National News
Braverman defies UN and Lineker over migrants
by James Tweedie , Sputnik
Britain's home secretary has vowed to push ahead with a crackdown on illegal immigration despite protests by the UN – and insults from football pundit Gary Lineker.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Budget Day Actions
by New Worker correspondent
Next Wednesday, 15th March, which is coincidently Budget Day, will hopefully see over half a million workers take strike action; some as part of on-going action and others for the first time.
Those involved include around 275,000 teachers belonging to the National Education Union (NEU) in England and Wales, around 125,000 civil servants belonging to PCS and Prospect will be joining them, along with University and College Union members In London at least, getting to the picket line by tube will be difficult because members of the ASLEF and RMT unions will be on strike. Other rail workers and Royal Mail workers who have unfinished business will not be involved, but junior doctors will be taking what for them is the unusual step of strike action
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
At the Town Hall
by New Worker correspondent
In local government, Unite the union have firmly rejected the latest pay offer for workers in England.
In February local government employers made an offer ranging from 3.88 and 9.42 per cent for 2023/24, depending on grade – but with the real inflation rate (RPI) presently at 13.4 per cent this in fact amounts to a real-terms pay cut of almost 10 per cent. This was even worse than last year’s offer.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Steps Forward or Delaying Tactics?
by New Worker correspondent
Progress has been made in at least one of the pay disputes affecting the NHS. Strikes involving 32,000 ambulance workers that have been taking place in different NHS regions have been called off
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
At the LSE
by New Worker correspondent
At the London School of Economics (LSE), which older readers will recall was founded by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, authors of an important history of British trade unions, management have acted viciously towards the leader of the 2017 strike by cleaners.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Scottish Political News
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
With the Coronation coming up the English tabloids continue to speculate on the seating arrangements for Prince Harry and his American wife, but north of the border the burning question for at least one Scot is whether the Stone of Scone should return to Westminster for the crowning of King Charles III.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
International News
No sense of shame
by Xinhua
The US House Ethics Committee has launched an investigation against Congressman George Santos, who has been found to have fabricated major elements of his life story and even lied about his mother's death in the 9/11 attacks.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Israelis protest against new reactionary laws
by Radio Havana Cuba
Ongoing protests against the far-right Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were larger than ever over the weekend as an estimated 200,000 people or more took to the streets in Tel Aviv and other cities to denounce judicial reforms they warn put the nation on a path towards dictatorship. The Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz (The Land) reported Saturday's turnout as a record since the movement started in early January.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Israeli riot police turn on democracy protesters
by Ed Newman, Radio Havana Cuba
The Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah has strongly condemned the deadly Israeli raid on the city of Nablus in the occupied West Bank that claimed the lives of nearly a dozen Palestinians.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Features
Churchill’s 'Iron Curtain' Speech in Perspective
by Scott Ritter , Sputnik
On 5th March 1946, Winston Churchill arrived in the small town of Fulton, Missouri.
Some seven months earlier, Churchill had been voted out of the office of prime minister that he had held for the five most tumultuous years in the history of Great Britain, during which the UK contributed to defeat Nazi Germany. Churchill was accompanied by Harry Truman, the former Missouri senator who had served as President Franklin D Roosevelt’s vice president until Roosevelt’s death on 12th April 1945 propelled him into the role of the USA’s commander-in-chief. Truman had arranged for Churchill to receive an honorary degree from Westminster College, after which the famously loquacious English politician would deliver an address.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Biden’s war drive fuels resistance
by John Catalinotto , Workers World (USA)
In the week of the first anniversary of the US/NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, the Biden administration has taken or announced steps to prolong that war and risk its escalation. The corporate media has parroted and amplified every government announcement. And the anti-war movement began to respond.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Lumumba – The murder of an African hero
by Marcus Browning , Guardian Australian communist weekly
Patrice Lumumba was amongst the most courageous and principled figures in a generation of young nationalist leaders who came forward in the second half of the 20th Century to claim freedom from European colonialism. The leader of the Congolese independence struggle and one of the most impassioned critics of the colonial oppression of Africa. He was brutally killed on 17th January 1961.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Watchers on the Wall
By Tao Zihu , Beijing Review
“I pledge my life and honour to the Night's Watch, for this night and all nights to come," vowed members of the Night’s Watch in Game of Thrones, the epic TV series based on George RR Martin’s classic fantasy novels, as they dedicated their lives to defending the ice wall in the novels.
Like them, British Beijing resident William Lindesay has devoted his life to the defence of a great northern wall of epic proportions. This wall is real however – and so is its need for protection.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
Solidarity with Palestine
R Arun Kumar , People’s Democracy (India)
A FORMER dictator of El Salvador, Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez, once said “killing an ant is a greater crime than killing a man”. Although said in a different context and well before the formation of the State of Israel on Palestinian land, it captures the mindset of the rulers of the present Israeli State. More than one Palestinian is killed every day by the Israeli government in these last two months. And this is done with impunity. This should not be allowed to go unchallenged.
[Read the complete story in the print edition]
