National News
Capita staff balloted over pension scheme
MEMBERS of the union Unite employed by Capita began voting in a strike ballot on Monday in a dispute over major changes to the pensions of staff.
Unite is conducting an industrial action ballot following the proposal to close the current defined benefit [final salary pension] scheme. In July Capita informed its employees of significant changes to the pension arrangements. Staff in the scheme will suffer a massive cut in their retirement income as a result of the proposals.
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Remembering the Battle of Lewisham — and the beginning of the end of the National Front
by New Worker correspondent
ANTI-FASCISTS gathered outside the New Cross Inn, close to Clifton Rise, last Saturday to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the historic battle between local communities and the National Front, who were supported by thousands of police, that saw the fascists forced to turn back and marked the beginning of the decline of the National Front (NF).
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Terms of reference of Grenfell Tower fire inquiry announced
A SILENT march of respect for those who died in the Grenfell Tower fire — at least 88 according to official estimates but reckoned to be many more by survivors — walked along Ladbroke Grove and around the estate where the empty burnt and blackened tower still stand as a shocking reminder of the terrible fire there just two months ago.
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Scots oppose new Trump golf course
DONALD Trump has found time off from his presidential duties to submit plans to expand his golf course in Aberdeenshire.
His first venture caused great anger amongst locals as his minions bulldozed their way on to neighbouring properties, destroying buildings that he deemed to be “too ugly” and riding roughshod over the rights and property of the local community and damaging the ecosystem on the beaches.
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May’s new attack on benefits
THERESA May’s government has quietly announced a trial of yet another ‘reform’ of the welfare state, which could force thousands of sick and disabled people back to work, or face being sanctioned.
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Selling off the NHS
THE TORY government has doubled the number of NHS properties being sold off to private developers — and many of the properties now on the market are still being used for medical care.
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Justice4Jannies
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
ON Monday Glasgow’s school janitors won a six per cent pay rise after a lengthy and bitter dispute with the council and their formal employer the ‘arms-length external organisation’, Cordia, that began in January 2016. The dispute has involved the low paid workers working to rule and undertaking strike action amounting in total to 67 days in blocs of three, five and finally 10 days. In addition the janitors led the 2016 Glasgow May Day march, twice held demonstrations at the Scottish Parliament and even held a two day, 25 mile fund-raising walk from the Kelpies sculptures near Falkirk to Glasgow.
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Freedom of Information
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
The Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) government has achieved a new distinction. It has the worst record for refusing Freedom of Information (FoI) requests from journalists than any other organisation in Britain. Over the last seven years they failed to meet the 20-day statutory response deadline for between 20—32 per cent of tabled requests. Thirty-eight per cent of all request were partially or fully refused in 2015/16. Between a third and half of requests from the public were partially denied and 47 per cent of requests from journalists were regularly stonewalled.
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Nationalists at War
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
From top to bottom Scotland’s nationalists are at each other throats. Although Left versus Right battles are the norm in both the Labour and Conservative parties, it is very unusual for members of the SNP to make even the mildest criticism of each other in public. Elected representatives are banned by party rules from making any critical remarks about party policy, which makes it difficult to establish just who loathes whom. Which is not to say that stabbing each other in the back does not go on behind closed doors.
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No new Korean War!
by New Worker correspondent
LONDON comrades joined other peace campaigners outside the American embassy on Friday 11th August to protest against Donald Trump’s latest threats against north Korea.
New Communist Party leader Andy Brooks and other members of the Central Committee gathered outside the centre of US imperialism in London to call on the US President to pursue a diplomatic solution to the crisis that is entirely of America’s making.
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Glasgow remembers the Hunger Strikers
by Special Correspondent
ON the 36th anniversary of their deaths, the 1981 H-Blocks Hunger Strikers were remembered in Glasgow last month in a series of commemorative events organised by Cairde na hÉireann.
The weekend started with Cairde na hÉireann showcasing their Hunger Strike Exhibition, Stailc Ocrais, which provides an historical account of hunger strikes throughout the republican struggle.
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In solidarity with the anti-fascists of Charlottesville
by New Worker correspondent
ANTI-Fascists gathered outside the United States embassy in Grosvenor Square in London on Monday to show solidarity with the anti-fascists in Charlottesville, Virginia, after an American neo-Nazi drove a car into a group of protesting anti-fascists, killing one, Heather Heyer, and injuring 19 others.
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International News
Anti-racist protests sweep America
by Pavel Jacomino
THOUSANDS of people rallied in cities across the United States on Sunday to protest against deadly violence by a mob of Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members and neo-Nazis during a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday.
A 20-year-old Nazi sympathizer killed one anti-racist activist and injured more than a dozen others when he rammed his car into a crowd of people protesting against the KKK and neo-Nazis who were rallying to oppose Charlottesville’s plan to remove a monument of Confederate General Robert E Lee from a downtown public park. Two state troopers also died when their helicopter crashed en route to the scene of the violence.
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North Korea delays decision on Guam missile plans
Telesur
THE Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has delayed a decision on firing missiles towards the US Pacific colony of Guam whilst it waits to see what the United States does next.
DPRK leader Kim Jong Un inspected the command of the country’s army on Monday, examining a plan to fire four missiles to land near Guam.
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Charlottesville: Watershed in the united struggle against fascism
by Workers World Party (US)
The following is a statement from Workers World Party, which sent many of its members to Charlottesville, Virginia, to beat back the Nazis and Klan who marched there.
THE COMING out into the light of day of an openly fascist movement in the United States, as happened last weekend in Charlottesville, confirms at least three things about the state of this country.
[Read the full statement at Charlottesville: Watershed in the united struggle against fascism]
What it means to be like Che
by Yenia Silva Correa
WE WILL be like Che! That is a chant well known by Cuban school children, repeated during special events, as a commitment to the revolution. Generations and generations of Cubans have grown up with a phrase calling on them to follow the example of a ‘new man’ or ‘new woman’ for a new society: “Pioneers for communism, we will be like Che”
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Veteran Sudanese Communist dies
CPI
VETERAN Sudanese communist and feminist leader, Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim, died at the age of 84 in London on Saturday morning 12th August.
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Features
The ongoing Cold War
by Rob Gowland
ANYONE who tries to tell you that the Cold War finished years ago “with the fall of the Soviet Union” has not been paying attention to what is happening right now in various parts of the world, most conspicuously perhaps in Venezuela. A democratically elected government that is trying to meet the needs of the poor is being destabilised by a well-organised, well-funded, foreign-directed campaign supported by a massive, co-ordinated propaganda blitz through all the world’s monopoly-controlled media.
That was the essence of the Cold War — that and the fact that it was always aimed at disrupting and if possible removing left-wing governments, whether the social democrat Allende in Chile or the Communist-led government in Moldova.
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Remembering the Life and Times of India’s Bandit Queen
Telesur
PHOOLAN Devi was from a low caste and became a dacoit, a member of a band of armed robbers, before entering into politics in later life.
Born on 10th August 1963, to a lower-caste fisherman’s family in a remote village in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, Phoolan Devi is remembered as a champion of the nation’s poor.
Often referred to as “India’s female Robin Hood”, she was also one of the most rebellious figures in the country’s modern history.
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Roger Waters: ‘On the altar of Zionism, they want to tear up the Constitution’
Sputnik
LAST WEEK Radio Sputnik’s Eugene Puryear spoke with Roger Waters about the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and exercising free speech even when it comes to the inflammatory Israel-Palestine conflict. The founding member of the legendary Pink Floyd stopped by Radio Sputnik’s Washington offices amid charges from the Jewish Community Relations Council that Waters’ activism has “crossed the line into anti-Semitism.”
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