatorship of global Capital over democracy in Britain and elsewhere around the world, including the ‘Republic of the USA”. As the assorted global dictators assembled in London’s Westminster Abbey might say in harmony with the happy couple: “Till death do us part”.
www.myspace.com/finiancunninghammusic
______________________________________
Notes:
[1] http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24507
[2]
http://american_almanac.tripod.com/crown.htm
[3]
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24491
[4]
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24351
[5]
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24306
Source
Thursday, 28 April 2011
AUCPB UK CLASS STRUGGLE 28 APRIL
April 23 - London
Trafalgar square occupation against cuts 4th week
The peaceful 'occupation against the cuts' established its camp in Trafalgar square for the fourth week running on saturday 23rd April and. the 24 hour protest will camped overnight and run workshops and awareness-raising exercises during the next day
As per last week, Trafalgar square was being used for an event (this week it was a St George's day celebration), and so the occupation began on the grass in front of the national gallery. there they set up their marquee and ground sheets and held a picnic while waiting for the square to clear.
Later, they pitched tents in the square.
This is the fourth week that the occupation has taken place. it was originally called a week after Trafalgar square was cleared by an enormous and unnecessarily violent police kettling operation after the TUC march and other anti-cuts protests on the 26th march.
They announced their occupation would be entirely lawful and non-violent and effectively dared the police to attack them once more.
Although filmed by 'heritage wardens' and watched by police (both overtly and covertly), they stayed the full 24 hours, and outreached with large numbers of passers-by who also participated in workshops run by the really free school.
When i visited last week (their third occupation), their numbers had increased, and they were also joined by the beginnings of a homeless rights project. they had spread out large sheets of blank paper, forming the slogan 'no cuts', and on the paper they invited people to write how the cuts had affected them. By the end of the occupation last sunday, the sheets were completely covered with moving descriptions of misfortune, misery and deprivation written by members of the public over the previous 24 hours.
The occupation is open to all as long as their intention is non-violent and respectful. Supporters should also bring food and non-alcoholic drink to share.
Contact email: rikkiindymedia(At)gmail[dot]com
Report or edit this article
Additions
eviction update
Published: April 23, 2011 23:35 by rikki
00:30 sunday 24th april
After the camp successfully moved into the square earlier this evening, a dozen police have just turned up and are threatening forced eviction.
The occupiers are meeting trying to negotiate and meeting to discuss what they want to do.
If anyone is reading this now, peaceful support is welcome.
6am update - compromise and threats
Published: April 24, 2011 05:02 by rikki
After the police visit at 00.30, the occupiers decided to offer a compromise and take down their tents but remain in the square.
This seemed to work, and the police backed off, but after a few hours, tiredness set in, and a decision was reached to attempt shelter once more.
The wardens again filmed the protestors and alerted the police.
Over the last hour there have been various conversations with police, and so far there has been a tents stand-off, with some crazy remarks made by individual coppers.
- a radical media activist was threatened with arrest for taking "personal photos" of an officer. the threat was not carried through.
- one has said they are waiting for riot police to turn up to aid a mass arrest.
- another claimed that if arrested, because of the bank holiday, the campers would be held in detention until tuesday. (but surely holding someone for 48 hours over bye-law infringement might be seen as a sue-ably disproportionate response).
whatever unfolds, the police are certainly keeping the occupiers awake with their presence and threats, but all remains peaceful for now.
http://london.indymedia.org/articles/8837
21 April – Bristol – Stokes Croft
The Battle of Stokes Croft
Around 10pm on Thursday 21st April, people from Stokes Croft and St Pauls in Bristol, reacting to blatant provocation, started attacking riot police gathered from three different forces with glass bottles. What ensued was seven hours of constant clashes; police charges, volleys of glass, brick and concrete, burning barricades and the trashing of a much-loathed Tesco recently forced on a community who for so long battled to stop it opening.
Just before 9pm, police had forcibly removed a small protest from outside the Tesco, which had been there since the store opened a week earlier and set up a cordon closing that stretch of the road. Their stated aim was to enter the squatted ‘Telepathic Heights’, an iconic, graffiti covered building opposite Tesco. They claimed to be acting on intelligence that suggested some occupants where planning to make petrol bombs with which to attack Tesco. Even if this intelligence was accurate, the numbers of police was far disproportionate to the half a dozen occupants of the squat.
The blocking of road by the police and the news that Telepathic Heights was threatened and that the Tesco protest had been forcibly broken up meant it wasn’t long before a substantial crowd had gathered. The crowd became more and more angry as police refused to give justification for their presence, pushing or hitting anyone who got close to their lines. The increased tension of recent months, which has built up as austerity measures begin to kick in and the community of Stokes Croft and St Pauls feel ever more ignored and marginalised, had found a focal point and personification in the belligerence of the police. All it took was for someone to tip over a glass recycling bin.
After the initial barrage of bottles, a retreat into St Pauls. As people came out their doors to see police marching through their streets, many joined in defending against the police. A routine of the police charging then retreating under a hail of bottles and bricks started to develop. Bins were set on fire and charged into police lines, others were used to form makeshift barricades. Around 1pm police retreated back to Stoke Croft and soon found themselves and their vans surrounded. The vans were prevented from moving off as others pelted them from a side street. Eventually the police broke out and sped away in the vans out of sight further up the road.
Celebrations broke out as the crowd realised they had the streets. Calls of “Smash Tesco!” rang out. Tesco windows and an abandoned police vehicle were smashed and a police trailer full of riot equipment was looted. Police then returned to the area. More clashes as police forced people back into St Pauls and down Stokes Croft before finding themselves again outmanoeuvred and at which point they again retreated. This time Tesco’s windows went all the way through as well as the shutters behind. When the police came back, their vans sped straight into the crowd. At least one person was caught behind police lines, unable to get out of Tesco in time and took a frenzied beating whilst on the floor. Someone else was run over, sustaining an injury to his foot and others hit by vans. Next time it was made sure vans would not be able to manoeuvre in this way as a skip was dragged into the road. Tesco was entered a second time and objects being lunched from rooftops made it increasingly difficult for the police.
A number of injuries were sustained and nine arrests made including four of the occupants of Telepathic Heights. Police report that eight of their number were hospitalised.
One local resident noted the police had “thrown a quarter century of semi-decent community policing down the drain” another saying “If they [the police] don’t calm down, things are getting tense enough on a range of other issues for a new pattern to develop of poor community relations and repeat rioting against a police force which has chosen political sides”.
The police provoked this. Turning up in this area of Bristol with such numbers, attacking Telepathic Heights and blatantly using public money to defend the interests of a corporate giant such as Tesco was always going to get a reaction.
More on this:
Cop vehicles and Tescos smashed in Bristol (Stokescroft) riot last night.
Just a brief couple of pieces from the mainstream (ish) press and the police themselves.
Very interesting article on last nights riot in Bristol.
The videos on the above website show both show Tescos being smashed up and police cars being attacked.
As the (informative) comments accompanying this article show this is just a few minutes in over 3 hours of running battles through Stokes croft, St Paul's and Montpelier. As hundreds were involved I suspect that we will build a fuller picture of what happened over time.
And here is a copy of the police statement. Which seems to mention 12 arrests so far.
FROM AVON AND SOMERSET POLICE WEBSITE
Police say that actions taken during their robust operation in Bristol city centre overnight were fully justified.
Protestors took to the streets after police carried out an operation to arrest four offenders who represented "a very real threat to the local community" from a property in Cheltenham Road, Stokes Croft.
Officers also seized a number of items following the arrest – including petrol bombs – which are currently being forensically examined.
Acting on intelligence provided during the day, officers rolled out well-rehearsed plans at 9.15pm last night, closing Cheltenham Road before forcing entry into the building.
Three people were arrested on suspicion of public order offences and another person on suspicion of threats to cause criminal damage with intent to endanger life.
Following the operation, which was completed swiftly and effectively, groups of protestors began to gather in Cheltenham Road and surrounding streets in the Stokes Croft area and refused to disperse when asked by police officers.
As minor fires were started and bottles, bricks and other objects were hurled at police, additional officers were bought in to assist their colleagues.
Assistant Chief Constable Rod Hansen said:" Residents have called us to several incidents in the property over the past few days. Yesterday there was a very real threat to the local community from the petrol bombs that were being made and we needed to take positive action.
"The safety of the public is paramount in any situation of this kind and we took the decision to carry out a swift arrest operation, following intelligence received about the criminal intentions of those who were occupying the building,"
"The fact that we seized petrol bombs illustrates the seriousness of this situation and the reason why we took this positive action.
"When 300 people congregated and a small minority from that group started small fires and throwing bottles, stones and other items at officers, we used well-rehearsed plans, which involved the use of officers from neighbouring forces to control what had become a volatile situation," said ACC Hansen.
Minor incidents continued until about 4am when the groups finally dispersed.
During the operation police made eight arrests.
Eight police officers and a number of protestors were injured and required hospital treatment. None of the injuries are believed to be serious.
Around 160 officers were involved in the high-profile operation, which included 66 officers drafted in from neighbouring forces.
****end***
Despite their joint operations with South Wales police being well-rehearsed they obviously didn't do spell checker rehearsal A&S constabulary. ( its protestErs not protestOrs)
Brizzle Rising
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/04/477953.html
Youtube
Stokes Croft, Bristol Riots: 21st - 22nd April 2011
=================================
Activists keep up school sit-in
Sunday 24 April 201
Climate activists continued to occupy the grounds of a disused school in Lewes, East Sussex, tonight.
Around 40 protesters from the group Brighton Climate Action entered the grounds early on Friday morning, local media reported.
The group has vowed to undertake a week of training and "direct action" against companies accused of environmental damage.
A list of potential targets released by the group includes Gatwick airport, Hastings bypass and the Newhaven incinerator. High street shops accused of tax avoidance were also named as targets.
An exploratory oil drilling site in an area of ancient woodland on the South Downs will be targeted for sabotage, protesters said.
Workshops in protest techniques will be given by members of UK Uncut, which campaigns against corporate tax avoidance and Climate Rush, the environmental protest group.
After the camp, activists plan to occupy the building of the former special needs school permanently and establish allotments in the grounds.
Ian Ratcliffe, a landscape gardener from Brighton, said the group had declared squatters' rights over the site.
"The timing is perfect. Evicting us legally is going to be quite difficult as between the two bank holidays they only have three days next week to do the bureaucracy," he said.
A Sussex Police spokesman said officers visited the site at the request of East Sussex County Council last night. He said the camp was peaceful and no arrests were made.
A spokesman for East Sussex County Council said: "Our property and legal staff are monitoring the situation and we are working closely with Sussex Police. We hope that this situation can be resolved without having to take legal action through the courts."
Source
==================
Trafalgar square occupation against cuts 4th week
The peaceful 'occupation against the cuts' established its camp in Trafalgar square for the fourth week running on saturday 23rd April and. the 24 hour protest will camped overnight and run workshops and awareness-raising exercises during the next day
As per last week, Trafalgar square was being used for an event (this week it was a St George's day celebration), and so the occupation began on the grass in front of the national gallery. there they set up their marquee and ground sheets and held a picnic while waiting for the square to clear.
Later, they pitched tents in the square.
This is the fourth week that the occupation has taken place. it was originally called a week after Trafalgar square was cleared by an enormous and unnecessarily violent police kettling operation after the TUC march and other anti-cuts protests on the 26th march.
They announced their occupation would be entirely lawful and non-violent and effectively dared the police to attack them once more.
Although filmed by 'heritage wardens' and watched by police (both overtly and covertly), they stayed the full 24 hours, and outreached with large numbers of passers-by who also participated in workshops run by the really free school.
When i visited last week (their third occupation), their numbers had increased, and they were also joined by the beginnings of a homeless rights project. they had spread out large sheets of blank paper, forming the slogan 'no cuts', and on the paper they invited people to write how the cuts had affected them. By the end of the occupation last sunday, the sheets were completely covered with moving descriptions of misfortune, misery and deprivation written by members of the public over the previous 24 hours.
The occupation is open to all as long as their intention is non-violent and respectful. Supporters should also bring food and non-alcoholic drink to share.
Contact email: rikkiindymedia(At)gmail[dot]com
Report or edit this article
Additions
eviction update
Published: April 23, 2011 23:35 by rikki
00:30 sunday 24th april
After the camp successfully moved into the square earlier this evening, a dozen police have just turned up and are threatening forced eviction.
The occupiers are meeting trying to negotiate and meeting to discuss what they want to do.
If anyone is reading this now, peaceful support is welcome.
6am update - compromise and threats
Published: April 24, 2011 05:02 by rikki
After the police visit at 00.30, the occupiers decided to offer a compromise and take down their tents but remain in the square.
This seemed to work, and the police backed off, but after a few hours, tiredness set in, and a decision was reached to attempt shelter once more.
The wardens again filmed the protestors and alerted the police.
Over the last hour there have been various conversations with police, and so far there has been a tents stand-off, with some crazy remarks made by individual coppers.
- a radical media activist was threatened with arrest for taking "personal photos" of an officer. the threat was not carried through.
- one has said they are waiting for riot police to turn up to aid a mass arrest.
- another claimed that if arrested, because of the bank holiday, the campers would be held in detention until tuesday. (but surely holding someone for 48 hours over bye-law infringement might be seen as a sue-ably disproportionate response).
whatever unfolds, the police are certainly keeping the occupiers awake with their presence and threats, but all remains peaceful for now.
http://london.indymedia.org/articles/8837
21 April – Bristol – Stokes Croft
The Battle of Stokes Croft
Around 10pm on Thursday 21st April, people from Stokes Croft and St Pauls in Bristol, reacting to blatant provocation, started attacking riot police gathered from three different forces with glass bottles. What ensued was seven hours of constant clashes; police charges, volleys of glass, brick and concrete, burning barricades and the trashing of a much-loathed Tesco recently forced on a community who for so long battled to stop it opening.
Just before 9pm, police had forcibly removed a small protest from outside the Tesco, which had been there since the store opened a week earlier and set up a cordon closing that stretch of the road. Their stated aim was to enter the squatted ‘Telepathic Heights’, an iconic, graffiti covered building opposite Tesco. They claimed to be acting on intelligence that suggested some occupants where planning to make petrol bombs with which to attack Tesco. Even if this intelligence was accurate, the numbers of police was far disproportionate to the half a dozen occupants of the squat.
The blocking of road by the police and the news that Telepathic Heights was threatened and that the Tesco protest had been forcibly broken up meant it wasn’t long before a substantial crowd had gathered. The crowd became more and more angry as police refused to give justification for their presence, pushing or hitting anyone who got close to their lines. The increased tension of recent months, which has built up as austerity measures begin to kick in and the community of Stokes Croft and St Pauls feel ever more ignored and marginalised, had found a focal point and personification in the belligerence of the police. All it took was for someone to tip over a glass recycling bin.
After the initial barrage of bottles, a retreat into St Pauls. As people came out their doors to see police marching through their streets, many joined in defending against the police. A routine of the police charging then retreating under a hail of bottles and bricks started to develop. Bins were set on fire and charged into police lines, others were used to form makeshift barricades. Around 1pm police retreated back to Stoke Croft and soon found themselves and their vans surrounded. The vans were prevented from moving off as others pelted them from a side street. Eventually the police broke out and sped away in the vans out of sight further up the road.
Celebrations broke out as the crowd realised they had the streets. Calls of “Smash Tesco!” rang out. Tesco windows and an abandoned police vehicle were smashed and a police trailer full of riot equipment was looted. Police then returned to the area. More clashes as police forced people back into St Pauls and down Stokes Croft before finding themselves again outmanoeuvred and at which point they again retreated. This time Tesco’s windows went all the way through as well as the shutters behind. When the police came back, their vans sped straight into the crowd. At least one person was caught behind police lines, unable to get out of Tesco in time and took a frenzied beating whilst on the floor. Someone else was run over, sustaining an injury to his foot and others hit by vans. Next time it was made sure vans would not be able to manoeuvre in this way as a skip was dragged into the road. Tesco was entered a second time and objects being lunched from rooftops made it increasingly difficult for the police.
A number of injuries were sustained and nine arrests made including four of the occupants of Telepathic Heights. Police report that eight of their number were hospitalised.
One local resident noted the police had “thrown a quarter century of semi-decent community policing down the drain” another saying “If they [the police] don’t calm down, things are getting tense enough on a range of other issues for a new pattern to develop of poor community relations and repeat rioting against a police force which has chosen political sides”.
The police provoked this. Turning up in this area of Bristol with such numbers, attacking Telepathic Heights and blatantly using public money to defend the interests of a corporate giant such as Tesco was always going to get a reaction.
Cop vehicles and Tescos smashed in Bristol (Stokescroft) riot last night.
Just a brief couple of pieces from the mainstream (ish) press and the police themselves.
Very interesting article on last nights riot in Bristol.
The videos on the above website show both show Tescos being smashed up and police cars being attacked.
As the (informative) comments accompanying this article show this is just a few minutes in over 3 hours of running battles through Stokes croft, St Paul's and Montpelier. As hundreds were involved I suspect that we will build a fuller picture of what happened over time.
And here is a copy of the police statement. Which seems to mention 12 arrests so far.
FROM AVON AND SOMERSET POLICE WEBSITE
Police say that actions taken during their robust operation in Bristol city centre overnight were fully justified.
Protestors took to the streets after police carried out an operation to arrest four offenders who represented "a very real threat to the local community" from a property in Cheltenham Road, Stokes Croft.
Officers also seized a number of items following the arrest – including petrol bombs – which are currently being forensically examined.
Acting on intelligence provided during the day, officers rolled out well-rehearsed plans at 9.15pm last night, closing Cheltenham Road before forcing entry into the building.
Three people were arrested on suspicion of public order offences and another person on suspicion of threats to cause criminal damage with intent to endanger life.
Following the operation, which was completed swiftly and effectively, groups of protestors began to gather in Cheltenham Road and surrounding streets in the Stokes Croft area and refused to disperse when asked by police officers.
As minor fires were started and bottles, bricks and other objects were hurled at police, additional officers were bought in to assist their colleagues.
Assistant Chief Constable Rod Hansen said:" Residents have called us to several incidents in the property over the past few days. Yesterday there was a very real threat to the local community from the petrol bombs that were being made and we needed to take positive action.
"The safety of the public is paramount in any situation of this kind and we took the decision to carry out a swift arrest operation, following intelligence received about the criminal intentions of those who were occupying the building,"
"The fact that we seized petrol bombs illustrates the seriousness of this situation and the reason why we took this positive action.
"When 300 people congregated and a small minority from that group started small fires and throwing bottles, stones and other items at officers, we used well-rehearsed plans, which involved the use of officers from neighbouring forces to control what had become a volatile situation," said ACC Hansen.
Minor incidents continued until about 4am when the groups finally dispersed.
During the operation police made eight arrests.
Eight police officers and a number of protestors were injured and required hospital treatment. None of the injuries are believed to be serious.
Around 160 officers were involved in the high-profile operation, which included 66 officers drafted in from neighbouring forces.
****end***
Despite their joint operations with South Wales police being well-rehearsed they obviously didn't do spell checker rehearsal A&S constabulary. ( its protestErs not protestOrs)
Brizzle Rising
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/04/477953.html
Youtube
Stokes Croft, Bristol Riots: 21st - 22nd April 2011
=================================
Activists keep up school sit-in
Sunday 24 April 201
Climate activists continued to occupy the grounds of a disused school in Lewes, East Sussex, tonight.
Around 40 protesters from the group Brighton Climate Action entered the grounds early on Friday morning, local media reported.
The group has vowed to undertake a week of training and "direct action" against companies accused of environmental damage.
A list of potential targets released by the group includes Gatwick airport, Hastings bypass and the Newhaven incinerator. High street shops accused of tax avoidance were also named as targets.
An exploratory oil drilling site in an area of ancient woodland on the South Downs will be targeted for sabotage, protesters said.
Workshops in protest techniques will be given by members of UK Uncut, which campaigns against corporate tax avoidance and Climate Rush, the environmental protest group.
After the camp, activists plan to occupy the building of the former special needs school permanently and establish allotments in the grounds.
Ian Ratcliffe, a landscape gardener from Brighton, said the group had declared squatters' rights over the site.
"The timing is perfect. Evicting us legally is going to be quite difficult as between the two bank holidays they only have three days next week to do the bureaucracy," he said.
A Sussex Police spokesman said officers visited the site at the request of East Sussex County Council last night. He said the camp was peaceful and no arrests were made.
A spokesman for East Sussex County Council said: "Our property and legal staff are monitoring the situation and we are working closely with Sussex Police. We hope that this situation can be resolved without having to take legal action through the courts."
Source
==================
Friday, 22 April 2011
AUCPB - CLASS STRUGGLE UK 22 APRIL
FB AUCPB UK EVENTS
AUCPB UK CLASS STRUGGLE 22 APRIL
21 APRIL
Engineers strike in Lancashire
Vehicle maintenance engineers in the Unite union at Lancashire County Council struck on Wednesday of last week against cuts to their conditions as part of a “single status” job evaluation.
=========================
21 APRIL
Wildcat walk-out shocks Dundee council bosses
Hundreds of council workers in Dundee walked out unofficially today when their management reneged on a temporary worker agreement. The workers include the council’s joiners, painters, plumbers, scaffolders and others who carry out essential work in the city.
Unions and management had an agreement that temporary workers would be automatically made permanent after two years in employment. Bosses now want to increase this to four years.
Workers in the Unite, Unison and Ucatt unions held a 300-strong meeting this morning at which they overwhelmingly voted to walk-out against these plans.
==========================
19 April
PCS strike
A national strike by around 7,000 call centre workers on Monday, demanding better conditions and public services, was a big success.
The solid action by PCS civil service workers’ union members had a massive impact on the 37 Jobcentre Plus contact centres around Britain.
Pickets reported a mass stayaway as staff made their feelings clear about the conditions they are forced to work under.
They were also angry that the government’s Work and Pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith described their action as “Neanderthal-like”.
“Some of the conditions we face are draconian,” said Andy Campbell, a PCS rep at Cressington House in Liverpool.
“And this affects the services we provide, which would be much better if staff were treated with respect.
“Workers in the centres have to achieve call time targets, and if you’re up against that you’ll always have to look at cutting corners.
“Because of this service users, who are phoning to claim benefits or get advice from the department, are getting a raw deal.
“The strength of the strike shows what staff think of the conditions they work under.
“The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) should listen to us.”
Another striker in Telford said, “A recently unemployed person who had never claimed benefit before needed reassurance. They had always worked for the last 30 years.
“But staff were unable to provide the support they needed as we must complete the call within 16 minutes.”
==============================
21 April
Victory for Yunus as judge orders reinstatement
A judge at an employment tribunal this week ordered the reinstatement of Yunus Bakhsh, the high profile nurse and activist who was sacked illegally for his trade union activities.
Health bosses in Newcastle first suspended then sacked Yunus after they received “anonymous” complaints against him.
It emerged later that some of those who witnessed against the high profile black trade unionist in a management investigation had previously joined racist-inspired groups on Facebook.
Last year, an employment tribunal ruled that Yunus’s sacking was because of his trade union activity and that he had been the victim of disability discrimination.
Now, a judge has ordered that bosses reemploy Yunus in his job as a psychiatric nurse, compensate him for lost earnings, and pay a penalty for discriminating against him.
=========================
AUCPB UK CLASS STRUGGLE 22 APRIL
21 APRIL
Engineers strike in Lancashire
Vehicle maintenance engineers in the Unite union at Lancashire County Council struck on Wednesday of last week against cuts to their conditions as part of a “single status” job evaluation.
=========================
21 APRIL
Wildcat walk-out shocks Dundee council bosses
Hundreds of council workers in Dundee walked out unofficially today when their management reneged on a temporary worker agreement. The workers include the council’s joiners, painters, plumbers, scaffolders and others who carry out essential work in the city.
Unions and management had an agreement that temporary workers would be automatically made permanent after two years in employment. Bosses now want to increase this to four years.
Workers in the Unite, Unison and Ucatt unions held a 300-strong meeting this morning at which they overwhelmingly voted to walk-out against these plans.
==========================
19 April
PCS strike
A national strike by around 7,000 call centre workers on Monday, demanding better conditions and public services, was a big success.
The solid action by PCS civil service workers’ union members had a massive impact on the 37 Jobcentre Plus contact centres around Britain.
Pickets reported a mass stayaway as staff made their feelings clear about the conditions they are forced to work under.
They were also angry that the government’s Work and Pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith described their action as “Neanderthal-like”.
“Some of the conditions we face are draconian,” said Andy Campbell, a PCS rep at Cressington House in Liverpool.
“And this affects the services we provide, which would be much better if staff were treated with respect.
“Workers in the centres have to achieve call time targets, and if you’re up against that you’ll always have to look at cutting corners.
“Because of this service users, who are phoning to claim benefits or get advice from the department, are getting a raw deal.
“The strength of the strike shows what staff think of the conditions they work under.
“The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) should listen to us.”
Another striker in Telford said, “A recently unemployed person who had never claimed benefit before needed reassurance. They had always worked for the last 30 years.
“But staff were unable to provide the support they needed as we must complete the call within 16 minutes.”
==============================
21 April
Victory for Yunus as judge orders reinstatement
A judge at an employment tribunal this week ordered the reinstatement of Yunus Bakhsh, the high profile nurse and activist who was sacked illegally for his trade union activities.
Health bosses in Newcastle first suspended then sacked Yunus after they received “anonymous” complaints against him.
It emerged later that some of those who witnessed against the high profile black trade unionist in a management investigation had previously joined racist-inspired groups on Facebook.
Last year, an employment tribunal ruled that Yunus’s sacking was because of his trade union activity and that he had been the victim of disability discrimination.
Now, a judge has ordered that bosses reemploy Yunus in his job as a psychiatric nurse, compensate him for lost earnings, and pay a penalty for discriminating against him.
=========================
Tuesday, 19 April 2011
AUCPB-UK CLASS STRUGGLE 18 APRIL
Cuts victims protest against Daily Mail lies
Disabled people and those struggling to find work in a jobless market have protested outside the Daily Mail offices to tell the right-wing newspaper to stop lying about them.
The demonstration on Thursday afternoon in Kensington, west London, called on the Mail to put an end to articles that protesters say defame people who need benefits to survive.
The ranks of protesters included people with disabilities, carers, parents, the unemployed and low-paid workers,
The event was part of the third national day of action against benefit cuts and the government's drive to force disabled people to undergo a work capability test run by private company Atos Origin.
The test has been heavily criticised by Citizens Advice, Child Poverty Action Group and other charities.
The campaigners argued the Mail had used Atos Origin's results to "mount a campaign against disabled people and people with illnesses" claiming incapacity benefit, which include headlines such as "76 per cent of those who say they're sick 'can work'."
Linda Burnip from Disabled People Against Cuts said: "The lies and half-truths that the Daily Mail has published have resulted in an increase of hate crime attacks against disabled people.
"We are not prepared to sit back and allow them to continue to peddle their disgusting disablist propaganda unchallenged."
She added that the Mail has led the propaganda campaign against the most vulnerable which has made these attacks on benefits possible.
A Mail spokesman said: "All we have done is reported what the government is saying.
"We have nothing against disabled people but have a duty to report Department of Work and Pensions policy."
source
===============
Atos Picketed, Daily Mail Mobbed and Invaded, Westminster Council Told
Protests took place around the country yesterday as part of the Third National Day of Action Against Benefit Cuts.
A demonstration of 100 people gathered outside the Daily Mail head office in Kensington demanding that they end the lies they print about disabled people and benefit claimants. Police initially prevented the protest happening outside the Mail’s entrance and demonstrators gathered opposite the front door of the Daily Mail Group on the other side of the building instead.
As the protest became increasingly angry it managed to move to it’s intended location where the microphone was passed round and impassioned and diverse expressions of contempt were aimed at the so called newspaper. The protest ended with mass chants of ‘fuck the Daily Mail’.
Protesters then moved onto to Westminster City Hall where over a hundred people shared food, made speeches and vowed to defy any attempts to criminalise rough sleeping and the handing out of food in parts of the borough.
The Daily Mail’s Scotland offices were also targeted with activists invading their offices to distribute information and tell the faceless hacks personally what they think of the Daily Mail’s abuse of disabled people. Prior to this the group has demonstrated outside the Glasgow offices of Atos Origin, the company responsible for health testing benefit claimants in an attempt to strip people of benefits.
Atos Origin were the focus of many protests around the country. Their testing centre Edinburgh was picketed whilst over 40 people protested outside their premises in Dundee. The protest at Atos’ Scotland Head Office in Livingston turned out to be a red herring, with a large police presence arriving to discover everyone had gone to Dundee instead.
In Brighton the Computer Says No play was performed outside Atos offices to an enthusiastic crowd and heavy police presence. Liverpool and Leeds both saw demonstrations outside Atos, organised by local Solidarity Federation branches and the Black Triangle Anti Defamation Camapign.
An early morning demonstration in Islington saw a crowd gather outside the North London Atos testing centre, and demonstrations also took place outside Atos in Bristol as well as in Burnley, Poole and Truro town centres.
The Armchair Army, Virtual Resistance and Troll A Tory ensured that those unable to attend protests in person could make their feelings heard. Hundreds of online activists wrote to MPs, media outlets or trolled Tory websites throughout the day.
Anti-benefit cuts camapaigners are now calling for escalation. A week of action against Atos Origin has been called beginning on May 9th. Watch this space for more details.
Source Indymedia
===================
Disabled people and those struggling to find work in a jobless market have protested outside the Daily Mail offices to tell the right-wing newspaper to stop lying about them.
The demonstration on Thursday afternoon in Kensington, west London, called on the Mail to put an end to articles that protesters say defame people who need benefits to survive.
The ranks of protesters included people with disabilities, carers, parents, the unemployed and low-paid workers,
The event was part of the third national day of action against benefit cuts and the government's drive to force disabled people to undergo a work capability test run by private company Atos Origin.
The test has been heavily criticised by Citizens Advice, Child Poverty Action Group and other charities.
The campaigners argued the Mail had used Atos Origin's results to "mount a campaign against disabled people and people with illnesses" claiming incapacity benefit, which include headlines such as "76 per cent of those who say they're sick 'can work'."
Linda Burnip from Disabled People Against Cuts said: "The lies and half-truths that the Daily Mail has published have resulted in an increase of hate crime attacks against disabled people.
"We are not prepared to sit back and allow them to continue to peddle their disgusting disablist propaganda unchallenged."
She added that the Mail has led the propaganda campaign against the most vulnerable which has made these attacks on benefits possible.
A Mail spokesman said: "All we have done is reported what the government is saying.
"We have nothing against disabled people but have a duty to report Department of Work and Pensions policy."
source
===============
Atos Picketed, Daily Mail Mobbed and Invaded, Westminster Council Told
Protests took place around the country yesterday as part of the Third National Day of Action Against Benefit Cuts.
A demonstration of 100 people gathered outside the Daily Mail head office in Kensington demanding that they end the lies they print about disabled people and benefit claimants. Police initially prevented the protest happening outside the Mail’s entrance and demonstrators gathered opposite the front door of the Daily Mail Group on the other side of the building instead.
As the protest became increasingly angry it managed to move to it’s intended location where the microphone was passed round and impassioned and diverse expressions of contempt were aimed at the so called newspaper. The protest ended with mass chants of ‘fuck the Daily Mail’.
Protesters then moved onto to Westminster City Hall where over a hundred people shared food, made speeches and vowed to defy any attempts to criminalise rough sleeping and the handing out of food in parts of the borough.
The Daily Mail’s Scotland offices were also targeted with activists invading their offices to distribute information and tell the faceless hacks personally what they think of the Daily Mail’s abuse of disabled people. Prior to this the group has demonstrated outside the Glasgow offices of Atos Origin, the company responsible for health testing benefit claimants in an attempt to strip people of benefits.
Atos Origin were the focus of many protests around the country. Their testing centre Edinburgh was picketed whilst over 40 people protested outside their premises in Dundee. The protest at Atos’ Scotland Head Office in Livingston turned out to be a red herring, with a large police presence arriving to discover everyone had gone to Dundee instead.
In Brighton the Computer Says No play was performed outside Atos offices to an enthusiastic crowd and heavy police presence. Liverpool and Leeds both saw demonstrations outside Atos, organised by local Solidarity Federation branches and the Black Triangle Anti Defamation Camapign.
An early morning demonstration in Islington saw a crowd gather outside the North London Atos testing centre, and demonstrations also took place outside Atos in Bristol as well as in Burnley, Poole and Truro town centres.
The Armchair Army, Virtual Resistance and Troll A Tory ensured that those unable to attend protests in person could make their feelings heard. Hundreds of online activists wrote to MPs, media outlets or trolled Tory websites throughout the day.
Anti-benefit cuts camapaigners are now calling for escalation. A week of action against Atos Origin has been called beginning on May 9th. Watch this space for more details.
Source Indymedia
===================
Wednesday, 13 April 2011
UK class stuggle 12 April on
Construction workers locked out but going nowhere
Monday 11 April 2011
by Paddy McGuffin, Home Affairs Reporter
Printable
Email
Hundreds of workers "locked out" of a contract at a biofuels plant in Humberside staged a sit-in protest today at the site after management walked out of talks.
Around 200 construction workers staged the protest outside the Saltend site near Hull after the GMB union said that talks at the conciliation service Acas had broken down due to management intransigence.
Over 400 contractors employed by Redhall Engineering Solutions have been "locked out" at the site in Saltend for nearly a month after the project for Vivergo fell behind schedule.
Vivergo - a consortium made up of BP, Du Pont and British Sugar - said it ended its contract with Redhall because of "significant performance issues."
But the workers fear that the aim is to replace them with a lower-paid workforce.
A protest is also being planned outside BP's annual meeting in London on Thursday.
GMB regional official Les Dobbs said: "The employers walked out of the Acas talks although the unions were prepared to continue talking to try to resolve this dispute."
He also said that he anticipated a similar number of protesters to attend a further demonstrations at the Saltend site tomorrow.
GMB general secretary Paul Kenny said: "It is reprehensible that neither the contractors nor the site's owners BP seem to care about these workers who have been locked out.
"GMB does care and will escalate the campaign for justice.
"If BP thought that this problem would quietly disappear, they lack any real knowledge about GMB and its members.
"BP has had ample opportunity to help resolve the dispute but they have chosen to ignore the injustice to these workers."
Responding to the protest Vivergo Fuels said: "We are appalled by the behaviour of some demonstrators including an element of the Redhall Engineering Solutions workforce earlier today, outside our Saltend site.
"This action is both irresponsible and ill-considered, with those involved being determined to cause the maximum disruption to parties completely unassociated with their dispute."
The firm claimed it remained committed to "working with the unions concerned in a bid to help resolve the issues raised" but said that the issue was between Redhall and its affected workforce.
A spokesman for Humberside Police said: "The protest resulted in the eastbound carriageway being closed and diversion being put in place and led to traffic delays in the area.
"The road started flowing freely at around 10.30am as the protest came to an end. The protests were peaceful and no arrests were required to ensure the road reopened."
Morning Star
=====================================
UNISON members in Connexions strike against the loss of support/careers services to young people and against up to 36 compulsory redundancies.
From Birmingham Against the Cuts
Twenty Connexions workers walked out on strike from the Northfield Centre at 1pm today. They held a lively protest outside the building for an hour and were well received by passing motorists, who gave their support in the customary fashion. Afterwards, they went on into town for the city centre rally.
Over two hundred Connexions workers joined an inspiring rally outside the Council House at 2.30 on Wednesday. Some marched down Broad Street from their office. Others joined from two other centres that were on strike, Kings Heath and Northfield.
Complete with music and speeches, a defiant message was sent out to the ConDem council that this vital service for young people would not lie down or be attacked without fighting back.
Amongst the speakers were Labour group leader Albert Bore and Jack Dromey MP. While their presence was to be welcomed, no commitment to reverse these cuts was given if Labour were to be returned to power in Birmingham in May, or at the national level if the ConDem coalition were to fall.
Nevertheless, good weather and an uplifting protest made it an enjoyable event and hopefully a sign of things to come.
Brum Wob
===========================================
Anti-nuclear activists currently blockading EDF in London
Boycott EDF | 11.04.2011 07:33 | Climate Chaos | Ecology | Energy Crisis
ACTIVISTS BLOCKADE QUEEN’S BACK YARD TO BRAND ENERGY GIANT’S NUCLEAR POWER BID A ‘RIGHT ROYAL RIP-OFF’
Campaigners brought rush hour traffic to a standstill this morning to protest against EDF Energy’s plans to build a new generation of nuclear power stations in the UK. All four lanes of the A302 outside EDF Energy’s headquarters in Grosvenor Place – which runs alongside the gardens of Buckingham Palace – were sealed off shortly after 8am using 14-foot tripods. The cleared zone was then declared a ‘nuclear disaster area’.
Campaign group, Boycott EDF, says the energy giant is spearheading a ‘nuclear renaissance’ which could see the construction of at least ten new nuclear reactors – a move spokeswoman, Bella Benson, claims will spell disaster for the UK.
Photos
============================
Monday 11 April 2011
by Paddy McGuffin, Home Affairs Reporter
Printable
Hundreds of workers "locked out" of a contract at a biofuels plant in Humberside staged a sit-in protest today at the site after management walked out of talks.
Around 200 construction workers staged the protest outside the Saltend site near Hull after the GMB union said that talks at the conciliation service Acas had broken down due to management intransigence.
Over 400 contractors employed by Redhall Engineering Solutions have been "locked out" at the site in Saltend for nearly a month after the project for Vivergo fell behind schedule.
Vivergo - a consortium made up of BP, Du Pont and British Sugar - said it ended its contract with Redhall because of "significant performance issues."
But the workers fear that the aim is to replace them with a lower-paid workforce.
A protest is also being planned outside BP's annual meeting in London on Thursday.
GMB regional official Les Dobbs said: "The employers walked out of the Acas talks although the unions were prepared to continue talking to try to resolve this dispute."
He also said that he anticipated a similar number of protesters to attend a further demonstrations at the Saltend site tomorrow.
GMB general secretary Paul Kenny said: "It is reprehensible that neither the contractors nor the site's owners BP seem to care about these workers who have been locked out.
"GMB does care and will escalate the campaign for justice.
"If BP thought that this problem would quietly disappear, they lack any real knowledge about GMB and its members.
"BP has had ample opportunity to help resolve the dispute but they have chosen to ignore the injustice to these workers."
Responding to the protest Vivergo Fuels said: "We are appalled by the behaviour of some demonstrators including an element of the Redhall Engineering Solutions workforce earlier today, outside our Saltend site.
"This action is both irresponsible and ill-considered, with those involved being determined to cause the maximum disruption to parties completely unassociated with their dispute."
The firm claimed it remained committed to "working with the unions concerned in a bid to help resolve the issues raised" but said that the issue was between Redhall and its affected workforce.
A spokesman for Humberside Police said: "The protest resulted in the eastbound carriageway being closed and diversion being put in place and led to traffic delays in the area.
"The road started flowing freely at around 10.30am as the protest came to an end. The protests were peaceful and no arrests were required to ensure the road reopened."
Morning Star
=====================================
UNISON members in Connexions strike against the loss of support/careers services to young people and against up to 36 compulsory redundancies.
From Birmingham Against the Cuts
Twenty Connexions workers walked out on strike from the Northfield Centre at 1pm today. They held a lively protest outside the building for an hour and were well received by passing motorists, who gave their support in the customary fashion. Afterwards, they went on into town for the city centre rally.
Over two hundred Connexions workers joined an inspiring rally outside the Council House at 2.30 on Wednesday. Some marched down Broad Street from their office. Others joined from two other centres that were on strike, Kings Heath and Northfield.
Complete with music and speeches, a defiant message was sent out to the ConDem council that this vital service for young people would not lie down or be attacked without fighting back.
Amongst the speakers were Labour group leader Albert Bore and Jack Dromey MP. While their presence was to be welcomed, no commitment to reverse these cuts was given if Labour were to be returned to power in Birmingham in May, or at the national level if the ConDem coalition were to fall.
Nevertheless, good weather and an uplifting protest made it an enjoyable event and hopefully a sign of things to come.
Brum Wob
===========================================
Anti-nuclear activists currently blockading EDF in London
Boycott EDF | 11.04.2011 07:33 | Climate Chaos | Ecology | Energy Crisis
ACTIVISTS BLOCKADE QUEEN’S BACK YARD TO BRAND ENERGY GIANT’S NUCLEAR POWER BID A ‘RIGHT ROYAL RIP-OFF’
Campaigners brought rush hour traffic to a standstill this morning to protest against EDF Energy’s plans to build a new generation of nuclear power stations in the UK. All four lanes of the A302 outside EDF Energy’s headquarters in Grosvenor Place – which runs alongside the gardens of Buckingham Palace – were sealed off shortly after 8am using 14-foot tripods. The cleared zone was then declared a ‘nuclear disaster area’.
Campaign group, Boycott EDF, says the energy giant is spearheading a ‘nuclear renaissance’ which could see the construction of at least ten new nuclear reactors – a move spokeswoman, Bella Benson, claims will spell disaster for the UK.
Photos
============================
Monday, 11 April 2011
SUCCESSFUL PUBLIC SEMINAR ON DPRK
MARCHMONT CENTRE, LONDON
On Saturday, April 9, 2011 an excellent and very successful seminar was held in London to mark the occasion of the 99th Anniversary of the birth of Great Leader Kim Il Sung.
In 2011, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) is pursuing its
all-sided project aimed at consolidating the gains of the revolution and
decisively improving the the people’s well-being. A programme is underway
designed to build a great, prosperous and powerful nation by 2012, the
centenary of the founder of the DPRK, Comrade Kim Il Sung, who was born on
April 15, 1912.
On this occasion of the 99th anniversary of President Kim Il Sung, Friends
of Korea held a successful public seminar to present all-round information
about the DPRK, and so assist in combating the disinformation about the
country by those who are not friends of the Korean people.
A number of informative papers were presented, with discussion. Topics
included: the programme to raise the people's standard of living and the
nation's prosperity; the social system in the DPRK; who upholds peace on
the Korean Peninsula; the movement for reunification of the Korean
Peninsula; the life and contributions of Comrade Kim Il Sung; what is
meant by the Juche Idea and Songun politics; the work to build friendship
with the DPRK.
It was Organised by Friends of Korea
The papers presented were by the following participating organisations: Communist Party of
Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist), UK Korean Friendship Association, Juche
Idea Study Group of England, New Communist Party, Revolutionary Communist
Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist), Socialist Labour Party.
Well done to all comrades who presented excellent papers on the DPRK.
LONG LIVE THE DPRK
SOLIDARITY TO ALL COMRADES IN SUPPORT!
MAY THE DEEDS OF GREAT LEADER KIM IL SUNG SHINE ON AND LIVE FOREVER!
For Bolshevism-AUCPB
On Saturday, April 9, 2011 an excellent and very successful seminar was held in London to mark the occasion of the 99th Anniversary of the birth of Great Leader Kim Il Sung.
In 2011, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) is pursuing its
all-sided project aimed at consolidating the gains of the revolution and
decisively improving the the people’s well-being. A programme is underway
designed to build a great, prosperous and powerful nation by 2012, the
centenary of the founder of the DPRK, Comrade Kim Il Sung, who was born on
April 15, 1912.
On this occasion of the 99th anniversary of President Kim Il Sung, Friends
of Korea held a successful public seminar to present all-round information
about the DPRK, and so assist in combating the disinformation about the
country by those who are not friends of the Korean people.
A number of informative papers were presented, with discussion. Topics
included: the programme to raise the people's standard of living and the
nation's prosperity; the social system in the DPRK; who upholds peace on
the Korean Peninsula; the movement for reunification of the Korean
Peninsula; the life and contributions of Comrade Kim Il Sung; what is
meant by the Juche Idea and Songun politics; the work to build friendship
with the DPRK.
It was Organised by Friends of Korea
The papers presented were by the following participating organisations: Communist Party of
Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist), UK Korean Friendship Association, Juche
Idea Study Group of England, New Communist Party, Revolutionary Communist
Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist), Socialist Labour Party.
Well done to all comrades who presented excellent papers on the DPRK.
LONG LIVE THE DPRK
SOLIDARITY TO ALL COMRADES IN SUPPORT!
MAY THE DEEDS OF GREAT LEADER KIM IL SUNG SHINE ON AND LIVE FOREVER!
For Bolshevism-AUCPB
Wednesday, 6 April 2011
TRAFALGAR SQ OCCUPATION 2 APRIL
24-hour occupation of Trafalgar Square by anti-cuts campaigners
Set to continue every week, tents have been set up by anti cuts-activists in Trafalgar Square and a 24-hour peaceful occupation is ongoing to protest against public service cuts and show solidarity and support with arrestees at the TUC march actions on 26 March.
For Bolshevism-AUCPB group also took part in solidarity.
source
Demotix
Set to continue every week, tents have been set up by anti cuts-activists in Trafalgar Square and a 24-hour peaceful occupation is ongoing to protest against public service cuts and show solidarity and support with arrestees at the TUC march actions on 26 March.
For Bolshevism-AUCPB group also took part in solidarity.
source
Demotix
Industry matters: - CPGB- ML
How the TUC 'leads' the proletariat - by the nose
Non-cooperation
The spirit of non-cooperation is certainly alive and kicking in Greece. Despite the intensifying threats of dismissal by the employers, in full cooperation with employer-led trade unionism, the most recent general strike in Greece was another major success, with the KKE-oriented popular front PAME again taking the leading role.
A speaker at a PAME rally cautioned militants that it was not just a question of kicking out PASOK and changing “the political staff of the bourgeoisie”, but a struggle for power. He warned, “If the movement lacks such an orientation the struggles are led to a deadlock, they will deflate.”
Meanwhile, in response to the austerity programme implemented by the Greek government at the behest of the IMF, workers are finding novel ways of loosening the belt. Activists wearing brightly coloured vests with “total disobedience” printed on them have staged a series of occupations of motorway toll booths, releasing commuters from the obligation to pay, whilst union militants have been covering ticket machines on the Athens tube with plastic bags so everyone can travel free.
Bus and tram passengers are getting free rides too, where public-spirited citizens have taped up the on-board ticket machines. The activists explain: “The people have paid already through their taxes, so they should be able to travel for free.”
The tactic has also spread to the health sector, with state hospital doctors staging a blockade in front of pay counters to prevent patients from paying their €5 flat fee for consultations. In Britain, where GP consortia’s budgets are now to be floated on the stock exchange so money clawed back from patient care can be turned into profits, the time is ripe for a similar outbreak of decency amongst civic-minded physicians.
Faced with the 50,000 NHS job cuts predicted by the TUC, such a spirit of non-cooperation is exactly what is needed over here.
Numerous protests and one-day strikes in Britain – involving teachers, posties, cleaners, civil servants and many others – give ample evidence of a widespread readiness to resist, given only the necessary organisation and leadership.
In the south of Korea this remains spirit alive too. Union members at Hanjin Heavy Industries and Construction are resisting plans to lay off 190 workers. Despite a cradle-to-grave diet of anti-communism from the authorities there, worker resistance is firmly embedded in the culture – the country has one of the most militant trade-union movements in the world, with a long and proud history of activism.
The company answered their strike with a lock-out. Not to be outdone, one of the strike leaders then occupied a 50-metre-tall crane on the shipyard. Despite legal injunctions and the threat of crippling fines, Kim Jin-Suk has held firm. Last reports say she was joined by two other comrades.
TUC’s futile ‘resistance’
The decision of the TUC to invite Labour leader Ed Miliband to speak on the platform at the long-awaited day of protest on 26 March was a premeditated slap in the face for the working class and should be condemned by all who are serious about building an anti-cuts resistance movement worthy of the name.
Even before the well-deserved collapse of Labour at the last elections created a vacuum in capitalist political leadership into which were sucked the ConDem mediocrities who now strut the stage, the labour aristocrats at the TUC were painting Labour in pretty colours to fool the workers. Labour’s cuts, they sighed, whilst regrettable, were largely unavoidable and in any case preferable to Tory cuts. Ditto Labour’s union-bashing, Labour’s privatisation rampage and Labour’s genocidal wars.
With Labour out of the hot seat and Gordon Brown out to grass, the party’s leadership election was the next burning question of the day for the TUC, eclipsing the ‘minor’ question of how the unions proposed to mobilise to resist the austerity juggernaut rumbling over the horizon. Despite pressure from the PCS, RMT and other unions calling for the TUC to coordinate resistance efforts, the accession of ‘Red Ed’ on a phony ‘left’ platform was greeted with a sigh of relief from the opportunists.
At last they could revert to the old formula: a moderate degree of lobbying, Early Day Motions and ritual protests against Tweedle Dum (“ConDem” cuts) to while away the time until Tweedle Dee (a new Labour government) can be elected again. Meanwhile, keep pouring members’ hard-earned subs into Labour party coffers and keep the seat warm for social democracy.
Breaking with Labour
So grossly at odds with what workers require from union leadership has the TUC shown itself to be that union militants have increasingly sought alternative ways of mobilising, notably within the National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN).
When Chancellor Osborne’s provocative ‘spending review’ last October was met with nothing more spirited from the TUC than the promise of a bit of a demo the following March, the NSSN took a lead in mobilising its own less leisurely protests, where possible in coordination with local trades councils, and gave Bob Crow and others a platform to denounce Labour’s record of treachery.
And in a significant development at its January conference, the shop stewards announced their intention to put organised labour at the heart of the anti-cuts movement, and to do so on the basis of opposition to all cuts.
These good intentions, if consistently adhered to, will set the anti-cuts movement on a very healthy and instructive collision course with the Labour party, hundreds of whose local councillors are currently implementing the so-called ‘ConDem cuts’. There is no more divisive force in the workers’ movement than the Labour party, and every step in the direction of breaking the link with Labour is a step closer to uniting workers in resistance against capitalism.
For too long Labour has got away with having its cake and eating it. Never mind that, in power, it initiates government cuts and, out of power, it implements local cuts, it still claims a leading role in the anti-cuts movement.
In just the same way, Labour sent British troops into Afghanistan and Iraq and then sent the party’s ‘left’ representatives into the anti-war movement with an offer to lead the protests! The TUC’s invitation to Miliband on 26 March will disgust all honest workers and should help convince ever more of them of the importance of breaking the link with Labour and taking the fight to the capitalists.
How the TUC ‘leads’ the proletariat – by the nose
Five months after Osborne’s declaration of class war, the TUC at last stirred in its sleep. Once again, it was time to march us up to the top of the hill, hear some faked-up ‘fire in the belly’ from the Labour ‘lefts’, sieve through another Labour leader’s utterances in search of some ‘progressive’ fool’s gold, then march us down again. The TUC knows how to do this; it’s had a lot of practice in all its years of steering workers away from revolution.
In honour of the occasion, the TUC produced a pamphlet entitled Cuts Are Not the Cure, which was a masterpiece of prevarication. The TUC invited us to march for the “alternative”. By this it meant not socialism, however, but a better regulated and managed capitalism along Keynesian lines. The TUC leaders asked us to march against “unfair”, “unnecessary” cuts – a carefully coded message which gives a free hand to today’s Labour councillors and any future Labour government to implement cuts that can be dressed up as ‘fair’ and ‘necessary’.
They told us that the “ConDem” cuts are ideologically driven and not warranted by the actual depth of the crisis. Yet when Keynesian solutions all fail, as sooner or later they must, then it is indeed the crisis itself which dictates the cuts, implemented by whichever bourgeois party. The Tories may in the short term lean harder on the accelerator than Labour might do in their place, but they are all heading off the same cliff.
What the TUC can never admit is that behind the debt crisis lies an overproduction crisis already 30 years in the making. An overproduction crisis does not mean that too many products are being made than people need to consume. Rather, it means that more commodities are being produced than can all be sold at a profit on the market. The problem is aggravated when capitalism, desperate to beat the competition, intensifies the exploitation of workers, thereby further depressing their ability to buy commodities.
There are two possible capitalist responses to this dilemma. Efforts can be made to revive the effective demand by various methods, all of which are founded on increasing debt. The drawback is that this postpones rather than solves the problem, and stores up yet worse trouble down the line.
The other capitalist response, which in the end becomes a necessary evil if the capitalist system of exploitation is to survive, is to destroy all those productive forces whose product is no longer able to be realised as expanding capital. To be concrete, this means closing down enterprises, laying off workers and slashing wages and welfare. This is achieved first of all through cut-throat competition between rival blocs of monopoly capital and ultimately through war.
These basic facts need to be grasped by workers so that they can judge the scale of the social crisis we are entering and the real choices with which history will be confronting them. Let us remember that both the major overproduction crises of the last century ultimately played out in two world wars, with socialist and anti-colonial revolutions hard on their heels.
The TUC wants us to believe that the only real problem is the bunch of over privileged ConDem public school boys left in temporary charge of the shop. Get Labour back in minus the Blairites, runs the story, and we can all unite, swallow whatever cuts Labour deems ‘fair’ and ‘necessary’, and get on with ‘growing our way out of the recession’.
“Cuts are not the cure” announced the TUC’s flier for 26 March, reassuring us besides that the illness is not life-threatening anyway. Don’t worry about Britain’s national debt, it twittered. “All countries have a debt – there is nothing dangerous about that.” Just look how much we borrowed from America after the second world war and we took ages to pay that back!
Why, the current debt blip is really nothing to panic about. And in so far as there’s a problem, we can extricate ourselves from it with some moderate belt-tightening, the creation of some ‘green’ jobs and some mild restraints on bankers’ bonuses.
This whistling in the dark fails to notice either the real character of the crisis or the historical context in which it is unfolding. After World War Two capitalism was recovering from overproduction crisis. Right now, having already used every possible stratagem to evade the consequences of market glut, imperialism is just now entering the acute phase of the crisis. The parallel is 1929, not 1945.
Massive surplus capacity stifles all markets, the US is too busy trying to rescue itself to throw anyone else a credit line, and on past performance only war, revolution or both will shift the logjam. We do not have an option of ‘growing ourselves out of recession’; capitalism is in a hole and cannot stop digging.
One solution: revolution
The only cure for the crisis ripping through Britain today is socialism. Those who pretend it is possible to duck the consequences of an overproduction crisis more than 30 years in the making by tinkering with the existing capitalist system are practising a cruel deceit upon workers, blowing smoke in their eyes at the very moment that capitalism is preparing an all-out class war assault in defence of the exploiting class.
“Cuts are not the cure, ” the TUC assures us. Yet every monopoly capitalist gang knows different. The only chance of prolonging their reign of exploitation in time of overproduction crisis is to slash labour costs, wipe out surplus productive capacity, throw millions out of work, drive all competitors to the wall and bend every sinew to the task of carving a greater share of a glutted and shrinking market.
True, this temporary ‘cure’ for the ills of capitalist commodity production in practice means plunging the modern world back into the ditch of slump and imperialist war, wantonly destroying the fruits of years of labour, setting back human progress and putting at hazard even the biological future of the human species. Yet for the capitalist, who can act only as capital personified, all such considerations must shrink into insignificance when confronted with the only real alternative: the replacement of capitalism by socialism.
And that is the task with which history ever more insistently confronts workers: the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.
Only by taking state power, expropriating the exploiting class and bringing the means of production into social ownership can the working class end the contradiction between the public character of labour and the private character of appropriation, the contradiction which is now threatening to stifle all further civilised development in modern society.
There is only one solution: revolution.
Source: Proletarian Online No 41 April 2011
Non-cooperation
The spirit of non-cooperation is certainly alive and kicking in Greece. Despite the intensifying threats of dismissal by the employers, in full cooperation with employer-led trade unionism, the most recent general strike in Greece was another major success, with the KKE-oriented popular front PAME again taking the leading role.
A speaker at a PAME rally cautioned militants that it was not just a question of kicking out PASOK and changing “the political staff of the bourgeoisie”, but a struggle for power. He warned, “If the movement lacks such an orientation the struggles are led to a deadlock, they will deflate.”
Meanwhile, in response to the austerity programme implemented by the Greek government at the behest of the IMF, workers are finding novel ways of loosening the belt. Activists wearing brightly coloured vests with “total disobedience” printed on them have staged a series of occupations of motorway toll booths, releasing commuters from the obligation to pay, whilst union militants have been covering ticket machines on the Athens tube with plastic bags so everyone can travel free.
Bus and tram passengers are getting free rides too, where public-spirited citizens have taped up the on-board ticket machines. The activists explain: “The people have paid already through their taxes, so they should be able to travel for free.”
The tactic has also spread to the health sector, with state hospital doctors staging a blockade in front of pay counters to prevent patients from paying their €5 flat fee for consultations. In Britain, where GP consortia’s budgets are now to be floated on the stock exchange so money clawed back from patient care can be turned into profits, the time is ripe for a similar outbreak of decency amongst civic-minded physicians.
Faced with the 50,000 NHS job cuts predicted by the TUC, such a spirit of non-cooperation is exactly what is needed over here.
Numerous protests and one-day strikes in Britain – involving teachers, posties, cleaners, civil servants and many others – give ample evidence of a widespread readiness to resist, given only the necessary organisation and leadership.
In the south of Korea this remains spirit alive too. Union members at Hanjin Heavy Industries and Construction are resisting plans to lay off 190 workers. Despite a cradle-to-grave diet of anti-communism from the authorities there, worker resistance is firmly embedded in the culture – the country has one of the most militant trade-union movements in the world, with a long and proud history of activism.
The company answered their strike with a lock-out. Not to be outdone, one of the strike leaders then occupied a 50-metre-tall crane on the shipyard. Despite legal injunctions and the threat of crippling fines, Kim Jin-Suk has held firm. Last reports say she was joined by two other comrades.
TUC’s futile ‘resistance’
The decision of the TUC to invite Labour leader Ed Miliband to speak on the platform at the long-awaited day of protest on 26 March was a premeditated slap in the face for the working class and should be condemned by all who are serious about building an anti-cuts resistance movement worthy of the name.
Even before the well-deserved collapse of Labour at the last elections created a vacuum in capitalist political leadership into which were sucked the ConDem mediocrities who now strut the stage, the labour aristocrats at the TUC were painting Labour in pretty colours to fool the workers. Labour’s cuts, they sighed, whilst regrettable, were largely unavoidable and in any case preferable to Tory cuts. Ditto Labour’s union-bashing, Labour’s privatisation rampage and Labour’s genocidal wars.
With Labour out of the hot seat and Gordon Brown out to grass, the party’s leadership election was the next burning question of the day for the TUC, eclipsing the ‘minor’ question of how the unions proposed to mobilise to resist the austerity juggernaut rumbling over the horizon. Despite pressure from the PCS, RMT and other unions calling for the TUC to coordinate resistance efforts, the accession of ‘Red Ed’ on a phony ‘left’ platform was greeted with a sigh of relief from the opportunists.
At last they could revert to the old formula: a moderate degree of lobbying, Early Day Motions and ritual protests against Tweedle Dum (“ConDem” cuts) to while away the time until Tweedle Dee (a new Labour government) can be elected again. Meanwhile, keep pouring members’ hard-earned subs into Labour party coffers and keep the seat warm for social democracy.
Breaking with Labour
So grossly at odds with what workers require from union leadership has the TUC shown itself to be that union militants have increasingly sought alternative ways of mobilising, notably within the National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN).
When Chancellor Osborne’s provocative ‘spending review’ last October was met with nothing more spirited from the TUC than the promise of a bit of a demo the following March, the NSSN took a lead in mobilising its own less leisurely protests, where possible in coordination with local trades councils, and gave Bob Crow and others a platform to denounce Labour’s record of treachery.
And in a significant development at its January conference, the shop stewards announced their intention to put organised labour at the heart of the anti-cuts movement, and to do so on the basis of opposition to all cuts.
These good intentions, if consistently adhered to, will set the anti-cuts movement on a very healthy and instructive collision course with the Labour party, hundreds of whose local councillors are currently implementing the so-called ‘ConDem cuts’. There is no more divisive force in the workers’ movement than the Labour party, and every step in the direction of breaking the link with Labour is a step closer to uniting workers in resistance against capitalism.
For too long Labour has got away with having its cake and eating it. Never mind that, in power, it initiates government cuts and, out of power, it implements local cuts, it still claims a leading role in the anti-cuts movement.
In just the same way, Labour sent British troops into Afghanistan and Iraq and then sent the party’s ‘left’ representatives into the anti-war movement with an offer to lead the protests! The TUC’s invitation to Miliband on 26 March will disgust all honest workers and should help convince ever more of them of the importance of breaking the link with Labour and taking the fight to the capitalists.
How the TUC ‘leads’ the proletariat – by the nose
Five months after Osborne’s declaration of class war, the TUC at last stirred in its sleep. Once again, it was time to march us up to the top of the hill, hear some faked-up ‘fire in the belly’ from the Labour ‘lefts’, sieve through another Labour leader’s utterances in search of some ‘progressive’ fool’s gold, then march us down again. The TUC knows how to do this; it’s had a lot of practice in all its years of steering workers away from revolution.
In honour of the occasion, the TUC produced a pamphlet entitled Cuts Are Not the Cure, which was a masterpiece of prevarication. The TUC invited us to march for the “alternative”. By this it meant not socialism, however, but a better regulated and managed capitalism along Keynesian lines. The TUC leaders asked us to march against “unfair”, “unnecessary” cuts – a carefully coded message which gives a free hand to today’s Labour councillors and any future Labour government to implement cuts that can be dressed up as ‘fair’ and ‘necessary’.
They told us that the “ConDem” cuts are ideologically driven and not warranted by the actual depth of the crisis. Yet when Keynesian solutions all fail, as sooner or later they must, then it is indeed the crisis itself which dictates the cuts, implemented by whichever bourgeois party. The Tories may in the short term lean harder on the accelerator than Labour might do in their place, but they are all heading off the same cliff.
What the TUC can never admit is that behind the debt crisis lies an overproduction crisis already 30 years in the making. An overproduction crisis does not mean that too many products are being made than people need to consume. Rather, it means that more commodities are being produced than can all be sold at a profit on the market. The problem is aggravated when capitalism, desperate to beat the competition, intensifies the exploitation of workers, thereby further depressing their ability to buy commodities.
There are two possible capitalist responses to this dilemma. Efforts can be made to revive the effective demand by various methods, all of which are founded on increasing debt. The drawback is that this postpones rather than solves the problem, and stores up yet worse trouble down the line.
The other capitalist response, which in the end becomes a necessary evil if the capitalist system of exploitation is to survive, is to destroy all those productive forces whose product is no longer able to be realised as expanding capital. To be concrete, this means closing down enterprises, laying off workers and slashing wages and welfare. This is achieved first of all through cut-throat competition between rival blocs of monopoly capital and ultimately through war.
These basic facts need to be grasped by workers so that they can judge the scale of the social crisis we are entering and the real choices with which history will be confronting them. Let us remember that both the major overproduction crises of the last century ultimately played out in two world wars, with socialist and anti-colonial revolutions hard on their heels.
The TUC wants us to believe that the only real problem is the bunch of over privileged ConDem public school boys left in temporary charge of the shop. Get Labour back in minus the Blairites, runs the story, and we can all unite, swallow whatever cuts Labour deems ‘fair’ and ‘necessary’, and get on with ‘growing our way out of the recession’.
“Cuts are not the cure” announced the TUC’s flier for 26 March, reassuring us besides that the illness is not life-threatening anyway. Don’t worry about Britain’s national debt, it twittered. “All countries have a debt – there is nothing dangerous about that.” Just look how much we borrowed from America after the second world war and we took ages to pay that back!
Why, the current debt blip is really nothing to panic about. And in so far as there’s a problem, we can extricate ourselves from it with some moderate belt-tightening, the creation of some ‘green’ jobs and some mild restraints on bankers’ bonuses.
This whistling in the dark fails to notice either the real character of the crisis or the historical context in which it is unfolding. After World War Two capitalism was recovering from overproduction crisis. Right now, having already used every possible stratagem to evade the consequences of market glut, imperialism is just now entering the acute phase of the crisis. The parallel is 1929, not 1945.
Massive surplus capacity stifles all markets, the US is too busy trying to rescue itself to throw anyone else a credit line, and on past performance only war, revolution or both will shift the logjam. We do not have an option of ‘growing ourselves out of recession’; capitalism is in a hole and cannot stop digging.
One solution: revolution
The only cure for the crisis ripping through Britain today is socialism. Those who pretend it is possible to duck the consequences of an overproduction crisis more than 30 years in the making by tinkering with the existing capitalist system are practising a cruel deceit upon workers, blowing smoke in their eyes at the very moment that capitalism is preparing an all-out class war assault in defence of the exploiting class.
“Cuts are not the cure, ” the TUC assures us. Yet every monopoly capitalist gang knows different. The only chance of prolonging their reign of exploitation in time of overproduction crisis is to slash labour costs, wipe out surplus productive capacity, throw millions out of work, drive all competitors to the wall and bend every sinew to the task of carving a greater share of a glutted and shrinking market.
True, this temporary ‘cure’ for the ills of capitalist commodity production in practice means plunging the modern world back into the ditch of slump and imperialist war, wantonly destroying the fruits of years of labour, setting back human progress and putting at hazard even the biological future of the human species. Yet for the capitalist, who can act only as capital personified, all such considerations must shrink into insignificance when confronted with the only real alternative: the replacement of capitalism by socialism.
And that is the task with which history ever more insistently confronts workers: the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.
Only by taking state power, expropriating the exploiting class and bringing the means of production into social ownership can the working class end the contradiction between the public character of labour and the private character of appropriation, the contradiction which is now threatening to stifle all further civilised development in modern society.
There is only one solution: revolution.
Source: Proletarian Online No 41 April 2011
Tuesday, 5 April 2011
FOR BOLSHEVISM- AUCPB- CLASS STRUGGLE UK APRIL 1 ON
UCU
Lecturers' on strike
More than 100,000 lecturers struck last week. It was the biggest strike yet under David Cameron’s government—and it showed two things.
First, the strike won huge support, particularly among students. And second, lecturers want to keep fighting—and want to strike with other workers.
The action, on Thursday of last week, hit colleges and universities across Britain and Northern Ireland. The UCU union members are fighting attacks on their pension schemes, lack of protection over jobs and derisory below-inflation pay offers.
It had a big impact. Lots of classes were cancelled and few crossed picket lines. In lots of places, more pickets were out than during previous strikes.
Martyn Moss, a UCU regional official, said the strike at Liverpool Hope University was “the most solid in history. Not a single university lecturer went into work”.
Tom Hickey, a UCU executive member in Brighton, described the action as “the most successful strike in the history of the University of Brighton”.
Students occupied the School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas), in central London, the night before the strike to show support for their lecturers. Many Unison union members refused to cross the picket lines.
At Birkbeck College, students were giving free tea, coffee and sandwiches to the pickets.
Richard Bowyer, a sessional lecturer in its law department, was one of many part-time lecturers on the picket lines.
Together
Sessional lecturers made a big sacrifice to join the strike. “My teaching is on Wednesdays and Thursdays so by striking I’m losing half my pay this week,” Richard said. He added, “I’d like to see people in different unions come out together.”
Naomi Bain, branch chair of Unison at Birkbeck, said that lots of Unison members had gained confidence by joining UCU picket lines.
Lots of people joined the UCU during the strike. Laura Miles, a lecturer at Bradford College, said, “Just on our picket line we gave out eight applications to join UCU, with two people joining.”
At Dundee University, some 40 people joined the union in the run-up to the strike.
Trade unionists from other unions also visited picket lines to show their support.
“We’ve had visits from the GMB union and the local trades council,” said James Eaden at Chesterfield College.
Paul Blackledge, branch secretary of the UCU at Leeds Metropolitan University, said council workers had stopped to show their support for strikers.
At the Institute of Education in London, eight members of the NUT national executive committee joined the picket line.
They talked about the need for workers to strike together. “It’s great that the UCU has taken the lead,” added Ann Lemon, another NUT executive member. “Now we need to follow them.”
Lecturers can stop the attack on education. The strikes can also be the start of a bigger revolt against the Tory assault on public services and the welfare state.
The UCU must escalate the action. And other workers must demand that their union leaders start strike ballots so that they can join the fight too
============================-
National Union Of Teachers – (NUT)
30 March - Wednesday - London
Tower Hamlets – East London
Teachers and council workers struck across Tower Hamlets, east London on Wednesday 30 March. They are fighting 500 job cuts that will hit everything from social services to schools and youth workers.
Schools across the borough came to a standstill.
Unison and NUT union members formed joint picket lines. Coordinated action between the two unions shut many of the schools as teachers and support staff refused to cross picket lines.
Teachers in Camden, north London, are also on strike today.
Over 30 Unison members picketed the Phoenix School in Tower Hamlets. They blew whistles and held up signs for drivers to honk in support. Bus drivers, cyclists and lorry drivers showed their solidarity. The noise was deafening.
Mohammed, a learning support worker, said, “It feels great to be here today, this is about us all being together. There are people here who might not have jobs tomorrow.”
Bin workers refused to cross the picket line at the nearby Central Foundation Girls School. Passers-by came to chat to the pickets and show solidarity.
“It wasn’t easy but we managed to build this strike at the base of the union. Local activists fought for the ballots. If this can happen in Tower Hamlets it can happen anywhere.”
Workers in Unison and the National Union of Teachers also picketed the Professional Development Centre in Mile End.
“Schools will be shocked when next year comes and services that used to exist simply won’t be there anymore.”
________________________________________
Camden
Hundreds of striking teachers recently marched through Camden in north London. National Union of teachers (NUT) members at 44 schools, children’s centres and other workplaces took strike action together against £20 million of cuts in jobs and services.
The strike was well supported. Cars and lorries hooted their horns in solidarity as strikers and their supporters gathered to march to a rally at the NUT’s London headquarters.
A big group of pickets massed outside South Camden Community School. Olayinka Williams, a humanities teacher there, said the cuts would have a “massive impact”.
“Students won’t have the personal connections they’ve been used to anymore.”
Another striker said the cuts would hit special educational needs and English as an additional language services. “I don’t see why there’s such a rush to repay the deficit,” she added.
Trade unionists from the RMT, PCS, UCU and Unite unions came to show their support with the strikers. Dave Williams was with a group from Unite’s national executive that visited the pickets.
Lots of people talked about how inspired they felt after Saturday’s TUC demonstration. Steve Hedley, an RMT organiser, said the march showed that “the mood is there for a general strike”.
“If we had a general strike we could bring down the government. I think there’s more chance of a general strike than there has been for years. It’s the hypocrisy that gets to people.
“The bankers are still getting huge bonuses while we’ve got cuts.”
________________________________________
Tower Hamlets march and rally
Some 1,500 striking council workers and teachers marched united through Tower Hamlets in east London today.
The strikers are members of the Unison and teachers’ unions, whose branch banners led the march. There were also banners from schools across the borough, many of them handmade.
The march set off from Bethnal Green, through the rich and poor parts of the borough that sit so close together, on their way to a rally in Whitechapel in East London.
As the strikers passed council estates, people leaned out of their windows clapping and cheering.
But as they marched past Barclays bank, they chanted, “Barclays bank pays no tax, Tower Hamlets gets the axe” and “1, 2, 3, 4, cut the rich, not the poor”.
“I think it’s disgusting,” said Lynette Emery, a special needs teacher. “Our school budget has been cut by £20,000—that means our kids have lost their daily living skills outings, outings in the community. We can’t do them any more.
“The Barclays bankers’ bonuses this year are more than has been spent on education in this borough in a century. If we took their money there’d be no need for cuts.”
After the march it was standing room only as strikers and supporters crammed into the rally. In a show of unity it was held in the London Muslim Centre.
“It’s a simple message—together we are much stronger,” John McLoughlin, Tower Hamlets Unison branch secretary, told the crowd.
“We have set a marker that the future is bringing our unions together to strike together.” Unison deputy general secretary Keith Sonnet also spoke.
“You are an absolute inspiration,” said Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCS union. “We want this fight everywhere.” He pointed to the possibility of joint action over pensions.
“The PCS is already in discussions with the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and UCU at least to plan now for a joint strike that, if members vote for it, will see us have close on a million people on strike before the summer,” he said. “My appeal to every other public sector union is this—it should be all of us.”
He got a standing ovation—and the crowd chanted “general strike, general strike”.
-=================
Lecturers' on strike
More than 100,000 lecturers struck last week. It was the biggest strike yet under David Cameron’s government—and it showed two things.
First, the strike won huge support, particularly among students. And second, lecturers want to keep fighting—and want to strike with other workers.
The action, on Thursday of last week, hit colleges and universities across Britain and Northern Ireland. The UCU union members are fighting attacks on their pension schemes, lack of protection over jobs and derisory below-inflation pay offers.
It had a big impact. Lots of classes were cancelled and few crossed picket lines. In lots of places, more pickets were out than during previous strikes.
Martyn Moss, a UCU regional official, said the strike at Liverpool Hope University was “the most solid in history. Not a single university lecturer went into work”.
Tom Hickey, a UCU executive member in Brighton, described the action as “the most successful strike in the history of the University of Brighton”.
Students occupied the School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas), in central London, the night before the strike to show support for their lecturers. Many Unison union members refused to cross the picket lines.
At Birkbeck College, students were giving free tea, coffee and sandwiches to the pickets.
Richard Bowyer, a sessional lecturer in its law department, was one of many part-time lecturers on the picket lines.
Together
Sessional lecturers made a big sacrifice to join the strike. “My teaching is on Wednesdays and Thursdays so by striking I’m losing half my pay this week,” Richard said. He added, “I’d like to see people in different unions come out together.”
Naomi Bain, branch chair of Unison at Birkbeck, said that lots of Unison members had gained confidence by joining UCU picket lines.
Lots of people joined the UCU during the strike. Laura Miles, a lecturer at Bradford College, said, “Just on our picket line we gave out eight applications to join UCU, with two people joining.”
At Dundee University, some 40 people joined the union in the run-up to the strike.
Trade unionists from other unions also visited picket lines to show their support.
“We’ve had visits from the GMB union and the local trades council,” said James Eaden at Chesterfield College.
Paul Blackledge, branch secretary of the UCU at Leeds Metropolitan University, said council workers had stopped to show their support for strikers.
At the Institute of Education in London, eight members of the NUT national executive committee joined the picket line.
They talked about the need for workers to strike together. “It’s great that the UCU has taken the lead,” added Ann Lemon, another NUT executive member. “Now we need to follow them.”
Lecturers can stop the attack on education. The strikes can also be the start of a bigger revolt against the Tory assault on public services and the welfare state.
The UCU must escalate the action. And other workers must demand that their union leaders start strike ballots so that they can join the fight too
============================-
National Union Of Teachers – (NUT)
30 March - Wednesday - London
Tower Hamlets – East London
Teachers and council workers struck across Tower Hamlets, east London on Wednesday 30 March. They are fighting 500 job cuts that will hit everything from social services to schools and youth workers.
Schools across the borough came to a standstill.
Unison and NUT union members formed joint picket lines. Coordinated action between the two unions shut many of the schools as teachers and support staff refused to cross picket lines.
Teachers in Camden, north London, are also on strike today.
Over 30 Unison members picketed the Phoenix School in Tower Hamlets. They blew whistles and held up signs for drivers to honk in support. Bus drivers, cyclists and lorry drivers showed their solidarity. The noise was deafening.
Mohammed, a learning support worker, said, “It feels great to be here today, this is about us all being together. There are people here who might not have jobs tomorrow.”
Bin workers refused to cross the picket line at the nearby Central Foundation Girls School. Passers-by came to chat to the pickets and show solidarity.
“It wasn’t easy but we managed to build this strike at the base of the union. Local activists fought for the ballots. If this can happen in Tower Hamlets it can happen anywhere.”
Workers in Unison and the National Union of Teachers also picketed the Professional Development Centre in Mile End.
“Schools will be shocked when next year comes and services that used to exist simply won’t be there anymore.”
________________________________________
Camden
Hundreds of striking teachers recently marched through Camden in north London. National Union of teachers (NUT) members at 44 schools, children’s centres and other workplaces took strike action together against £20 million of cuts in jobs and services.
The strike was well supported. Cars and lorries hooted their horns in solidarity as strikers and their supporters gathered to march to a rally at the NUT’s London headquarters.
A big group of pickets massed outside South Camden Community School. Olayinka Williams, a humanities teacher there, said the cuts would have a “massive impact”.
“Students won’t have the personal connections they’ve been used to anymore.”
Another striker said the cuts would hit special educational needs and English as an additional language services. “I don’t see why there’s such a rush to repay the deficit,” she added.
Trade unionists from the RMT, PCS, UCU and Unite unions came to show their support with the strikers. Dave Williams was with a group from Unite’s national executive that visited the pickets.
Lots of people talked about how inspired they felt after Saturday’s TUC demonstration. Steve Hedley, an RMT organiser, said the march showed that “the mood is there for a general strike”.
“If we had a general strike we could bring down the government. I think there’s more chance of a general strike than there has been for years. It’s the hypocrisy that gets to people.
“The bankers are still getting huge bonuses while we’ve got cuts.”
________________________________________
Tower Hamlets march and rally
Some 1,500 striking council workers and teachers marched united through Tower Hamlets in east London today.
The strikers are members of the Unison and teachers’ unions, whose branch banners led the march. There were also banners from schools across the borough, many of them handmade.
The march set off from Bethnal Green, through the rich and poor parts of the borough that sit so close together, on their way to a rally in Whitechapel in East London.
As the strikers passed council estates, people leaned out of their windows clapping and cheering.
But as they marched past Barclays bank, they chanted, “Barclays bank pays no tax, Tower Hamlets gets the axe” and “1, 2, 3, 4, cut the rich, not the poor”.
“I think it’s disgusting,” said Lynette Emery, a special needs teacher. “Our school budget has been cut by £20,000—that means our kids have lost their daily living skills outings, outings in the community. We can’t do them any more.
“The Barclays bankers’ bonuses this year are more than has been spent on education in this borough in a century. If we took their money there’d be no need for cuts.”
After the march it was standing room only as strikers and supporters crammed into the rally. In a show of unity it was held in the London Muslim Centre.
“It’s a simple message—together we are much stronger,” John McLoughlin, Tower Hamlets Unison branch secretary, told the crowd.
“We have set a marker that the future is bringing our unions together to strike together.” Unison deputy general secretary Keith Sonnet also spoke.
“You are an absolute inspiration,” said Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCS union. “We want this fight everywhere.” He pointed to the possibility of joint action over pensions.
“The PCS is already in discussions with the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and UCU at least to plan now for a joint strike that, if members vote for it, will see us have close on a million people on strike before the summer,” he said. “My appeal to every other public sector union is this—it should be all of us.”
He got a standing ovation—and the crowd chanted “general strike, general strike”.
-=================
Friday, 1 April 2011
FB-AUCPB - CLASS STRUGGLE UK APRIL 1 on
GMB
Tues 29 March - Hull
700 protest over lockout at Saltend, Hull
Hundreds of workers protested on Monday of this week in solidarity with workers locked out of the Saltend biofuel construction site in Hull, east Yorkshire.
Workers from North Lincolnshire refineries Lindsey and ConocoPhillips, Pembroke power station in Wales, and Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire joined the locked out workers.
Management put up a fence to block a gate to the area that workers had used to hold rallies since the lockout started two weeks ago.
Workers marched to the gate to rally.
They then drove into Hull and marched around the town centre. They held a rally of up to 700 workers.
The lockout is a clear attempt to attack a militant workforce.
The industry is wracked with corruption. The building bosses run blacklists to keep trade union militants off their sites.
As long as the poisonous system of contracting and subcontracting remains, there will be constant attempts to set worker against worker.
Everyone must stand against such divisions.
Militancy and unofficial action on construction sites terrifies the employers.
The delegations from other sites on the demonstration shows the potential for solidarity.
Since this is a national attack, there needs to be a national response.
Shutting down every construction site, power station and refinery around Britain would hit the multinationals where it hurts—in their profits.
Solidarity, including militant industrial action, is the only language the construction bosses understand.
National action has the power not just to win back the jobs, but to transform construction in favour of workers.
===============================
NASUWT
Tues 22 March - Wales – Powys
Powys teachers strike to save jobs
Teachers at a high school in Powys, Wales, are striking against compulsory redundancies. The NASUWT union members at Brecon High School struck on Thursday of last week.
They have five more strike dates planned—on Wednesday and Thursday of next week, and 5, 6 and 7 April.
Last week’s strike closed the school to all students except sixth formers. Rex Phillips, NASUWT organiser for Wales, described the action as “solid”.
Six jobs are under threat.
The head teacher, Ingrid Gallagher, claims that the school “has more staff than it needs”. But the NASUWT has accused the school’s governors of financial mismanagement and says they have turned a £100,000 surplus into a projected £650,000 deficit.
===============================
NUT
Go from Fury at the bankers on the streets of tower hamlets
Coventry teachers say no to academy
Teachers at Tile Hill Wood School and Language College in Coventry struck on Tuesday of this week against plans to turn their school into an academy.
The NUT union members unanimously backed strikes in a ballot, and 75 percent turned out to vote. Workers struck for half a day in the morning.
================================
UCU
Lecturers strike on
More than 100,000 lecturers struck last week. It was the biggest strike yet under David Cameron’s government—and it showed two things.
First, the strike won huge support, particularly among students. And second, lecturers want to keep fighting—and want to strike with other workers.
The action, on Thursday of last week, hit colleges and universities across Britain and Northern Ireland. The UCU union members are fighting attacks on their pension schemes, lack of protection over jobs and derisory below-inflation pay offers.
It had a big impact. Lots of classes were cancelled and few crossed picket lines. In lots of places, more pickets were out than during previous strikes.
Martyn Moss, a UCU regional official, said the strike at Liverpool Hope University was “the most solid in history. Not a single university lecturer went into work”.
========================================
PCS
UB40 speaks out against Tory cuts
UB40 band members Brian Travers and Jimmy Brown spoke out against unemployment at a Birmingham Against the Cuts press conference on Wednesday.
The press conference called on as many people as possible to join the TUC protest against the cuts this Saturday. It also highlighted rising unemployment in Birmingham, which now stands at 1 in 10— the title of a song by the band in 1981.
The band were joined by trade unionists, councillors and anti-cuts activists.
Unemployment in the West Midlands stands at 9.9 percent—that’s 265,000 people out of work, an increase of 27,000 in the last three months.
Caroline Johnson, assistant secretary of Birmingham Unison announced that the union has 18 coaches going to the demonstration on Saturday.
She said that Birmingham City Council’s plan to sack 7,000 workers as part of their budget cuts must be opposed.
Birmingham Unison is preparing to ballot its members in the coming weeks for industrial action against the cuts.
Other speakers included Birmingham Council Labour group leader Albert Bore, Tony Conway from the PCS and Mary Pearson from the NUT.
Jimmy Brown from UB40 closed the press conference saying that “a massive injustice is taking place”—because working people didn’t create the crisis, but will be expected to pay for it.
---------------------------------------------------------
Tues 29 March - Hull
700 protest over lockout at Saltend, Hull
Hundreds of workers protested on Monday of this week in solidarity with workers locked out of the Saltend biofuel construction site in Hull, east Yorkshire.
Workers from North Lincolnshire refineries Lindsey and ConocoPhillips, Pembroke power station in Wales, and Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire joined the locked out workers.
Management put up a fence to block a gate to the area that workers had used to hold rallies since the lockout started two weeks ago.
Workers marched to the gate to rally.
They then drove into Hull and marched around the town centre. They held a rally of up to 700 workers.
The lockout is a clear attempt to attack a militant workforce.
The industry is wracked with corruption. The building bosses run blacklists to keep trade union militants off their sites.
As long as the poisonous system of contracting and subcontracting remains, there will be constant attempts to set worker against worker.
Everyone must stand against such divisions.
Militancy and unofficial action on construction sites terrifies the employers.
The delegations from other sites on the demonstration shows the potential for solidarity.
Since this is a national attack, there needs to be a national response.
Shutting down every construction site, power station and refinery around Britain would hit the multinationals where it hurts—in their profits.
Solidarity, including militant industrial action, is the only language the construction bosses understand.
National action has the power not just to win back the jobs, but to transform construction in favour of workers.
===============================
NASUWT
Tues 22 March - Wales – Powys
Powys teachers strike to save jobs
Teachers at a high school in Powys, Wales, are striking against compulsory redundancies. The NASUWT union members at Brecon High School struck on Thursday of last week.
They have five more strike dates planned—on Wednesday and Thursday of next week, and 5, 6 and 7 April.
Last week’s strike closed the school to all students except sixth formers. Rex Phillips, NASUWT organiser for Wales, described the action as “solid”.
Six jobs are under threat.
The head teacher, Ingrid Gallagher, claims that the school “has more staff than it needs”. But the NASUWT has accused the school’s governors of financial mismanagement and says they have turned a £100,000 surplus into a projected £650,000 deficit.
===============================
NUT
Go from Fury at the bankers on the streets of tower hamlets
Coventry teachers say no to academy
Teachers at Tile Hill Wood School and Language College in Coventry struck on Tuesday of this week against plans to turn their school into an academy.
The NUT union members unanimously backed strikes in a ballot, and 75 percent turned out to vote. Workers struck for half a day in the morning.
================================
UCU
Lecturers strike on
More than 100,000 lecturers struck last week. It was the biggest strike yet under David Cameron’s government—and it showed two things.
First, the strike won huge support, particularly among students. And second, lecturers want to keep fighting—and want to strike with other workers.
The action, on Thursday of last week, hit colleges and universities across Britain and Northern Ireland. The UCU union members are fighting attacks on their pension schemes, lack of protection over jobs and derisory below-inflation pay offers.
It had a big impact. Lots of classes were cancelled and few crossed picket lines. In lots of places, more pickets were out than during previous strikes.
Martyn Moss, a UCU regional official, said the strike at Liverpool Hope University was “the most solid in history. Not a single university lecturer went into work”.
========================================
PCS
UB40 speaks out against Tory cuts
UB40 band members Brian Travers and Jimmy Brown spoke out against unemployment at a Birmingham Against the Cuts press conference on Wednesday.
The press conference called on as many people as possible to join the TUC protest against the cuts this Saturday. It also highlighted rising unemployment in Birmingham, which now stands at 1 in 10— the title of a song by the band in 1981.
The band were joined by trade unionists, councillors and anti-cuts activists.
Unemployment in the West Midlands stands at 9.9 percent—that’s 265,000 people out of work, an increase of 27,000 in the last three months.
Caroline Johnson, assistant secretary of Birmingham Unison announced that the union has 18 coaches going to the demonstration on Saturday.
She said that Birmingham City Council’s plan to sack 7,000 workers as part of their budget cuts must be opposed.
Birmingham Unison is preparing to ballot its members in the coming weeks for industrial action against the cuts.
Other speakers included Birmingham Council Labour group leader Albert Bore, Tony Conway from the PCS and Mary Pearson from the NUT.
Jimmy Brown from UB40 closed the press conference saying that “a massive injustice is taking place”—because working people didn’t create the crisis, but will be expected to pay for it.
---------------------------------------------------------
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