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By Sean Matgamna
“They take each other by the hand today, but they will take each other by the throat, tomorrow,” we said not long ago, commenting on the United Front of Christian, Muslim and Sikh zealots to repress “disrespectful” comments on their respective religions.
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By Sean Matgamna
Of course you know the story. A man is in the market place, and he sees Death, and Death looks at him intently, recognising him.
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Labour Party conference featured plenty of fringe meetings such as Kraft Foods making the case for Dairylea to be included in school meals, tobacco companies telling delegates to remember that “smokers are voters too”, and BUPA setting the agenda for how to improve healthcare standards. But away from the lobbyists and spin doctors, outside the ring of checkpoints, barriers and hundreds of armed police, was an alternative fringe. David Broder reports.
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The BBC’s programme Shoot the Messenger caused a bit of a furore. When I sat down to watch it I was already aware that its working title had been Fuck Black People. To say the least I felt somewhat uncomfortable, not least because this a story about a black IT worker whose idealism leads him to become a teacher — which is also a remarkably accurate description of me (though my idealism is of a different brand). Although I didn’t get to relax during the course of the programme, the nature of my discomfort changed.
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By Colin Foster
From the Blairites, and from further to the right, we hear more and more about “restoring discipline” and “restoring old-fashioned standards” in schools.
The real chaos generated in some schools by social decay and by incessant “restructuring” from above is being used as a springboard for the re-imposition of more punitive, authoritarian regimes in schools.
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“Power to the people” is the unlikely new slogan of New Labour, of Gordon Brown and his supposed “Blairite” rivals alike.
Brown himself impressed the Guardian’s political editor, Patrick Wintour, with “the scale of [his] plans to shift power away from politicians” (Guardian, 25 September).
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By a Labour Party Conference delegate
DESPITE the bureaucratic exclusion, for the first time ever, of a majority of resolutions from Constituency Labour Parties, this year’s Labour Party conference has surpassed last year’s record by inflicting five significant defeats on the government.
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Faryal Velmi reports on the Grunwick commemoration event held by Brent Trades Council on 17 September.
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Having admitted eight former Stalinist states in central and Eastern Europe, as well as Malta and Cyprus, to enlarge to 25 countries in 2004, the EU will admit Romania and Bulgaria in January 2007. However, Romanian and Bulgarian workers will be denied the right to migrate to Britain, with New Labour ministers arguing for “managed migration” and “gradual access”, which could mean controls for up to seven years.
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OVER 18 months after Coventry City Council voted to break off negotiations with Unison over the imposed Single Status ‘deal’, the union looks set to add to the three days of strike action which it has already taken to defend members’ wages. In the face of the Tory-controlled council's attempts to use anti-union legislation and its team of solicitors in the High Court, the union ballot unanimously endorsed selective strike action.
