National News
In the air again
by New Worker correspondent
ANOTHER aviation issue relating to long hours has been raised by the RMT union, which represents many North Sea oil workers. The union is demanding a public inquiry into helicopter safety in the region.
It has highlighted the long-standing issue after an Air Accident Investigation Board report found that fatigue amongst overworked ground engineers contributed to a near miss at Aberdeen airport involving an Airbus 175 helicopter operated by the Canadian company CHC Helicopters.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Class struggle in the sky
by New Worker correspondent
THIS SUMMER the class struggle appears to be developing in the air, or at least in the gateways to the sky.
Late last month 400 workers at Glasgow Airport called off strike action after last minute talks broke the deadlock and secured them a satisfactory settlement in a long-running dispute about pensions. Slightly more recently, at the beginning of this month another long-running dispute at Aberdeen International Airport ended when 300 security staff, fire and airfield support staff belonging to Unite the Union voted by 60—40 per cent to accept a revised pay and pensions deal after taking strike action.
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Down the Tube
by New Worker correspondent
THE RMT is stepping up preparations for ballots for strike action by its 10,000 London Underground members after the tube union accused London Underground bosses of stringing staff along and playing fast and loose after eight days of pay talks failed to secure any kind of meaningful offer out of the management side.
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Death by Contracting Out
by New Worker correspondent
RMT has demanded an absolute ban on contracting out and an end to the cuts culture on the railways, along with the replacement of the Office of Rail and Road, a non-ministerial Government Department, with a genuinely independent safety regulator, after the death of a track worker death at Purley, near Croydon.
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Revolutionary Democracy
Reviewed by Robin McGregor
Revolutionary Democracy
Vol XXIV, No 2, April, 2019.
£5.00 + £1.00 p&p from NCP Lit: PO Box 73, London SW11 2PQ.
ONCE AGAIN, the twice-yearly Indian Marxist-Leninist has arrived from New Delhi to these shores and is available for purchase for a very reasonable sum.
The usual mixture of articles on contemporary Indian politics, contemporary events from around the globe from parties associated with the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations (ICMLPO), and archival materials is a well tried but not tired one.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
A long, hot summer…
by our Scottish affairs correspondent
THE Scottish Parliament has closed down for its two-month long summer holiday but there that does not entirely mean that political life comes to a complete halt.
Out of a thin field the most exciting news is possibly that former Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Tavish Scott is standing down as MSP for the Shetland Islands to become head of Scottish Rugby. The resultant by-election, in the safest seat in Scotland, will take place in late August. Another former leader, Kezia Dugdale for Labour, has also deserted Holyrood in favour of a pseudo-academic job at Glasgow University. As she was only a List MSP, she will be replaced automatically by a formerly unsuccessful hopeful on the Labour List.
Nevertheless, there is still plenty of infighting on the nationalist front to keep us amused, despite the best efforts of the Scottish National Party (SNP) high command to stamp out dissent.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Health News
by our Scottish affairs correspondent
On Tuesday it was announced that Scotland came top of a European league table. As this was the European Union’s (EU) drugs death table the Scottish Government did not rush out a press release to boast about it and how they were so different from England. It recorded 1,187 registered drug deaths in 2018, an increase of 27 per cent compared with 2017. Three quarters were male, 86 per cent died from opiates such as heroin. Dundee was proportionally the worst area.
This was the highest in the EU at 213 per million, way ahead of the grim runner-up Estonia at 130. In the UK as a whole the percentage was a third of the Scottish figure.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Short Changed
by our Scottish affairs correspondent
Contracted-out workers involved in cleaning, portering, maintenance, housekeeping and security at Hairmyres Hospital in East Kilbride are among the latest group of such workers to take action over changes to their payroll arrangements.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Down the fairway
by our Scottish affairs correspondent
A Scottish golf club is facing closure because its landlord disapproves of the club’s members voting to introduce unacceptable and inappropriate behaviour to the links and clubhouse.
The club in question is the Stornoway Golf Club, whose members recently voted unanimously to open the course seven days per week. They earlier voted to obtain a seven days per week drinks licence for the club (which has not been granted).
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Targeting kids!
fiLM REVIEW
by Theo Russell
War School (2018). Director: Mic Dixon. POW Productions Ltd. 85 minutes.
WAR SCHOOL is a superb new resource for the peace movement in Britain, which has faced huge challenges since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the virtually endless series of wars involving British forces since 1990.
One statistic quoted in the film sums up the ghastly reality of modern war: in the first World War, 20 per cent of those killed were civilians and 80 per cent were military; in the Second World War it was 50—50; but in today’s wars, the ratio is 95 per cent civilian, five per cent military.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
A landmark for the movement
by New Worker correspondent
LAST weekend comrades gathered to celebrate the 42nd anniversary of the foundation of the New Communist Party (NCP) at the Party Centre in London. Friends and comrades, including three founder members, joined NCP leader Andy Brooks in celebrating the anniversary of the Party that was established by Sid French in July 1977 to challenge the ‘Eurocommunism’ and revisionism that was the dominant trend within the British communist movement at the time.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
International News
Trump knows about war but nothing about solidarity
by Bertha Mojena Milián
The only troops Cuba has in Venezuela are the doctors in our army of white coats, helping to save lives there, as thousands of others do around the world. But President Donald Trump shows no signs of ending his unfounded accusations of Cuba.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
A nest of American spies in Baghdad
Sputnik
IRAQI MP Hassan Salem has accused the US Embassy in Baghdad of serving as a “hotbed for Israel’s Mossad and ISIS”. The massive $750 million diplomatic compound, which is nearly the size of the Vatican, was opened in 2009, several years after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Trump abuses UK ambassador who called him “inept”
by Curtis Stone
SIR KIM Darroch, the British ambassador to the USA, has announced his resignation days after leaked cables cast US President Donald Trump in an unflattering light. The announcement was reported by multiple outlets. British Prime Minister Theresa May called it “a matter of deep regret”.
The leaked cables from the ambassador, which were exposed by the Daily Mail, described Trump as “inept”, “insecure” and “incompetent” in a series of memos. The cables also warned London that the White House was “uniquely dysfunctional” and that Trump’s career could end in “disgrace”.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Hong Kong: regime change vs change the world
by Rob Gowland
THE VICTORY of the Red forces in China’s civil war in 1949 was a huge setback for imperialism and especially for the leading imperialist power, the USA. The USA had emerged from the Second World War as pre-eminent amongst the capitalist allies, aided immeasurably by the fact that it had not had to endure invasion and associated fighting (and the accompanying destruction) on its own territory that Britain and especially the Soviet Union had experienced.
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Features
Soviet—German Non-Aggression Pact helped Soviet Victory
by Sergey Ivanov
In less than two months the world will mark the 80th anniversary of the start of the Second World War. Sergey Ivanov, Russia’s former defence minister and Kremlin chief of staff, has spoken about the controversy behind the 1939 Treaty of Non-aggression between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
Sergey Ivanov is currently the Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation on Issues of Environmental Activities, Environment and Transport, and is the chairman of the Russian Military Historical Society.
The Soviet Union and Germany signed the Molotov—Ribbentrop pact, named for the Soviet and German foreign ministers Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop, on 23rd August 1939. A secret protocol delineating “spheres of interests” between the two countries was signed simultaneously with the pact. According to the document, USSR’s sphere of influence included Latvia, Estonia, Western Belarus, Western Ukraine and Bessarabia, and moved the European border of the country much to the west.
Sputnik: Relations between the USSR and Germany deteriorated sharply after Hitler came to power. When did this deterioration happen exactly, why and on whose initiative did it come about?
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