By Bernie McAdam As health unions call a second strike on 24 November, NHS England’s five-year plan demands more funding. But the plan is a trap for staff and patients. NHS England Chief Executive Simon Stevens argues that the NHS needs a further £8 billion by 2020, as limited resources lag behind increasing patient demand. […]
By KD Tait The ritual central London march for free education, a staple of the student activist’s Autumn calendar for 15 years, has been called for 19 November by a coalition of student campaigns under the slogan ‘no to debt, no to fees – yes to free education’. The defeat of the 2010 student […]
By Bernie McAdam After their humiliation in the EU elections at the hands of UKIP the Tories had to do something to reclaim the mantle of Britain’s number one racist party. The answer was to stir up Islamophobia by attacking Birmingham schools whose catchment area has a large Muslim population. In March an anonymous letter was […]
The National Union of Teachers has called a national strike in a continuing campaign to defend pay, pensions and conditions: report by NUT member Bernie McAdam Teachers are right to feel angry. That’s why thousands of schools will be closed on 26 March across England and Wales. Our aim must be to use this one-day […]
By Dara O’Cogaidhin The Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign brought about one of the most significant defeats for this government to date – a judicial review in July ruled the government’s decision to close the hospital as unlawful. This was following months of mass protests and campaigning work within the community. But before the […]
Thousands of school students strike in solidarity with refugees fighting racist violence and deportation. Tobi Hansen reports On February 13, more than 3,000 school and university students went on strike to demonstrate their solidarity with refugees on the streets of Berlin. For nearly two years, there has been a camp on Oranienplatz in Berlin protesting […]
This statement was originally published by the Revolutionary Socialists – Britain. Comrades, We – the Revolutionary Socialists , a youth organisation in Britain – send our warmest solidarity to the Berlin school students’ strike in defence of the rights of refugees. From London to Lampedusa those fleeing the violence of poverty and war are hunted […]
The prospect of a second two-day strike was enough to force London Underground (LU) to back down. Previously, they had intended to impose their “Fit for the Future” plan to close all ticket offices and cut nearly 1,000 jobs, without even the pretence of negotiation with the unions. All the same, this is only a […]
By Jeremy Dewar RMT members on the London Underground have voted by 77 per cent to strike against nearly 1,000 job cuts and the proposed closure of all 268 ticket offices by 2015. This is a serious attack on all tube workers and users. Not only could it leave travellers stranded and unable to […]
The Rail Maritime and Transport union is currently balloting its members on the tube in response to London Underground’s decision to cut nearly 1,000 jobs and close all 268-ticket offices by 2015, writes Jeremy Dewar. This is a serious attack on all tube workers and users. Not only would it potentially leave travellers stranded […]
credit: @ailiahrizvi Thousands of students defied the protest ban and demonstrated on the Bloomsbury campus of University of London, before marching to the Royal Courts of Justice to show solidarity with Mark Duggan’s family, writes KD Tait. The police were completely absent – ordered off the streets by their commanders, panicked into retreat by […]
By KD Tait University bosses have launched a crackdown against a wave of student occupations. The suppression of the right to protest signals the start of the final offensive in the struggle to complete the marketization of Higher Education. Injunctions have been used to ban all protests at several universities. Where students rejected the rulings […]
By Bernie McAdam Teachers from both main unions have overwhelmingly supported a series of regional strikes against Education Secretary Michael Gove’s attacks on pay, pensions and workload. This action was meant to be a forerunner to a national strike before Christmas. But now the NUT leadership has decided to call off further action for […]
Hospital Managers have always regarded On-call fees as expensive, but have never been prepared to take the even more expensive approach of employing enough staff to run a proper round-the-clock service. Consequently the old Out-of-Hours (OOH) question gets hauled out every few years for another fruitless run around the block. However the current attempts to […]
Thousands of teachers thronged Markham Street in Westminster between the Home Office and Department for Education, writes Bernie McAdam, NUT. Some started jumping up and down as loud calls rang out for “Gove to go”. You could feel the frisson in the air as the police did not quite know what was going to happen […]
By Bernie McAdam The teachers’ unions NUT and NASUWT called the second and third of their regional strikes this month as they step up their fight against Education Secretary Michael Gove’s attacks on their pay, pensions and workload. Teachers from the Eastern, Midlands and Yorkshire and Humberside areas took one-day strike action on 1 October. […]
By Dara O’Coghaidin, Mental Health worker / 02 September 2013 Established in 1948 to be a free and universal system of healthcare, the NHS reached the pensionable age of 65 in July and is sadly unwell. Patient satisfaction has plummeted from an all-time high of 70 per cent to just 58 per cent in a […]
A recent “correction” in The Guardian makes it the first mainstream newspaper to confirm what many activists, bloggers and most of all, health workers have known for months: the so-called “needless deaths” statistics pedalled by the media are a crude scare tactic designed to shore up public support for “reform” – the Tory term for privatisation. For […]
By Carla Turner APRIL 2013 could go down in history as the day that marked the beginning of the end for our National Health Service. If, that is, we don’t rouse ourselves to massive nationwide action NOW. General practitioners (GPs) have already started the takeover of the lion’s share of the NHS budget and services […]
A dispute which has been running in a desultory stop-go fashion for years has come to a head in one large hospital trust with the issuing of a consultation plan culminating in a ninety day notice of change of contract for any group of staff required to work on-call from home. The background to this […]
By Carla Turner Approaching a year since the Health and Social Care bill passed through Parliament, Carla Turner looks at the damage already done, what’s still to come and whether recent protests against local cuts can form the basis for a national campaign to save our NHS In 1948, the Labour government nationalised health […]
By Bernie McAdam, Sandwell NUT The National Union of Teachers (NUT) is gearing up for a national strike on Wednesday 13 March, possibly coinciding with a European TUC Day of Action against austerity. This is a direct response to Tory Education Secretary Michael Gove’s vicious attack on teachers’ pay. His plans will involve […]
2012 was a year to forget for the Tories. It was, in the main, a year to forget for student activists as well, writes K D Tait. The first year of £9,000 fees saw a 10 per cent drop in student numbers. September saw the government try to deport thousands of overseas students from London […]
On November 21 the National Union of Students (NUS) will march in London under the slogan ‘Educate, Employ, Empower’. The protest is supported by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC), Education Activists Network (EAN) and the UCU. Activists across the country are organising for the biggest possible turnout, but participation seems uneven and […]
‘Time to tackle the dumbing down’ is the new slogan of the Tory education ‘reforms’ which aim to make school serve the needs of the market, not the students. At their heart these counter-reforms aim to segregate students by class, limiting working class students to basic literacy and numeracy skills or, at best, technical, vocational […]
London’s sparks have targeted rogue construction outfit BFK for some special treatment – flying pickets, direct action and brand contamination. The capital’s high-profile Crossrail project has received some unwelcome publicity when building workers, students and supporters blocked traffic near Tottenham Court Road for an hour. But matters got worse for the blacklisting and corner-cutting consortium a […]
Protesters picketed the BFK (Bam-Ferrovial-Kiers) Leeds Arena construction site this morning, demanding the reinstatement of workers sacked for trade union activities. The company, subcontracted by Crossrail, has been fiercely resisting the efforts of union Unite to win collective bargaining rights for those working on the project. A health and safety rep was suspended last month […]
In a dramatic turn of events on the eve of the second London bus strike, the employers appear to have conceded. Clearly the private bus operators and Tory Mayor Boris Johnson’s Transport for London feared yet another gridlock from yet another strike. According to a report in the Evening Standard, Unite, the drivers’ union, has […]
Today’s strike saw hundreds of bus drivers from 17 companies putting on some of the biggest and most militant pickets seen in recent years. Up to 25,000 drivers are on strike, demanding an equal share of the £500 Olympic bonus given to transport workers to compensate for the extra workload expected during the games. Despite […]
By Bernie McAdam, Sandwell NUT Teachers’ unions NUT and NASUWT have announced a joint campaign to defend pensions and protect pay, working conditions and jobs. Teachers will be balloted both for strike action and action short of strike to be taken in the autumn term “should the government refuse to listen”. As yet no clear […]