National News
Police target London’s homeless
METROPOLITAN Police and immigration officials raided places where homeless people gather to sleep in the early hours of last Monday morning as part of a clamp down on rough sleepers and beggars.
One of the spots the police raided at 4am in a joint operation with UK Border Agency officers was at Marble Arch’ trying to catch people deemed to be in Britain illegally.
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Romford sparks strike for victimised union reps
ELECTRICIANS employed by contractor T Clarke on rail maintenance work at Romford in Essex have taken strike action on Monday morning in protest at the sacking of two Unite union representatives and another worker.
The dispute began last week when 13 agency construction workers who were suffering being paid via the umbrella company scam — in which the various contractors on a site come together to create an umbrella body to act as employer — called a Unite official to the site.
They were seeking help in putting forward their demand that they be employed directly by the building services contractor company T Clarke. In a meeting between Unite reps and Clarke’s management it was agreed that Clarke would consider the request for the 13 to be directly employed.
A Unite steward and deputy steward were elected by the workers. But last Friday morning these two stewards and one other worker were sacked by Clarke.
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Tube cleaners balloting over fingerprinting
CLEANERS employed by London Underground are to be balloted for strike action over “degrading and bullying” fingerprinting checks.
Tube Union RMT today confirmed that underground cleaners working for ISS are to be balloted for strike action and action short of a strike over outrageous attempts to force them to be subjected to finger-printing on a daily basis.
The cleaners have been in a long-running dispute over the attempt to enforce the fingerprint sign-in system which has led to staff being intimidated, bullied and locked out of the workplace as they refuse to comply with a move that is threatening, degrading and carries all the overtones of a Police State.
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Lake District town has last affordable homes
COPELAND in the Lake District is the last local authority area left in England where the average house price is less than three times the average annual salary, according to new analysis published last Monday by the TUC.
The TUC analysis of average (median) salaries and house prices by local authority area shows that in 1997, around one in five local authority areas were “easily affordable” with average house prices less than three times local median earnings.
Over the last 16 years the number of “easily affordable” local authority areas across England has fallen from 72 to just one — Copeland in the Lake District. However, house prices in neighbouring South Lakeland are now eight times the average local salary — showing that the rest of the Lake District is by no means an affordable area to live, says the TUC.
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Anglo-Portuguese union agreement
THE BRITISH and Portuguese trade union movements last Thursday signed a co-operation protocol aimed at ensuring Portuguese migrant workers in Britain can join unions and enforce their rights at work.
The new agreement will help to prevent the exploitation of migrants and the undercutting of existing workers’ wages, says the TUC.
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Anti-fascists defend Cricklewood — again
by New Worker correspondent
A MIXED bag of anti-fascists from many different groups gathered once again last Saturday in Cricklewood Broadway to prevent a march by the fascists and racists of the South East Alliance (SEA) — a hardline breakaway from the Islamophobic English Defence League.
As before the core of the protest were comrades from Brent Trades Council but there were also local councillors, members of the Green Party, Polish anti- fascists in Dywizjon 161, members of the Labour Representation Committee, young people in Antifa and lots of local residents. And again the local shopkeepers and passers-by were supportive of the anti-fascists.
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Hands Up! Don’t Shoot!
by New Worker correspondent
ANTI-RACISTS gathered in Grosvenor Square outside the American embassy last Wednesday 27th August to protest at the murder of Michael Brown, an unarmed black youth with his hands up, shot dead by police in Ferguson, Missouri.
They were also protesting at the American police response to the wave of outrage and protests this sparked in Ferguson.
The American police response to the demonstrations has harked back to the days prior to the Civil Rights Movement. They have used tear gas, dogs, automatic weapons and armoured cars on demonstrators. Michael’s murder highlights the deeply racist nature of US society today. But deaths in police custody are not limited to America. As we have seen in the cases of Mark Duggan, Smiley Culture, Sean Rigg, and Christopher Alder to name but a few
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Korea’s struggle for freedom
by New Worker correspondent
NEW COMMUNIST Party leader Andy Brooks joined in the discussion on Korea’s revolutionary struggle with other comrades and a representative of the DPR Korea embassy at a joint mini-seminar at the Party Centre last week.
The meeting opened with a talk to commemorate the 54th anniversary of the start of the Songun revolutionary leadership and the 45th anniversary of the foundation of the Anti-Imperialist National Democratic Front (AINDF) of south Korea. The discussion revolved around these two important themes — the military-first ideology that embodies the Juché idea and the underground resistance to the puppet regime and the US occupation in south Korea.
The AINDF was founded as the Revolutionary Party for Reunification on 25th August 1969. The south Korean puppet regime responded by resorting to terror to try and stifle the new revolutionary upsurge against the military dictatorship and the American occupation. Many cadres were arrested, tortured and jailed and some were murdered included two RPR leaders, Kim Jong-tae and Choi Young-do.
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International News
Palestinians denounce new land grab
by Juan Leandro
Palestinians have denounced an Israeli plan to grab more Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank, calling for international action against Tel Aviv.
About 400 hectares of Arab land near the Zionist settlement of Gevaot were “declared Israeli land” last week.
The chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erakat, condemned the plan, saying that the Tel Aviv regime is “committing various crimes against the Palestinian people and their occupied land.”
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Ferguson helps build workers’ solidarity
by Monica Moorehead
THE CALL for justice continues not only in Ferguson, Missouri., but around the United States since the 9th August brutal murder of Michael Brown, the 18-year-old African American who was shot in broad daylight by a white police officer, Darren Wilson.
Not since the 1992 Los Angeles rebellion has there been another one like the one that erupted in Ferguson on 10th August and lasted for over a week. And never before has so much national and international scrutiny been paid towards the racist scourge of police terror inside the United States.
It is a known fact that at least one African-American male on average is killed by the police every 28 hours. But what brought unprecedented attention to Brown’s murder was that eyewitnesses saw and heard him tell Wilson to stop shooting as he tried to surrender with his hands up.
After Brown was shot at least six times, his motionless body reportedly lay in the street for four hours as the police denied any medical attempts to revive him or for any of Brown’s family members to approach him. It was an all-too-familiar racist display of wanton disregard for the lives of Black youth.
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Britain’s covert role against Nepal’s Maoist guerillas
by Ashok Thapa
Much to the surprise of the entire global community, the British government, a strong human rights advocate, was behind a covert operation in support of the erstwhile Nepali government against communist rebels during the country’s decade-long Maoist insurgency.
According to a new book entitled Kathmandu, the British authorities funded and also conducted a four-year intelligence operation in the Himalayan country from 2002 to 2006 called “Operation Mustang”.
The book, which will goes on sale in Nepali and Indian bookstores this week, claims that the covert operation conducted by MI6 was specially focused on supporting Nepal’s state security agency in the fight against the then Maoist rebels leading to their arrest, torture and murder.
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Features
Oliver Cromwell 1599 - 1658
OLIVER CROMWELL, the leader of the bourgeois English Revolution, died on 3rd September 1658. Cromwell, the MP for Huntingdon, was the leading Parliamentary commander during the English Civil War, which began in 1642 and ended in 1649 with the trial and execution of Charles Stuart and the abolition of the monarchy. The Republic of England, or Commonwealth as it was styled in English, was proclaimed soon after.
In 1653 Oliver became head of state, the Lord Protector. By then the republic Cromwell led included England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland as well as colonies in New England and the Caribbean. During its brief life the Commonwealth became a force in Europe. Culturally it inspired the great poetry of Milton and Marvell and other radical and pacifist religious movements like the Quakers who are still with us today.
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Dialectical materialism is a scientific world outlook
by John Maryon
The relationship between science and religion has always been a difficult one. Oppressive regimes form close contact with religious forces to prevent free thinking and maintain their hold on power. Since the times of the Greek philosophers, when it is believed that Socrates was forced to drink the poison hemlock, men of learning have had to be cautious.
Greek mathematicians with their knowledge of trigonometry would be able to look out to sea and observe ships at a distance sinking below the horizon and calculate that the Earth was a sphere. Such conclusions would alarm any “Flat Earth” believers. In the Middle Ages Copernicus incurred the wrath of the Inquisition when he proved the rotation of the Earth on its axis and its revolution round the Sun.
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Climate disruption and religious bigotry
by Rob Gowland
ONE OF the confusing aspects of global warming is the undeniable fact that in some parts of the world temperatures are actually falling. In July and August, “cool air moved from high northern latitudes into much of the US, setting record-low day time and night time temperatures as far south as Florida and Georgia. Temperatures dropped to winter- like levels in the mountains of Tennessee” — (Dahr Jamail, Truthout).
In the North Atlantic the Gulf Stream is losing its thrust, failing to carry warm water all the way to the coast of Europe and causing temperatures on the Continent to drop.
This data has been seized upon by climate deniers as evidence that global warming is a tall tale. But in reality it is evidence of their own simplistic approach to the issue. Although the world is experiencing an overall rise in temperature, this has mixed effects that manifest themselves in different ways, causing temperatures to rise dramatically in some areas (the Arctic, for example) and to fall in others.
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NATO, the hand of death
by Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey
IRAQ: Chaos! Libya: Chaos! Syria: Chaos! Whatever Nato touches turns putrid, rots and dies. Three interventions by the Anglo-Saxon Alliance (UK and US), two by the FUKUS Axis (add France), three interventions by Nato, three destabilised states crawling with terrorists. The responsibility lies at the feet of Washington and its poodle states and the onus is on them to right the wrongs they wilfully committed. You messed up, now... Pay for it!
Are dogs Vegans? Do you feed goldfish chocolate? Common sense says no in both cases. Common sense also dictates that you do not intervene in highly complex societies with thousands of years of tradition and lore intricately mixed up in a myriad of ethnic and religious mosaics cemented together by a governing body that understands where the point of equilibrium is to be found and which is kept in its position by the players in the society which it governs.
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The man behind the Red Flag
by Lily Murphy
The well -known anthem of the labour movement, the Red Flag, is a song that is sung far and wide and the well-known anthem came from the pen of an Irish man.
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