National News
Waves of strikes sweep the country
by Oleg Burunov
ON FRIDAY, at least 115,000 postal workers took to the streets across the UK to demand a “dignified and proper pay raise”. The strike became one of the country’s biggest walkouts in more than a decade and came amidst skyrocketing inflation and soaring energy bills.
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On the front-line
by New Worker correspondent
ON MONDAY, Unite announced that its Scottish local government committee was rejecting entirely the slightly improved offer of five per cent (up from the original 3.5) vainly made by the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (CoSLA) to resolve the strike by refuse collectors. Unison has also rejected the offer and said its members will be voting on it. Whilst cleansing workers have been at the forefront of action, the offer applies to many other council workers as well.
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Health battles
by New Worker correspondent
NOT YET on strike, but thinking about it, are nursing staff belonging to the Royal College of Nursing (RCN). They are being urged to vote in favour of strike action by their general secretary Pat Cullen, who said: “There’s never been a more urgent time to fight for fair pay and patient safety. From severe staff shortages to a decade of underpayment, we can’t continue like this.”
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A battle won
by New Worker correspondent
WHILST battles still have to be fought, there are a few recent triumphs worth recording. One of them is in Manchester, where thousands of healthcare assistants (HCAs) have successfully claimed up to £5,000 in backdated earnings that were due to them having long-worked on clinical duties above their pay grade.
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Scottish Political News
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
SCOTLAND, and indeed the rest of the UK, may well be on the brink of the worst economic crisis of the last 50 years, but it’s still the silly season as far as the media are concerned.
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International News
Free all Ukrainian political prisoners!
by New Worker correspondent
A VERY successful online meeting to mobilise international support for the Free the Kononovich Brothers campaign took place on Thursday 25th August, with 50 participants from Ukraine, the Russian Federation, the USA, England and Scotland. Organised by the London-based International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity campaign (IUAFS), the seminar called for the release of the Kononovich brothers and all Ukrainian political prisoners, and for the restoration of all political and media freedoms.
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Western unity over Ukraine crumbling
by Alexey Belov
READING the US and European media lately, I catch myself thinking that they in the West cannot make up their own minds about the conflict in Ukraine.
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Is Biden like Trump?
by Elson Concepción Pérez
I CAN’T imagine Joe Biden summoning his followers to “take over” the Capitol or proclaiming electoral fraud in the “cradle of democracy.”
In the time that has elapsed since he took office, however, he has frequently identified with Donald Trump’s political actions and, at the very least, he uses the strategy of inertia to avoid changing what was established by his predecessor.
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Double standards at their finest
by Andrei Mihailov
ON 24th August, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan had a meeting with his Israeli counterpart Eyal Hulata in Washington to discuss issues of co-operation between the two countries
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Features
The untold story: Soviet support for Indian independence
by Ilya Tsukanov
MONDAY 15th August was the 75th anniversary of Indian independence. Festivities across the country celebrated the jubilee of the end of British rule. Russia played a hugely important, but largely forgotten, role in helping India on its journey to self-rule and with post-independence state construction. Here’s a refresher on how it all took place.
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Oliver Cromwell: 1599–1658
by New Worker corresondent
OLIVER CROMWELL died on 3rd September 1658. Cromwell, the MP for Huntingdon, was the leading Parliamentary commander during the English Civil War that began in 1642 and ended in 1649 with the trial and execution of Charles Stuart and the abolition of the monarchy. The Republic of England, or Commonwealth as it was usually styled in English, was proclaimed soon after.
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