Solidarity 048, 18 March 2004

Tube strike called off as Metronet agree to abide by tribunal

Rail union RMT suspended strike action by Metronet maintenance and signal workers, scheduled for 12 March. RMT members had voted 5:1 for action in support of colleagues sacked despite the lack of evidence linking them to beer cans allegedly found in a mess room at Farringdon station. "After considering the undertaking by Metronet to abide by the outcome of an Employment Tribunal, the RMT executive has today suspended the strike action scheduled for tomorrow," RMT general secretary Bob Crow told the press. "We understand that the president of the Tribunals has undertaken to do everything within...

Support Scotland's nursery nurses!

Nursery nurses in Scotland are continuing their indefinite strike action after the Scottish Parliament rejected calls for a national pay settlement. Around 300 of the 5,000 nurses on strike demonstrated for improved pay outside the Scottish Parliament as MSPs debated the issue on 11 March. The Scottish Socialist Party had tabled a motion calling for "a fair, nationally negotiated settlement" to the pay dispute. But MSPs voted 70 to 44 for a Scottish Executive motion urging councils and union leaders to get back round the negotiating table. Nine local authorities have agreed to local pay deals...

Rank-and-file fight needed on job cuts

The Lyons report, just published, proposes to abolish 20,000 Civil Service posts in London and the South-East by 2009. The Gershon review looking for "efficiency" savings across the public sector is due to report in the coming weeks. According to press leaks, it is looking to get rid of 80,000 jobs by 2011. The Budget on 17 March included a plan to cut 30,000 jobs in the Department of Work and Pensions, and ban permanent recruitment to DWP indefinitely. While it is unclear how this commitment relates to Gershon, the DWP is already being shrunk 4 or 5% a year by natural wastage everywhere. The...

What next in pay battle?

The Department of Work and Pensions PCS reps' meeting on 6 March discussed the action against the pay freeze. The exec's only proposal was to continue with action short of strike action, and to have a three-day strike after Easter. No strategy to win the dispute was outlined, and no further plans were mentioned. The GEC appears to believe that escalation of the dispute is simply a matter of taking people out on strike for more days than last time. At the beginning of the meeting some of us successfully made the point that more time had to be given to discussing further strike action. The...

Student unions need new leadership

By Alan Clarke and Sally Murdock Although nothing was confirmed when Solidarity went to press, it looks likely that the Third Reading of the Higher Education Bill will take place on 31 March - the last day before the parliamentary Easter break, and also the third day of this year's Conference of the National Union of Students. The Higher Education Bill introduces "top-up fees" for university education in place of the current flat-rate fee. The Labour Students-"independent" leadership of NUS is extremely nervous about the possibility of an anti-Blairite backlash at the student conference. It...

Smile

by Brian Wilson "If there is one person I have to select as as a living genius of pop music, I would choose Brian Wilson." George Martin, Beatles producer "I lost my way, heh, heh, heh." Brian Wilson With sell-out concerts at the Royal Festival Hall and major coverage in the serious press, Brian Wilson, aged 61, is back. He is back playing music he wrote when he was just 24. Last year we were re-introduced to Pet Sounds , consistently voted best album of all time by music journalists. This year Wilson has compiled the most famous unfinished album in rock history, Smile , abandoned 37 years ago...

Dunkirk

BBC2 If there is a national myth about the Second World War which still holds sway in the public imagination, it is that of the "miracle of Dunkirk", the "little ships" which rescued retreating British troops from the Normandy coast in June 1940, when France fell to the Nazis. BBC2's dramatic recreation of these events gained more than five million viewers, almost matching the viewing figures for Footballers' Wives on ITV! The three Dunkirk programmes were compelling television, recounting a wretched and crushing British military defeat. Using digital technology, the film-makers took you to...

What is ETA?

The Basque Country, Euskadi, is a region in the north-east of Spain with a distinct language and culture. About two million people live there. There is also a smaller Basque population in France. Under the dictatorship of General Franco, from 1939 to 1976, the Basque language and all Basque self-assertion were rigidly suppressed. ETA, the group which was first accused of the Madrid bombings, but has denied them, was founded in 1959 to fight for Basque independence. In 1973 it killed Franco's prime minister, Luis Carrero Blanco. Generally its attacks have been of a similar character - against...

Victims' families speak out

No more lies! We reproduce a statement signed by 'The Families of the victims of the 11 March', delivered at 2am to the demonstration on 14 March. It appears in Spanish on the website of El Militante , a group linked to Socialist Appeal in Britain. The families of the victims of the bombing are furious at the government's manipulation of the facts of this crime. We consider ETA a group of assassins and gunmen and think their members should be judged accordingly, but to assign to them a crime they did not commit only strengthens them. Everyone knew from the first hours of 11 March that the...

After Madrid

Against the terrorists - international working-class solidarity The bombing which killed over 200 people at three railway stations in Madrid in the morning rush hour of 11 March was an unspeakable atrocity. Whoever did it is as much an enemy of the working class and democracy as were the Italian fascists who killed 85 people by bombing Bologna railway station in 1980, or the American right-wing terrorists who killed 168 with a bombing in Oklahoma in 1995. It would be plain stupid for socialists to translate what the bombers do and aim for into our liberationist concerns, and conclude that they...

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