Twenty Thousand Demonstrate against "War on Terrorism"

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Twenty Thousand Demonstrate against "War on Terrorism"

Local Government Workers:
First National Strike for over 20 Years Possible

Bank Profits Rise

News In Brief
Birmingham Children's Hospital Lays off Temporary Staff
Workers Facing Sack at Perkins in Shrewsbury Fight for Jobs

Down with the warmongering of the Indian State!
Anglo-American Imperialists – Get out of South Asia!

Thousands of protesters have gathered at a rally in central London on Saturday to call for a halt to the bombing in Afghanistan and the threat to other countries such as Iraq.

From Hyde Park the demonstration marched to Trafalgar Square where there were speeches.

Tony Benn said: "The moment that bombing begins, we go to where we are and we stop for an hour. Stop the buses, stop the trains. It's got to be something we take up in every town and village. Go home today, talk to your schools, raise it in the churches, the temples, the mosques, the synagogues and at work, because we could well be heading for a Third World War because of stupid men who are in government and are governing in our name. And then we continue to stop for one hour every day. That is my proposal."

Below we are reprinting the media release of the Stop the War Coalition.

Time for Tony Blair to get the message: stop backing George Bush!

A lively, diverse and determined gathering of 20,000 marched through central London this afternoon (2 March) in the third major national anti-war demonstration since the US and Britain launched the military assault on Afghanistan on 7 October.

The demonstration, organised by the Stop the War Coalition and backed by CND, heard Stop the War Coalition convenor Lindsey German say:

The ever-expanding 'war against terrorism' is a war of lies and hypocrisy. Events in Afghanistan and elsewhere, not to mention George Bush's frightening 'axis of evil' speech, have confirmed many of our worst fears.

Bush and Blair claim that they must attack Iraq in order to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, but it is the US and its allies which have repeatedly deployed weapons of mass destruction from the sanctions against Iraq that have taken hundreds of thousands of lives to the 'daisy-cutters' that have rained death upon Afghanistan to the space-based nukes of NMD that now threaten our planet.

At a time when the war in Afghanistan has largely vanished from the front pages, the turn-out today is especially significant, and should serve as a warning to the government. Public opposition to Bush and Blair's war is definitely on the rise. We are determined to continue to organise the broadest possible opposition to this dangerous and unjust war.

The message from today's demonstration is clear: as long as Bush and Blair sustain their pro-war coalition, our Coalition will campaign to stop them.

She called on the demonstrators to return to London for the CND march on 30 March, which is being backed by the Stop the War Coalition.

Other speakers in Trafalgar Square included Tony Benn, human rights lawyer Louise Christian, MPs Jeremy Corbyn and George Galloway, journalist Yvonne Ridley, NATFHE general secretary Paul Mackney, writer Tariq Ali, and representatives of Muslims for Just Peace, Kurdish and Palestinian organisations.

Among the protesters at today's demonstration were contingents representing many trades unions, community and civil rights groups, peace organisations, local Stop the War Coalitions, Media Workers Against the War, Artists Against the War, Muslims for Just Peace, the Jewish Socialist Group, Kurdish, Palestinian and Colombian organisations, as well as a wide variety of political groups. Coaches brought protesters to London from Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Bradford, Nottingham, Sheffield, Leeds, Newcastle, Bristol, Portsmouth, Blackburn, Plymouth, Southampton, Gloucester, Milton Keynes, York, Bury, Basildon, Chesterfield, Huddersfield and elsewhere.

The first national strike in more than 20 years looked imminent as trade unions considered balloting more than a million public sector workers on industrial action in a dispute over pay.

The collapse in negotiations with local government employers, involving 1.2m council workers, came on Thursday as union leaders threatened to ballot for industrial action.

UNISON, the GMB and the Transport and General Workers' Union – which represent 1.2m local government workers ranging from refuse collectors to social workers, cleaners and meals-on-wheels staff – said they were urging members to reject a proposed 3 per cent pay rise for workers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The unions promised to ballot on strike action, likely to be held in late April, if workers rejected the offer.

Union negotiators are demanding the bigger of either a £1,750 increase in basic pay or a 6 per cent rise. They argued that councillors had voted themselves increases of more than 60% in recent months.

The employers’ representatives said that the demands were "unrealistic" and would add £1.685 billion to the wage bills.

Union Comments

John Edmonds, general secretary of the GMB, blamed the government for eroding morale in the public services. "This is a crisis made in Downing Street. If ministers sat down and put together a sensible industrial policy rather than simply running around branding public sector workers wreckers, situations such as this could be avoided." He calculated that the offer was worth only 15p an hour to some of the country's lowest-paid workers.

Mick Graham, national officer of the GMB union, said: "This is a crisis made in Downing Street. If ministers sat down and developed a sensible industrial strategy rather than running around dubbing public service workers as wreckers, this situation could have been avoided. The offer is completely unacceptable and effectively means a rise of less than 15p an hour for some of the country's lowest paid workers, at a time when boardroom bosses are awarding themselves telephone number pay increases."

Jack Dromey, national organiser of the TGWU, said: "Local government is on the brink of the first national strike since the Winter of Discontent" of 1978-79. He contrasted the 3% offer with up to 8% offered to NHS support staff earlier last week.

Malcolm Wing, a UNISON official, said his union was "bitterly disappointed" with the offer, particularly as health workers had been offered 3.6 per cent, with more for the lower paid. The union added: "The only way to bring employers back to the negotiating table is to threaten industrial action."

CBI Letter

A letter signed by Digby Jones, the head of the CBI, and 17 big contracting firms has been sent to key government ministers. The letter says that Labour's public services programme will not be achievable without private contractors. It claims that "legalistic" or "rule book" protection of workers "would slow down reform, strangle innovation and drive leading edge providers to leave the market".

Dave Prentis, the general secretary of UNISON, responded: "Digby Jones says the private sector isn't about driving down everybody's wages. Try telling that to the hospital cleaner who has just had her wages cut, or the school meals worker whose pension has just gone down the drain, or the home carer who has lost her holiday entitlement. Is it any wonder they are suspicious?

"Innovation by the private sector has been hard to find and efficiencies have been mostly at the expense of low paid women workers. Unison shares the government's objective of world class services, and it is our members in the public sector who will deliver those reforms.

"UNISON wants newly recruited employees working for private contractors in the public sector to be paid the same as any workers transferred from the public sector. But businesses want a voluntary code of conduct and promise to be exemplary employers, recruiting new staff on rates that are fair and reasonable."

The Royal Bank of Scotland has announced a 32 per cent rise in full-year profits with a pre-tax profit of £4.28 billion.

The bank is facing criticism over its refusal to pay 500 staff in Bristol the same regional pay allowance that is awarded to its staff in the local retail sector.

Meg Crack, organiser at Unifi, said: "This disparity is grossly unfair when the bank is making some £40,000 per minute. These employees face the same cost of living expenses as their colleagues so are entitled to the same allowance. Over 400 people have already signed a petition on this issue – an indication of how strongly staff feel they are being kicked in the teeth".

Temporary and agency staff at Birmingham Children's Hospital are to be laid off after it was announced that it faces debts of over £4.5m.

Around 500 temporary staff are being pushed out this month in order to try and reduce the financial burden. Routine surgery will be delayed by the measures.

Gisela Stuart, ex-health Minister and Edgbaston MP, has suggested that hospitals are exaggerating the crisis.

Workers Facing Sack at Perkins in Shrewsbury Fight for Jobs

Workers at an engine factory will have to wait a week to find out the result of a struggle to save some of the 500 jobs due to go by December.

The Perkins factory on Lancaster Road in Shrewsbury had announced all jobs were to go but workers and their unions opposed it. A task force of unions and civic leaders have joined negotiation, to persuade the firm not to carry out the plan, and are also trying to reduce the number of proposed redundancies. Executives will announce their decision on Thursday.

WDIE is posting the following from People's Voice, organ of the Communist Ghadar Party of India, from its issue dated February 16-28, 2002.

For over two months now, the Indian state has massed up its troops along its western borders with Pakistan, and the Pakistani regime has followed suit. The Anglo-American imperialists and other powers have gleefully tuned up the tensions, jeopardising peace in the entire region. Life has been adversely affected for millions of ordinary people of India and Pakistan, yet for the rulers of these countries, it’s business as usual – the business of brutal exploitation of the toiling people being made much easier by threatening them with war and the suspension of their rights, meagre as they already were.

Just like the US imperialists used the attacks of September 11, 2001, to justify their war in Afghanistan and the beginning of their crusade for the redivision of Asia, the attack on the Indian Parliament on December 13, 2001, provided the Indian ruling circles with the very pretext they needed to amplify their warmongering against Pakistan. Taking cue from the Anglo-American imperialists, the Indian state had already commenced the latest offensive on the rights of the working people, promulgating the infamous Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance (POTO) and threatening to exterminate or incarcerate anyone who dared raise his voice as a "terrorist".

Following the December 13 attack, the Indian state has gone all out to raise its warmongering to a crescendo. The measures it took while doing so have hit the people of the region very hard. It suspended rail and road links with Pakistan, causing great difficulties to lakhs of people in both countries. It suspended over flights by civilian Pakistani aircraft, causing difficulties to the citizens of other South Asian countries as well, who could hitherto conveniently use Pakistani airlines to fly to Arab and European countries. The spiteful actions of the Indian ruling classes earned reproach from most of the leaders of the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (SAARC) when they met in Kathmandu in January 2002.

As the governments of both India and Pakistan massed up troops along their common border, the imperialists readily rushed in – while Tony Blair visited early in January to peddle jet aircraft, and Colin Powell hopped over to play "referee", the Indian defence minister George Fernandes went over to the US with his long shopping list for billions of dollars worth of military hardware. The Pakistani regime also has gone about on an arms shopping splurge.

Indian government sources gleefully claim that Indian military mobilisation is putting a great strain on Pakistan’s finances. It is reported that just a month-long mobilisation of Pakistan’s armed forces, to counter Indian military mobilisation, will cost between US$400 - 600 million, at least Rs 25 billion! Indian diplomats have reportedly told their Western counterparts that India’s military mobilisation is expected to "bleed Pakistan white", besides keeping up the threat of war. The mobilisation of India’s military apparently would cost even more than what Pakistan would have to bear, but the Indian rulers have more funds at their disposal. On both sides of the border however, it is the toiling people who are being bled white to finance the warmongering of their rulers.

While the toiling people are thus being bled white, the rulers have gone about their "business as usual". The Anglo-American imperialists are losing no opportunity to meddle herein, now appearing to favour one side and now the other, but entrenching themselves and their dastardly military and intelligence agencies ever more surely into the region. The Indian Prime Minister has said, firstly, that there can be no talks with Pakistan until "cross border terrorism" stops. Who is to decide what is meant by that term and which armed outfit has committed what crime? And secondly, that talks with Pakistan would only be on the topic of "return of Pakistan occupied Kashmir to India" a condition which obviously cannot be agreed to by any Pakistani ruler today. The Indian Prime Minister is thus making it clear that they intend continuing with their stand-off as long as they like.

Millions of people in both countries, especially in the border regions, are being put to tremendous hardships by the massing up of troops. As the rulers of India have made amply clear on several occasions in the recent past, the threat of war is still very real. This war would add to the already heavy burden on the toiling peoples of both countries, besides claiming the precious lives of so many of the fraternal peoples. Whatever the outcome of such a reactionary war, the benefactors could only be the rulers of both countries and the Anglo-American and other powers which choose to meddle in the region. The misery of the toiling people would greatly increase.

People’s Voice condemns the warmongering of the Indian state and the insidious activities of the Anglo-American imperialists.

NO to War!

Anglo-American imperialists, get out of South Asia!