National News
Far right ‘Day of Freedom’ attracts 4,000
JOINT event in London dubbed the “Day of Freedom” and organised jointly by several far right, racist, fascist, alt-right and Islamophobic groups attracted a total of around 4,000 supporters last Sunday, 6th May.
They included around 2,000 supporters of the Democratic Football Lads Alliance (DFLA — a split from the original Football Lads Alliance) who marched from Hyde Park Corner to Whitehall and Parliament Square,
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PCS attacks Universal Credit
THE CIVIL service union PCS last week published a critique of the Government’s Universal Credit (UC) programme, which is currently being rolled out around the country. It is based on the perspective of thousands of PCS members who work for the Department of Work and Pensions administering the programme.
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first private police force
BRITAIN’S first private police force is set to expand across Britain following its success in three of London’s wealthiest areas.
The force, called My Local Bobby, makes citizens arrests and can gather evidence to launch private prosecutions.
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Breast screening error
AS MANY as 270 women in England may have died because they did not receive invitations to a final routine breast cancer screening, the Health Secretary
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Child poverty set to soar
GOVERNMENT cuts mean that children from working households now account for two-thirds of those living in poverty in Britain according to figures published last week by the TUC.
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Scottish Political News
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
May Day in Glasgow
GLASGOW’S May Day march and rally on Sunday had a strong feminist them to mark the one hundredth anniversary of women (or at least some of them) getting the vote. The march was led by members of the Glasgow Equal Pay Campaign (GEPC), some of whom were dressed as Edwardian suffragettes whilst others wore a 1960s look to mark the 50th anniversary of the equal pay battle at Fords of Dagenham.
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The Great Baby Box Scandal
There were no municipal elections in Scotland last week to mull over but some nationalists made up for it by moaning about a manufacturer of traditional Scottish square Lorne sausages putting the Union Jack on the packaging. We shall refrain from making any comment of the priorities of our more colourful nationalists and focus instead on the great baby box scandal.
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Justice for Odessa fire martyrs!
by New Worker correspondent
NEW COMMUNIST Party leader Andy Brooks and Gerry Downing from the Socialist fight movement joined other anti-fascist picketers outside the Ukrainian embassy in London last week. The protest, called by the New Communist Party, Socialist fight and the British Posadists was part of an international commemoration of the workers who died when Ukrainian fascists torched the Odessa Trade Union House on 2nd May 2014
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When the Army debated democracy
by Carole Barclay
ON THE face of it St Mary’s in Putney looks like just any other heavily restored medieval parish church. But it’s a different story inside because back in 1647 this was where the representatives of the New Model Army opened a discussion of how they saw the future after the defeat of the Royalists during the Civil War.
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A BBQ for the workers
by New Worker correspondent
MEMBERS and supporters of Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group took advantage of the glorious weekend weather for a highly successful fundraising barbecue.
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International News
New Chinese-DPRK summit in Dalian
Xinhua
CHINESE president, Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC), met Kim Jong Un, the chair of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) and chair of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), in Dalian, in north-east China, this week.
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Key task for Russia in the coming years
Sputnik
RAISING the real income of Russian citizens will be a major task for the country’s leadership in the coming years, Russian President Vladimir Putin told ministers in the Kremlin on the eve of his inauguration on Monday.
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Venezuela quits OAS
Radio Havana Cuba
THE BOLIVARIAN government of Venezuela reaffirmed its decision to renounce its membership of the Organisation of American States (OAS) this week. The Venezuelan government said that the body has returned to “its original condition as a colonial body, at the service of Washington’s ambition for dominance
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Features
Mass challenge to the Military and Taliban alliance in Pakistan
by Shafiq Ahmad
A NEW Pashtun movement has erupted in Pakistan, mobilising hundreds of thousands of people across the country, with tens of thousands attending its public meetings. The state apparatus and the entire ruling class, including all establishment political parties, are trembling at the sight of this huge movement, which originated from the most backward areas of the country — where it was least expected.
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200 years on Karl Marx
Xinhua
IN September 1999, the BBC launched an online poll to find the greatest thinker of the millennium. Karl Marx, a great German philosopher and pioneer of the international communist movement, topped the list, leading Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton and even Charles Darwin with a clear margin.
Born in the Rhineland city of Trier on 5th May 1818, Marx lived in an era of drastic transformation. In that year, Britain was planning to build the world’s first railway, Prussia initiated the establishment of a customs union, and French peasants continued to flee their homes into cities because of heavy taxation.
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