National News
Compensation for blacklisted workers
THE GIANT union Unite last Monday won a victory for 256 workers who had been blacklisted and are now due to share more than £10 million in compensation.
The pay-outs could range from £25,000 up to £200,000 per claimant, depending on such factors as the loss of income and the seriousness of the defamation.
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Climate protesters occupy mine
PROTESTERS against the continuing use of fossil fuels and the damage this does to our climate occupied the Ffos-y-fran coal mine, Britain’s largest open-cast coal mine in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales on Tuesday 3rd May.
The environmental activists from the Reclaim the Power group, wearing red boiler suits, formed a human chain blocking access to the mine.
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Massive student rent strike
MORE than 1,000 students across London are withholding their rents in protest at soaring rent costs. Last week students from Roehampton University and the Courtauld Institute of Art joined those from Goldsmiths and University College London (UCL).
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BBC under fire
THE BBC managed to get its news teams thrown out of Hong Kong and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in one week for biased, misleading and negative reporting but the corporation is also under strong criticism closer to home.
The BBC’s political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, has been sharply criticised for coverage of last week’s local elections that was described as “nothing short of propaganda” against Labour. Her anti-Corbyn crusade previously included the staged resignation of a Labour MP.
It has led to questions about who is really running the BBC, which is supposed to be “politically neutral”.
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Allegations of Tory election fraud
THE CROWN Prosecution Service (CPS) has cleared the way for police forces around the country to consider prosecuting 26 Tory MPs for electoral fraud through hiding the amount they were spending on their election campaigns.
But many are asking whether Parliament should be called into recess while this is sorted out, to make sure no further business may be completed with the help of people who gained their Parliamentary seats fraudulently.
The Tories have a very narrow majority in the House of Commons and it could easily disappear if as many as half of those who are under suspicion were found to have been elected fraudulently.
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No evidence of Lutfur Rahman fraud
THE METROPOLITA N Police have dropped their investigation into electoral fraud by former Tower Hamlets mayor Lutfur Rahman because of “insufficient evidence that criminal offences had been committed”.
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Court defeat for Israel lobby
A TRIBUNAL judge last week set an important precedent when he comprehensively dismissed a high-profile legal attack on the University and College Union that was accusing the union of anti-Semitism.
The case was brought after democratic union bodies discussed boycotts of Israel. An Employment Tribunal ruled that the claim of “institutional anti- Semitism,” brought by union member and Academic Friends of Israel director Ronnie Fraser, was dismissed on all counts.
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Topshop: pay your cleaners the living wage
A NEW WAVE of protests outside branches of the high-street chain Topshop has been organised for this weekend as part of the campaign against the appallingly low wages Topshop pays to its cleaning staff and its victimisation of those who are leading the fight for better pay.
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Scottish Political News
by our Scottish Political Correspondent
RUPERT MURDOCH must have been delighted with the state of the electoral map of Scotland. Not only was most of it covered by his preferred sickly Scottish National Party (SNP) yellow, there were also new large blue Tory blobs to delight the media mogul’s eye.
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May Day in Edinburgh
by New Worker correspondent
AROUND 750 people marched through central Edinburgh last Saturday on the annual Edinburgh and Lothians May Day march, which traditionally takes place on the first Saturday in May.
The march was led by the Royal Scots Association and Bothwick pipe bands, whose stirring bagpipe tunes attracted crowds of locals and tourists, many of whom waved and clapped in support.
When the march passed the plaque marking James Connolly’s birthplace on Cowgate in the old town, the marchers paused to dip their banners in his honour.
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Posadists remember fallen comrade and host debate
by New Worker correspondent
COMMUNISTS and socialist from a broad spectrum of groups met last Saturday at the Marx Memorial Library to remember Brian Lynam, a lifelong activist, thinker and Posadist, and to exchange and share views.
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International News
Banquets to celebrate WPK 7th Congress
KCNA
BANQUETS took place last Monday in celebration of the 7th Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) at Mokran House, the People’s Palace of Culture, Okryu Restaurant, Chongryu Restaurant and other places of Pyongyang Tuesday.
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Brazil: the brain and the brawn of the coup is abroad
by Timothy Bancroft- Hinchey
THE FORMER president of the Bar Association, Marcello Lavenère, who was one of the lawyers who signed the document to request the impeachment against former president Fernando Collor, said on Tuesday that the “brain” of the move to frame President Dilma, without any crime, is from out of the country.
He said the impeachment is not against a president, as in the case of Collor, but against the reduction of social inequalities, against the increase in income of the value of the minimum wage and all the achievements of the last 13 years — but also against independence of Brazilian foreign policy.
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Germany’s AfD calls for end to anti-Russian sanctions
Sputnik
PARTY LEGISLATORS from Germany’s populist opposition party Alternative for Germany (AfD) have called for scrapping sanctions against Russia, saying that they plan to send the relevant resolution to the government of the federal state of Baden-Wurttemberg on 11th May Russia
Today reported.
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Protests, strikes in Latin America
by Benji Pyles
WORKERS filled the streets in Argentina in protest marches on 29th April against right-wing President Mauricio Macri’s campaign of job cuts.
The main demonstration took place in Buenos Aires, where hundreds of thousands of people participated. Protests also took place in other provinces. In a show of unity, the five main trade unions called the march despite their own differences with each other.
“This is an historic gathering. We understand that the interests of the workers come before the interests of the union leaders,” said Hugo Moyano, who heads the truckers’ union and a branch of the influential CGT labour federation (Confederación General del Trabajo; General Confederation of Labour). “Macri is against the workers.”
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Features
Vietnam and the legacy of ‘continuous war’
by Rob Gowland
ON 29TH MARCH 1973 the last United States combat troops were officially withdrawn from South Vietnam. “Withdrawn?” Driven out would be more accurate. The war would not actually end for another two years but it was clear that the world’s richest imperialist power had suffered ignominious defeat at the hands of one of the world’s poorest nations.
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Hindutva, the threat to India’s secular environment
by Baldev Padam
“Fascism is not
defined by the
number of its
victims, but by the
way it kills them” —
Jean-Paul Sartre
THE RASHTRIYA Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is a right-wing Hindu organisation formed in 1925 in India, with Hindutva (making India a Hindu Nation) as its ambition. Hindutva is a political movement dissimilar from Hinduism, the religion followed by the majority of Indians since time immemorial.
Since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) assumed power in 2014 under Narendra Modi as its leader, the RSS has assumed a singular importance. The ruling party, known as the political arm of RSS, has steadily pushed towards the goal of Hindutva, notwithstanding fierce opposition from minority communities, secular and rationalist elements in society.
While Hindutva means to the jingoists a nation of Hindus to the exclusion of others, Hinduism is a tolerant and inclusive religion. More than merely a faith, it has come to be known as a liberal way of peaceful coexisting with all others.
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Nine days in May ninety years ago
by Robert Laurie
“SURRENDER of the Revolutionaries” was the headline of the much reduced issue of The Daily Mail of the 13th May 1926. It was indeed a surrender but not by revolutionaries. The surrender referred to was an announcement by the General Council of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) that: “In order to resume negotiations, the General Council of the TUC have decided to terminate the general strike today.”
For the previous nine days Britain had been brought to a standstill in an unprecedented act of solidarity with the coal miners, who had long been opposing wage cuts in their industry. The TUC’s surrender was at first met with disbelief in many parts of the country where the strike remained solid. On first hearing the news some thought it was a victory. Instead of weakening increasing numbers, particularly engineering workers, who had not been in the first wave of solidarity, were eager to join the fray.
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