National News
New attack on workplace rights
TRADE unions last week warned that proposals from the Con-Dem Coalition will deny justice to employees seeking redress for workplace disputes and undermine a system that has worked well for nearly half a century.
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Teachers unions prepare for strikes
TWO MAJOR teaching unions at their national conferences last week opted to ballot their memberships for strike action to defend their pensions.
The normally cautious Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) was the first to vote for a national strike ballot, shortly followed by the National Union of Teachers in their annual conference in Harrogate.
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£30 million cuts to ambulance service
THE SOUTH Central Ambulance Service (SCAS) is facing cuts of £30 million over the next five years and staff are warning this is bound to affect patient care.
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RMT rejects five-year pay offer
TUBE UNION RMT confirmed last week that it has rejected a proposed five-year pay offer from Transport for London (TfL) and is launching a campaign for a substantial, above-inflation one year deal that reflects the additional workload placed on staff as a result of the repeated breakdown in services, a large increase in passenger numbers and the knock-on effect from a programme of staff reductions.
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Child mental health cuts protest
CAMPAIGNERS gathered last Tuesday lunchtime outside the Kaleidoscope children’s mental health facility in Lewisham, south London to protest against the nearly £500,000 of cuts to frontline child mental health services in Lewisham, a borough where 20 per cent of children live in poverty.
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Humberside BP lockout continues
THE GENERAL union GMB has called for company heads to roll over a failed attempt to resolve the lockout dispute at the BP Vivergo site at Saltend, Hull.
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International News
Carter and ‘Elders’ in Pyongyang talks
Xinhua news agency
FORMER US President Jimmy Carter, accompanied by three other former state leaders, arrived in Pyongyang on Tuesday morning aboard a private jet for a three-day visit aimed at easing tensions on the Korean peninsula. At the airport Carter was greeted by Ri Yong Ho, vice foreign minister of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).
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President of Yemen agrees to go
Radio Havana Cuba
YEMENI President Ali Abdullah Saleh agreed on Saturday to leave power after 32 years, according to a top Yemeni official, but only if the opposition agrees to a list of conditions, including that he and his family be granted immunity.
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Japan: the reconstruction begins
Radio Havana Cuba
THE JAPANESE government has assigned billions of dollars to finance the first stage of the reconstruction of the region devastated by the earthquake and the following tsunami last month. Meanwhile situation is still tense in the area near the Fukushima Daichi nuclear power plant as the effort to cool down the reactors continues.
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Cuban communists look to the future
Radio Havana Cuba
THE SIXTH Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba, which ended last week, was not seen by the average citizen as a closed event, because it set out guidelines for party members and all Cubans who from now will be the force moving both the political and economic policies of the Party and the Revolution. The guidelines should be implemented in practice starting now and during the coming five years.
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Portuguese workers under attack
by John Catalinotto
THE PORTUGUESE government has accepted orders from the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund to impose austerity on that country’s workers. Some Portuguese leftists have said this would turn the country into a semi-colony of the big European powers, especially France and Germany.
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Accolade for top Cuban dancer
Prensa Latina
CUBAN ballet dancer Carlos Acosta has received the 2011 Cuban National Dance Prize in recognition of his brilliant career, which began in the National Ballet of Cuba, directed by Alicia Alonso, where he advanced to the position of
principal dancer in 1994.
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Lenin: a giant of his era
Granma
THE life and work of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin are worthy of admiration. On 22nd April we celebrate the 141st anniversary of his birth and the continuators of his ideas are proud to describe them as ageless.
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Our communist heritage
RUSSIAN communists took a day off in April to clean up the area around a historic building that was used by underground Marxist groups in Czarist days.
This wooden building in the Nevskaya Zastava [Neva Outpost] district of St Petersburg, so typical of late 19th century Russian construction, was erected to provide spartan accommodation for local workers and their families.
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Features
The struggle in Lithuania
The reactionary regime in Lithuania persecutes communists and likens Soviet power to the Nazi occupation. Earlier in the month the Socialist People’s Front (SPF) leader Algirdas Paleckis faced trumped up charges of publicly endorsing alleged criminal acts committed by Soviet forces trying to stop secession in 1991, when the country was part of the USSR. But who are the SPF? Here the party explains what it stands for.
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