National News
End the siege of Gaza
by a New Worker correspondent
NEW WORKER supporters joined thousands of protesters who marched through London to the Israeli Embassy to express their anger at the murder of nine activists by Israeli forces who raided a convoy of ships bringing emergency aid to the blockaded people of Gaza.
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BNP abandons Red, White and Blue festival
THE FASCIST British National Party last week announced that its controversial annual Red, White and Blue festival will not return to Derbyshire this year.
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Scientists attack GM stitch-up
ENVIRONMENT Secretary Caroline Spelman last week gave Government backing to an increase in the growing and selling of genetically modified crops after the publication of a report by the Food Standards Authority.
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Strike ballot at Coca-Cola
WORKERS employed by Coca Cola in Britain are balloting for strike action in a dispute over national bargaining. It is likely that strike action could begin while the World Cup, which Coca-Cola are sponsoring, is still in progress says the union GMB
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McDonnell bows out and backs Abbot
JOHN McDONNELL MP has failed to get enough nominations to stand in Labour leadership contest and has withdrawn in favour of another left social-democrat Labour MP.
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Judge questions Mayor’s power
THE CASE brought by London Mayor Boris Johnson in the High Court to remove the peace camp from Parliament Square where it has been since 1st May — along with Brian Haw, the peace activist who has sustained a peace vigil opposite the House of Commons for nine years.
London pub barred gay group
THE LABOUR Party’s Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Society (LGBT) were astonished last Saturday when the duty manager at the Greencoat Boy pub in Westminster refused to serve them and said he would not have accepted their booking if he had known they were a gay group.
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A new Queer activism
by Anton Johnson
AT ITS AGM this weekend Lesbian, Gay Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Labour passed a motion to engage in outward campaigning work with trade unions and trade councils following the defeat of Labour at the polls last month. Encouragingly the AGM also agreed affiliation to Hope Not Hate and Searchlight.Hopefully this will lead to LGBT Labour re-engaging with grassroots activism.
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International News
Deadly Zionist tentacles in Latin America
Radio Havana Cuba
THE BRUTALLY inhuman Israeli raid against the peaceful Freedom Flotilla of international humanitarian aid for the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian people is still shocking — an unacceptable violation of human rights and an international criminal act that stands to be fiercely repudiated.
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Workers open fightback against bosses’ offensive
by John Catalinotto
INSPIRED by the courageous example workers are setting in Greece, workers throughout Europe are beginning to respond with strikes and street demonstrations to the capitalist offensive that is minimising their wages, eliminating vital social benefits and contracting the job market.
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Anger at Bhopal court verdict
by our Asian affairs correspondent
THERE were angry scenes outside a court in India as eight people were convicted over the 1984 disaster at Bhopal, the capital of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
Many who survived what is still the world’s worst industrial accident were there to hear the verdict for themselves. They were refused entry and angry at convictions of negligence and not homicide and they urged the government to do more. Appeals are expected against the lenient two-year prison sentences handed down to eight Indian officials of Union Carbide India Limited.
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Spain’s public sector workers on strike
PUBLIC workers in Spain walked out on Tuesday in protest against an average five per cent cut in pay that comes into effect later this month. The cuts are part of a government austerity package aimed at reducing the country’s budget deficit.
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Features
Sinn Féin: peace process moves forward but much remains to be done
Sean Oliver, Sinn Féin Co-ordinator for England, Scotland and Wales, talks to Theo Russell about the effects of the economic crisis in Ireland and the future of the peace process following the elections in the north and the change of government in London.
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Top level union meetings in Beijing
Guardian. Australian communist weekly
Maritime Union of Australia national secretary and International Transport Federation vice president for the Asia Pacific Paddy Crumlin has returned from high-level union meetings in China with ACTU and International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) president Sharan Burrow last week.
“It was a solidarity meeting,” said Paddy Crumlin. “We talked to the Chinese unions about friendship, building relationships and mutual issues.
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Fifty years of Sheremetyevo
by Maksim Kondratyev
THE OFFICIAL opening of Moscow’s International Sheremetyevo Airport took place 50 years ago, on 2nd June 1960. Rumour has it that Nikita Khrushchev personally initiated the construction of the airport because the Soviet leader was so impressed with the size of London’s Heathrow airport that he decided to create something like that in the USSR.
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