THE NEW WORKER

The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 2nd November 2018

Lead story

Israel Pounds Gaza Again !

by our Arab Affairs correspondent

ISRAELI war-planes and drones are again pounding the Gaza Strip after Egyptian efforts to get a truce broke down last weekend. five Palestinians were gunned down at the Gaza border fence and three Palestinian teenagers were killed in an Israeli air-strike last weekend. Two were aged 13 the other was 14. The Zionists claimed they were “terrorists” about to plant bombs on the border fence The violence escalated when the Israelis resumed their attacks on Palestinian civilians. This provoked the Islamic Jihad militia, a rival to Hamas, the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood that runs the Gaza Strip, into firing a volley of rockets at targets in southern Israel in revenge. Earlier hopes of an end to the fighting had risen following progress in indirect talks, via Egyptian and United Nations officials, between Hamas and the Israelis. The Israelis agreed to allow Qatari-funded fuel shipments pass the Israeli blockade to help restore the broken electricity supply in the Strip and allow Qatar to meet a large chunk of the wages of the Strip’s public workers that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has threatened to curtail.

Read the full story here >> Israel Pounds Gaza Again !

New London trades council takes off

by Theo Russell

HAMMERSMITH, Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea Trades Council was successfully launched last week at its first AGM in West London. It was addressed by Manuel Cortes, the general secretary of the TSSA rail union, and chaired by Roger Sutton of the Greater London Association of Trade Union Councils. Cortes is a member of the TUC General Council, with responsibility for liaising with trades councils nationally. Roger Sutton recalled “the long and proud history of trades councils in this part of London”, and guided the meeting through the essential business — most importantly ensuring that enough local trade union branches were affiliated to make the new body viable — and gave invaluable advice on how to conduct its future work.

Read the full story here >> New London trades council takes off

Editorial

More Tory rubbish

THE CHANCELLOR, Philip Hammond, tells us that austerity is coming to an end. But there was little sign of that in his budget statement to parliament this week. Labour Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell rejected his claim, saying that more welfare cuts were come. He also said that prisons, schools and local authorities would not have much to celebrate about the new budget, and should be preparing for more difficult years ahead. Hammond said this was a budget for “strivers, grafters and carers”. But it was, as usual, a budget for the capitalists, bankers, industrialists and landowners who really run this country. The Chancellor doled out some sops to provide the mainstream media with more fake news about a “give away” budget for “Middle England”. But robbing Peter to pay Paul seldom fools anyone these days. The bourgeois media trumpeted Hammond’s decision to lift some low-paid workers out of income taxation by raising the personal allowance to £12,500. But raising the higher tax band to £50,000 will benefit the high-earners whose loyalty the Tories need to retain at the next election. A one-off £400 million “bonus” for schools to buy “little extras” goes nowhere to compensate for a decade of cuts, whilst the much vaunted £4 billion for mental healthcare comes out of the existing £20 billion already earmarked for the NHS, which everyone who works in the health service thinks is woefully inadequate. Hammond says that austerity will end but “discipline will remain”, which means the same in Tory-speak. No wonder the Labour leader has called this a “broken-promise budget”. Jeremy Corbyn points out that the spending plans bring no benefit to poorer people and will only lead to further cuts to many public services.

Read the full editorial here >> More Tory rubbish