Lead story

Another Tory U-Turn

by Daphne Liddle

THE TORIES have been forced again to make concessions on the anti-Trade Union Bill that had even former Tory Home Secretary David Davis comparing some of the clauses to laws passed by fascist Franco in Spain and threatening to vote against the Bill at its third reading unless it was changed.

Business Secretary Sajid Javid on Wednesday announced a big climb-down on some of their proposals to restrict picketing and protest.

The Government has now dropped its proposal to force unions to publish a protest and picketing plan 14 days in advance. This would have made unions spell out in great detail how they planned to campaign during a strike.

It would have given employers and the police two weeks’ notice of everything the union planned to do — where and when pickets would be held, how many would attend, even whether megaphones would be used.

And it would have made unions declare online how they would campaign, including what they were intending to post on Facebook and Twitter. And if they did not comply unions would have been liable for fines of up to £20,000.

The Government decided not to go ahead with proposals to create new criminal offences around picketing or to make every picketer wear an armband or give their name to the police.

But picket organisers will still have to wear an armband and give their name and address to the police. And they’ll still have to carry a standard letter from the union authorising the picket. The threat of victimisation will hang over many trade union activists.

Read the full story here >>

Another Tory U-Turn

Families demand no more deaths in custody

by New Worker correspondent

HUNDREDS of members of families who have lost a close relative through a death in custody gathered on a corner of Trafalgar Square last Saturday with banners, placards and leaflets to commemorate their loved ones, and to demand an end to deaths in custody.

Since 1990 a total of 1,518 people have died in custody and their families are demanding justice.

Some died in police stations, police vans, prisons and secure mental hospitals. All had died needlessly; but in every case the killers have not been brought to justice.

The victims included: Sean Rigg, Seni Lewis, Jimmy Mubenga, Roger Sylvester, Shehu Bayoh, Rebecca Overy, Ricky Bishop, Jason Thomson, Paul Coker, Thomas Orchard, Joy Gardener, Kingsley Burrell and many, many more.

Read the full story here >>

Families demand no more deaths in custody

Editorial

Don’t bomb Syria

GOVERNMENT plans to bomb Syria have again been put on hold largely because David Cameron cannot get enough support in Parliament for a new British military intervention in the Middle East. The handful of Blairite turncoats in the Parliamentary Labour Party are far outweighed by Tory rebels and Labour and the rest of the opposition, including the Scottish and Welsh nationalists and the Liberal-Democrats, who are totally opposed to sending the RAF into the fray.

In August 2013 Cameron’s Tory-Lib-Dem Coalition government lost a Commons vote on possible military action by Britain against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government by 285 to 272 votes. He lost the vote because Labour leader Ed Miliband took the principled stand to oppose sending the RAF into combat as part of US-led strikes backed by a significant number of Tory rebels who abstained or voted with the opposition.

Earlier in the week an influential committee of MPs warned the Conservative leader that he should not press forward for air-strikes until he could show there was a clear plan to end Syria’s bloody civil war and defeat the “Islamic State”. The Foreign Affairs Committee, which has a Tory majority, raised concerns about the legality of any British military intervention and said the Prime Minister should instead focus on efforts to end Syria’s civil war.

Read the full story here >>

Don’t bomb Syria