Lead story

The big strike: more to come!

By Daphne Liddle

HUNDREDS of thousands of public sector workers went on strike last Thursday, 10th July in protest at low pay, pension cuts and job cuts. Estimates of the total number taking part range from one to two million strikers, angry at sharply declining living standards as the greedy one per cent of top capitalists are enjoying unprecedented rises in their income.

Schools, libraries and council offices closed throughout the country; bins went uncollected, streets went unswept and driving tests were postponed. This was the biggest national strike since November 2011 — and that was the biggest since the General Strike of 1926.

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Stop the massacre in Gaza

by our Arab Affairs correspondentt

ISRAELI warplanes are hammering Gaza in a new anti-Arab offensive that has claimed the lives of 205 Palestinians and left more than 1,500 injured. Most of the casualties, some 80 per cent according to the Gazan health service, have been civilians.

The UN Security Council has unanimously called for ceasefire and respect for “international humanitarian laws,” voicing “serious concern” over the “protection and welfare of civilians” during Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. But US imperialism has given its full support to Israel’s new round of aggression, saying Tel Aviv has a right to “defend itself”. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said on Monday that there was no evidence that Israel is using disproportionate force in the coastal enclave.

Thousands of Gazans have fled their homes amid a relentless and indiscriminate Israeli bombing campaign, which began last week as a reprisal for the murder of three teenagers from Zionist settler families, has now escalated into open confrontation with daily air-raids and missile attacks on the densely populated Gaza Strip.

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Editorial

Gaza — the slaughter must end

ISRAELI warplanes are pounding the Gaza Strip. Over 200 Palestinian Arabs have been killed and many more wounded. Most of them were civilians. But in the White House and the chancelleries of the European Union we hear no call for the “no-fly” zones or “humanitarian corridors” that they’ve used to justify imperialist aggression in Iraq and Libya and resurrected in last year’s abortive attempt to drum up support for an invasion of Syria.

While millions all over the world have taken to the streets to show their solidarity with the people of Gaza the bourgeois media remains silent about the root causes of the Palestinian problem. Israeli claims are taken at face value by the BBC and no attempt is made to explain the plight of the Palestinian refugees or Israel’s intransigence and portrays the monstrous Israeli assault as an act of “self-defence” against Palestinian terror.

The Cameron government and the rest of the imperialist pack of wolves talk about their “concern” and make half-hearted appeals for a ceasefire to an Israeli regime that is economically dependent on US aid and is essentially an American protectorate.

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Cameron shuffles the pack

Tory Party reshuffles rarely concern working people. Few will shed a tear at the departure of the useless William Hague from the Foreign Office or Michael Gove’s transfer out of Education. Two Europhiles, including veteran politician Kenneth Clarke, have been dumped and a number of Tory women MPs have been elevated to replace some of the older male nonentities in the Cameron team. But all in all David Cameron’s changes are purely cosmetic and are simply designed to build a Conservative front-bench slate best able to head off the Ukip challenge from the right at the general election next year.

Workers have little say in whoever rules them in this country let alone those chosen by the ruling class to represent the interests of the capitalists and landowners in Parliament. But we do have a say in those who claim to represent us in the labour movement and the Labour Party it largely funds.

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