National News
No legal aid for benefit cases
CUTS to the legal aid system initiated in 2011 have led to a 99 per cent reduction in legal aid being available to disabled people who are in dispute with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) over decisions on their benefit entitlements.
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Racist conference collapses
THE FAR-RIGHT group, Generation Identity (GI), which promotes a new version of eugenics, planned to hold a “European conference” in London last Saturday. Details of the venue were kept secret until the last minute to foil anti-fascist protests
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ACAS conciliators to take industrial action
MEMBERS of the civil service union PCS, who work as conciliators for ACAS, are to take industrial action in a long-running dispute over the imposition of changes by management of the conciliation service.
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Skripal poison “was BZ”
THE SUBSTANCE used to poison Sergei Skripal and his daughter was an agent called BZ, according to Swiss state Spiez laboratory, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The toxin was never produced in Russia but was in service in the USA, Britain and other NATO states.
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Bank of England warns of Marxist revival
MARK Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, warned last week that mass job losses caused by advancing technology could
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May’s husband’s Capital Group profits soar
PHILIP MAY, the Prime Minister’s husband, works for a company that is the largest shareholder in arms manufacturer BAE Systems, whose share price has soared since
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Scottish Political News
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
THE PHENOMENON of cybernats (nationalists who post anonymous vitriolic online abuse at their political opponents) has come under attack from a leading politician. He has sternly denounced them, saying “shouting people down, name calling and misrepresenting people’s views will not help anybody” after he was described as an “Etonian boot-licker” who had become “well settled into London life.”
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Edukashun Newz
John Mason, the SNP MSP for Shettleston in the east end of Glasgow, had a not very clever response to an irate constituent who complained that her child had had no permanent teacher for an entire year. Apparently the pupil had been taught by seven people and the first part of lessons involved pupils telling the transient teachers what they had covered. The irate mother correctly pointed out that this “is not education, it is a babysitting service. Spin it any way you want but I have never seen so many angry parents. Lack of teachers is having a huge negative impact.”
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European communists meet in Brussels
by New Worker correspondent
EUROPEAN communist and workers’ parties met in Brussels last week to discuss communist campaigning within the labour movement across the continent.
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Down with the Kiev fascist regime!
by New Worker correspondent
NEW Communist Party (NCP) leader Andy Brooks joined other anti-fascist campaigners demonstrating outside the Ukrainian embassy in London last weekend. The picket, called by the NCP
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Day of the Sun in Minsk
by New Worker correspondent
activists from around the world honoured the memory of great leader Kim Il Sung at an international conference in Minsk, the capital of the Republic of Belarus, last week.
Dermot Hudson, chair of the UK Korean Friendship Association (KFA), took part in the solidarity meeting that included delegates from Europe, Australia, Egypt Japan and Mexico, as well as diplomats from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) embassy in Minsk and a team from Democratic Korea’s Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries.
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Indian communists meet in Manchester
People’s Democracy (India)
THE annual conference of the Association of Indian Communists (AIC) was held for the first time in the historic industrial city of Manchester last month. Delegates and friends representing the diverse Indian diaspora from cities across Britain and Ireland assembled in the Comrade Avtar Singh Nagar Hall on 31st March and 1st April for the rally and conference.
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International News
Iran teams up with China on nuclear development
Sputnik
AS US President Donald Trump decides whether to reauthorise the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which he has long wanted to exit or renegotiate, Iranian authorities have announced that they will be getting help with their nuclear programme from China.
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Israeli Labour Party cuts ties with Corbyn
Radio Havana Cuba
THE ISRAELI Labour Party says it has decided to sever temporarily all ties with Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of Britain’s Labour Party, due to his perceived failure to handle anti-Semitism in his party.
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Malvinas War remembered
MONDAY the 2nd of April marked 36 years since Argentine troops landed on the disputed Falkland/Malvinas Islands that had been taken over by the British Empire in 1833, drawing Britain into an armed conflict.
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President Macron, tool of the oligarchs
Workers World (US)
SINCE the beginning of March, France has plunged into social turbulence. Dissatisfaction is rising everywhere. Demonstrations multiply, as do strikes, notably in public transport — from railway to Air France workers, amongst sanitation workers, and also in the mass retailing sector.
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Features
A threat to Ghana’s independence
Sputnik
THOUSANDS of Ghanaians demonstrated in the capital of Accra on 28th March against a defence agreement with the USA in which Washington would inject $20 million into the country’s military and grant the US “unimpeded” access to military facilities. They see the deal as an affront to their sovereignty.
Three thousand people in Ghana protested the defence agreement with the USA holding signs declaring “Ghana not for sale,” and “legalising the invasion of African sovereignty is a mockery to our independence,” in response to the update to the 1998 Status of Forces Agreement Ghana—USA defence agreement, which the new deal expands upon with the $20 million
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Peace in the Basque Country cannot be built by only one side
An Phoblacht
IT’S A BRAVE while from when I last played hand-ball. Last week I had a game with my friend Igor in a little village called Gatzaga in the Basque Country.
Igor is from Arasate (or Mondragon) and we’ve been buddies for a long time. He lived for a few years in Ireland; was arrested in France; tried to escape from prison; and served
[Read the complete story in the print edition]The US is an oligarchy not a democracy
Granma
“THE GOVERNMENT of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.” By replacing the term “people” in Abraham Lincoln’s well-known phrase with those who have real power in the USA, we gain a more exact idea of how US politics and society work.
The country that presents itself as a universal model of democracy does not meet the basic standards of a system in which the majority makes decisions.
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1918: British intervention in Russia unlawful and indefensible
Sputnik
BRITISH military intervention in Russia in 1918—1919 was unlawful and indefensible, British government papers held by the National Archives reveal. It turned Russian public attitudes towards Britain from friendly to hostile.
In March 1918 the Bolshevik government signed a peace treaty with Germany, as they had promised to the nation exhausted by four years of the devastating and senseless first World War. The Russian Revolution was triggered by the overwhelming public desire for peace
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