National News
50,000 London families forced out
MORE than 50,000 families have been quietly shipped out of London boroughs in the past three years by cuts in benefits and soaring rents, according to a report last week in the Independent based on leaked documents.
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Brixton solidarity with Baltimore
HUNDREDS of people marched through Brixton last Sunday to show solidarity with the people of Baltimore in their struggle against police brutality and racism.
Baltimore has erupted in protests after a 25-year-old African American, Freddie Gray, died in police custody with a broken neck — the most recent in a long litany of black victims of shocking police brutality made public through social media.
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Fuel poverty killed 15,000 last winter
FUEL poverty campaigners last week reported that an estimated 15,000 people died unnecessarily between December and March because they were living in homes they couldn’t afford to heat.....
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Cancer patients face long wait
AROUND 4,500 newly diagnosed cancer patients have had to wait for six months or more for to find out whether they have been awarded disability benefits — now known as Personal Independence Payments (PIP) —according to the charity Macmillan Cancer Support.
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Cuts in police patrols
MORE THAN a quarter of police patrols have been withdrawn from our streets, according to the public sector union Unison.
More than 1,000 police community support officer (PCSO) jobs in England have been cut every year since 2010, leaving the public with little or no reassurance over safety, according Unison’s report published last Tuesday.
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Lutfur Rahman: guilty of protecting Tower Hamlets from austerity cuts
by New Worker correspondent
LUTFUR Rahman received a standing ovation last Thursday evening on his arrival at a packed meeting at the Water Lily conference centre in Whitechapel’s Mile End Road.
The vast conference chamber was packed as were a couple of ante-rooms with video links and there was a link to the big Mosque just down the road.
Most of those present were local Bangladeshi residents but there was also a strong turnout from local Black and White residents, trade unionists, anti- fascist leaders and progressive political activists.
They had come to hear Rahman declare his intention challenge a court judgement the previous week that deposed him as Mayor of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets on the grounds of election fraud and using “undue influence” over the local electorate.
The judge, Richard Mawrey QC, based his ruling on a very old law regarding “Undue influence: spiritual injury”. This is a law that has very rarely been used for over 100 years. It was framed by the British government to “counter the baleful influence of the Roman Catholic clergy of (largely the southern counties of) Ireland over elections in the late 19th century”.
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International Worker’s Memorial Day Poison in the workplace
HAZARDOUS substances in the workplace were the main theme of this year’s International Workers’ Memorial Day, which was marked with ceremonies all around Britain and the world.
The Wales TUC held a rally in Cathedral Road, Cardiff after issuing a statement: “Every year more people are killed at work than in wars. Most don’t die of mystery ailments, or in tragic “accidents”. They die because an employer decided their safety just wasn’t that important a priority. Workers’ Memorial Day (WMD) commemorates those workers.
“Workers’ Memorial Day is held on 28th April every year, all over the world workers and their representatives conduct events, demonstrations, vigils and a whole host of other activities to mark the day.
The day is also intended to serve as a rallying cry to ‘remember the dead, but fight for the living’.
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UN calls for TTIP suspension
A SENIOR United Nations lawyer has called for the suspension of Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations because of fears of human rights abuses.
UN lawyer Alfred de Zayas said there should be a moratorium on negotiations over the Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership (TTIP), which are on course to turn the EU and US blocs into the largest free-trade area in the world. He is concerned that a mooted system of secret courts used by major corporations would undermine human rights.
He told the Guardian that the lesson from other trade agreements around the world was that major corporations had succeeded in blocking government policies with the support of secret arbitration tribunals that operate outside the jurisdiction of domestic courts.
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Unite fights job losses in ship repairs
THE GIANT union Unite last week issued a statement on threatened redundancies at ship repairers A&P Tyne in north east.
Unite regional officer Dave Telford said: “We are having our first meeting with the management of ship repairer A&P Tyne at Hebbum tomorrow morning (Wednesday 6th May) over the redundancy plans announced today that could affect 58 jobs.
“We are very concerned that the company is still using agency workers on contracts when our members’ full-time jobs are under threat and will be raising this tomorrow with management.
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Scottish News
by our Scottish Political Correspondent
BEFORE the coming of the telegram American politicians often gave whistle-stop speeches at various towns across the country where they could preach a different message at each town.
In a steel town they would promise tariffs for the steel industry and denounce lazy farmers, while at the next stop in the countryside they praised the farmers and denounce greedy steel-men.
Rupert Murdoch has revived this tradition. Exactly a week before the election his tabloid the Sun called for a Tory vote specifically to prevent “a Labour/SNP nightmare”.
contrast
In sharp contrast the Scottish edition of the same rag entitled the Scottish Sun has enthusiastically endorsed Nicola Sturgeon saying that she would “fight harder for Scotland’s interests at Westminster, offering a new hope for our country”.
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London protest demands justice for Odessa
MORE THAN 60 people gathered outside the Ukraine embassy in London on Saturday to mark the first anniversary of the Odessa massacre when dozens of people were killed as fascist thugs attacked an anti-Maidan protest camp and set the Trade Union house on fire. No one has faced trial for these murders, and so its anniversary was marked around the world yesterday, including in London.
The picket in London was organised by Solidarity with Anti-fascist Resistance in Ukraine (SARU) outside the Ukrainian embassy in Holland Park, West London, and SARU had produced a special banner to mark the occasion.
Alex Gordon from the rail workers union, RMT, spoke about the illegal coup in Kiev last year, and the burning of the Trade Union house in Odessa. Alex explained why it is important for people in Britain to demand justice for Odessa.
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Bangladeshi May Day in Whitechapel
by New Worker correspondent
MEMBERS and supporters of the Communist Party of Bangladesh (UK Branch) held a May Day Red Flag Rally and Ganasangeet cultural programme at the Altab Ali Park in Whitechapel, East London on 1st May.
In a statement the organisers said: “In Tower Hamlets this event has gone unrecognised for a long time,” and recalled that that the female workers of the Bryant May Match Factory in Bow went on strike in 1888 in protest against the sacking of a worker and the awful conditions of work.
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International News
Secret US-Japan deal to cover up germ warfare crimes
by Zhu Chao and Liu Xiuling
THE UNITED States struck a deal with Japan after the Second World War to conceal Japan’s heinous war crimes, including those committed by the notorious Unit 731 in northeast China in exchange for biological warfare data.
Shoji Kondo, author of Evidence of Unit 731 crimes says that the secret treaty “is possibly still effective”. He believes that the late Emperor Hirohito would have been charged with war crimes if relevant materials were exposed, a consequence both Japan and the United States did not want to see.
“Unit 731 was established by the order of Emperor Hirohito. Without his order, those researchers could do nothing. If the US wanted to investigate the atrocities by the Unit 731, Emperor Hirohito must be held responsible for war crimes,” said Kondo, who has been studying Japanese germ warfare since 1976.
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Britain’s ‘dirty war’ in Ireland
by John Hedges
THE FAMILY of Patrick Heenan, murdered by British state agents within the unionist Ulster Defence Association on 1st February 1973 in east Belfast, travelled to London last week with Relatives for Justice and solicitors KRW Law to issue legal proceedings against the Ministry of Defence and retired British Army Commander-in-Chief Frank Kitson.
Kitson, who at the time of Heenan’s murder was a brigadier posted to the North, is specifically named in the writ, the first of this kind whereby senior military figures have been included in relation to murders in Ireland.
Patrick Heenan (47) was killed when the minibus he was travelling in was targeted by the UDA. Patrick was a foreman joiner overseeing part of the construction of a Catholic school in east Belfast.
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New Iron Curtain: EU leaders to shield Europe from ‘Kremlin Propaganda
Sputnik International
EUROPEAN Union leaders will try to develop a strategy to curb “Kremlin propaganda” — an issue that is on a par with a Grexit and terrorism threats on the agenda.
The leaders of 28 EU countries will discuss ways to clamp down on “Russian propaganda” in light of the Ukrainian crisis during their upcoming summit in June, a diplomatic source told RIA Novosti.
“EU leaders are expected to discuss a plan of action to counter the Russian disinformation campaign,” the diplomat said.
In early 2015 Lithuania, Britain, Denmark and Estonia called on the European Commission to develop a strategy of battling Russia’s “propagandist campaign”. One of the measures stipulated was launching a Russian- speaking TV channel to dispel “Kremlin media myths.”.
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Features
70th Anniversary of the Victory over Fascism
by R Arun Kumar
ON THIS 9th May the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War will be observed. The rising of the Red Flag on the Reichstag, a day before in 1945, signalled the end of the war and the decisive defeat of the Nazi, fascist forces. Hitler, who symbolised the evil Nazi-fascists, committed suicide in his bunker on 30th April 1945, with the Red Army only streets away in Berlin. He was unable to digest the reality of his faltering dreams and failed ambitions.
True to the axiom that “success has many fathers”, 70 years later many countries are claiming the credit for defeating Nazism and bringing an end to the Second World War. Of course every stone pelted at the fascists contributed to their defeat. But this should not mean that the role of people other than themselves should be disparaged. The Polish president is on record claiming that it is “Ukrainians” who had liberated Poland and not the Soviet Red Army.
The European Union (EU) and the United States are actively encouraging brazen distortion of history, belittling the role of Soviet Union and the Red Army and glorifying the role played by the US, Britain and France.
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Privatisation, demons and profiling
by Rob Gowland
ALL OVER the world, but particularly in developed countries, capitalists are pushing hard for the privatisation of every government service and every publicly-owned enterprise, regardless of how much money it generates for the government’s coffers. At the same time, capitalist governments of all political shades have yielded to the demands of big business and cut corporate tax rates to the bone.
Reduced Government income is the inevitable result, with consequent cries of alarm to the effect that “we are living beyond our means” and that governments can no longer afford such “luxuries” as a pension people can live on (if they are particularly frugal, of course). Capitalism, however, is not concerned about the privations of the poor and the under-privileged. It is only interested in finding new sources of profit — and they are becoming harder to find.
Desperate, big business is seeking to take over the provision of all Government services, from running prisons to mending roads. As private security firms proliferate, even the provision of police services is being surreptitiously handed over to “cops for hire”. Maintaining order at rock concerts and sporting events is farmed out to the private sector, or if police actually provide the service, they charge for it.
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