No to NATO and British Troops in Macedonia!

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No to NATO and British Troops in Macedonia!

Tanker Drivers' Strike to Hit Fuel Supplies

Social Care News In Brief
NHS Short of Medicines
Shortage of Community Dentists
Nursing Homes Problems
Protest Threatened over Hospital Sale
Government Accused of Asylum Figure Cover-Up

The Languages of the Caribbean

NATO leaders meeting in Brussels have decreed that Britain should send a vanguard force of some 400 troops to Macedonia, paving the way for a NATO force of 3,500.

The British government has said that the troops are going to Macedonia to help implement a "peace deal". It says the troops will not get sucked into any fighting between the "ethnic Albanian rebels" and Macedonian government forces.

British and NATO troops have no business in Macedonia. Foreign intervention throughout the Balkans has done nothing but bring strife and bloodshed to the troubled region. Ever since the Balkans wars of 1913 and before, and especially over the last decade, the big powers have meddled and attempted to carve and re-carve up the region for their own ulterior gains. When US and British planes bombed Kosova and Yugoslavia it was supposedly for the good of the Albanian population, who, however, began their exodus en masse because of the bombing.

British Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram alleges that the troops are expecting to operate in a "benign environment". He said that the troops are there only for weapon collection, not to "peace make or to "peace keep" and would not get involved if there was any fighting between the two sides. Britain went into Sierra Leone, for example, with similar fine-sounding sentiments passing the Foreign Secretary's lips. But its motives were sordid in terms of the British government's strategic, political and economic aims. It cannot be said that its intervention in Macedonia is any different in kind.

A British official said, "We recognise there are risks. There is a real risk that the parties on the ground do not have the same aspirations as NATO." NATO itself has signalled that it is not prepared to get drawn into another long-term operation in the Balkans. However, Britain expects to contribute more than 1,000 troops to NATO's "Operation Harvest" mission, supported by large contingents from France, Italy and Greece.

The British government's concerns in Macedonia and the rest of the Balkans have nothing to do with the self-determination of peoples. Self-determination means self-determination, and interference and even aggression from Britain and other NATO powers in the Balkans and elsewhere has brought not self-determination but subjugation to the economic and political aims and values of these powers. These powers will not rest until the whole of Europe is under their dictate, and under these circumstances the contradictions between the big powers themselves are intensifying.

All foreign interventionist forces must get out and stay out of Macedonia and the Balkans, and only then will conditions for a political solution of the problems the Balkan peoples face be created.

No to NATO and British Troops in Macedonia!

No British Troops on Foreign Soil!

Tanker Drivers from Petrol Monopoly Conoco’s Immingham, Jarrow, Plymouth, Belfast and Kingsbury, Warwickshire, Depots are to strike on Tuesday August 21. Of 130 drivers, 102 voted for strike action. The workers, represented by the Transport and General Workers' Union, have announced plans for a 24-hour strike to start at 4 am on Tuesday. The dispute centres on Conoco's plans to contract fuel delivery to a distribution company and the tanker drivers demand guarantees on funding of pensions, profit-related pay and share option schemes.

"The message from the drivers was very clear following the ballot. Their determination is also very clear and they will take action," said Danny Bryan, T&G's national secretary for transport.

The NHS is suffering from increasing shortages of older but crucial medicines, it was reported on Wednesday.

Allan Karr, pharmacy business services manager at University College London hospital said, "We are struggling to keep supplies going".

The medicines involved generally do not make much money for their makers. Further shortages also come about through globalisation and the mergers of drug giants.

Shortage of Community Dentists

The British Dental Association on Wednesday said that the NHS shortage in community dentists is due to the large debts run up by graduates during their studies, leading them to enter private practice. A newly qualified practitioner is now expected to graduate with over £10,000 debt, a figure set to increase with the imposition of tuition fees.

Nursing Homes Problems

The authority on nursing homes, Counsel and Care for the elderly, on Wednesday warned the government that plans for care home fees payment will "almost certainly" reduce the older person's choice and control of care homes. The government has announced that the NHS will finance nursing care for the elderly after October 1.

Protest Threatened over Hospital Sale

Union leaders are considering a series of protests against the unprecedented sale of a private hospital to the NHS. The Heart Hospital, off Harley Street, was bought by University College Hospital Trust last week for £27.5 million. The trust is due to take over the "state-of-the-art" cardiac centre at the beginning of September.

The plan, announced by the Department of Health as the first "renationalisation" of a private hospital, involves transferring NHS cardiac surgery from the Middlesex hospital to the Heart Hospital and using the vacated space to create a "factory" for fast-track treatment of waiting list patients. Hospital managers claim it will lead to a doubling of the number of cardiac operations carried out, as well as providing capacity to increase the number of orthopaedic and urology surgery cases by 2,000.

However, NHS staff are meeting today to debate a series of moral and practical objections to the scheme. UNISON has questioned the viability of the plan to treat 2,000 extra waiting list patients at Middlesex Hospital which trust chief executive Robert Naylor admitted would require the recruitment of about 100 staff. Geoff Martin, London convenor for UNISON, said: "The staff are simply not there to do that." London is facing a severe recruitment crisis among nurses with a shortfall of about 4,000.

Government Accused of Asylum Figure Cover-Up

Amnesty International has accused the government of covering-up the true number of asylum seekers allowed to stay in Britain. Amnesty claims that nearly half of all refugees get permission to stay rather than the 20 per cent the government claim. Amnesty claims that the government's misleading figures brand asylum seekers as "bogus".

"By feeding the myth that most asylum seekers are economic migrants the government has contributed to a hostile climate in which some people may feel justified in insulting or even attacking refugees," said Kate Allen, Amnesty International's director.

The following article is taken from the Knowledge & Information section of Progress, August 2001, Issue 14. Progress is the Journal of the African and Caribbean Progressive Study Group. The theme around which the August 2001 edition of Progress is focused is the Caribbean. The lead article, "Celebrating Emancipation Day", gives an historical perspective to the recently marked Emancipation Day and provides background to this day on which the former British colonies in the Caribbean mark the abolition of slavery. The journal's editorial points out that the modern-day phase of the nation-building projects of the islands and countries of the Caribbean have their origin in the events of emancipation, the abolition of slavery, which occurred at different times in the area. Such a history, the editorial points out, has had an immense influence on the countries of the region and on the contemporary and historical societies of the colonial powers. Other articles in Progress elaborate on a number of historical and cultural aspects of the Caribbean.

The development of the modern Caribbean nations within the context of slavery, colonialism and foreign domination has left many cultural problems facing Caribbean people today. One of the most pressing of these is the question of the Caribbean languages and their proper position in today’s world, especially in the Caribbean and among Caribbean communities internationally.

Rich heritage

Even the simple statement that there is such a thing as Caribbean languages is still one which generates controversy and many Caribbean people find it difficult to view the languages they speak as "proper languages". Under the pressure of the colonial outlook, many people refer to these forms of speech as "dialects", "broken English", "broken French" and so on. These terms themselves negate the process of Caribbean national development of which these languages are an integral part and reinforce the stereotype of the Caribbean as an extension of some other region, whether Europe or more recently, the United States of America. This idea of Caribbean cultural dependency and inferiority is linked to and serves the foreign political domination of the region. The facts are, however, that as the Caribbean nations developed, so too did their languages and today these languages represent part of the rich heritage of Caribbean culture.

Many of the existing prejudices about Caribbean languages are based on a lack of knowledge about the nature of language in general. For example, the fact that language exists as a continuum of different varieties which change from region to region and between social classes is one which is not often taken account of. Yet, this is a reality which everyone is very aware of. Differences in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar can all be noticed between speakers from different regions and of different social backgrounds. This is a feature of all languages. However, when a language is standardised one variety from this continuum is chosen as the "official language" of the community of speakers. Historically the variety of language chosen has been the version spoken by the rich and powerful within the community. It is this variety which is usually written and which is presented as the "grammatically correct version of the language". In order to reinforce the superiority of this version of a language and the social superiority of its speakers, the other varieties of the language are now described as dialects and as examples of "bad usage of language". The relationship between Standard English, so-called Received Pronunciation, and other varieties of English within Britain such as Cockney and Brummie illustrates this situation perfectly.

Birth of new languages

Another important fact which needs to be kept in mind is how new languages come into being and develop and the part that contact between speakers of different languages can play in this process. For example, many of the world’s languages have themselves developed out of older languages in conditions of extensive contact with speakers of other languages brought about by major political upheavals. Modern English emerged from Anglo-Saxon in conditions of major contact with speakers of Latin, Norse and Norman. These elements in the birth of English are reflected in its grammar, vocabulary and phonology, which is the way that the words and sentences are pronounced.

The birth and development of the Caribbean languages has followed a similar pattern. In the conditions of slavery during which most Caribbean languages were born, Caribbean societies were made up of large numbers of African slaves, mainly speaking west African languages such as Yoruba, Twi, and Igbo and a small minority of slave masters and other Europeans speaking the languages associated with the main slave owning countries such as English, French and Spanish. The peculiar social relationships associated with plantation society and the specific social make up of the population of each country are reflected in the structure of individual Caribbean languages. For example the large numbers of Fon speakers in Haiti and Akan language speakers in Jamaica have both left their mark on the languages of these two countries.

New meanings

Although most Caribbean languages drew their vocabulary from the languages of the slavemasters which were socially dominant, they relied heavily on the mother tongues of the captured Africans in determining the new meanings of many of these words and in constructing the grammar of the new languages. For example in many Caribbean languages, the word "foot" is equivalent to the words "leg" and "foot" in English. New expressions were coined using words from the European languages but combining them in ways which the slaves were familiar with from their African mother tongues. For example the Bajan word ‘"hardears" and its Kweyol equivalent "zowey-li wed" which translate as the standard English word ‘naughty’ is an almost direct translation of an Igbo word and reflects the African influence on the formation of Caribbean languages.

Independent languages

Other expressions from a range of Caribbean languages like "cut eye" or "koupe zie" in Kweyol and "suk teet" are further evidence of this process. There are also a smaller number of African words which have passed directly into Caribbean languages. Words like ‘jook’, ‘nyam’ and 'unu' are common in a number of Caribbean languages. Not only do Caribbean languages have their own vocabulary, but their grammatical structures also reflect the fact that they are in fact independent languages in their own right. Serial verb constructions such as ‘carry go bring come’ in Jamaican, the absence of auxiliary verbs in expressions like ‘he wukkin in Trinidad’ and the absence of verbs in expressions like ‘he ugly’ are only a few of the distinctive grammatical features of Caribbean languages. Interestingly, the expression of the negative through the use of double negatives as in "I din do nuttin" is a grammatical feature which Caribbean languages share with some non-standard varieties of English such as Cockney.

Rightful place

New languages like Jamaican, Trinidadian and Kweyol, which draws its vocabulary primarily from French, have emerged and developed. However, they have so far been unable to occupy their appropriate place in the life of the Caribbean people. This problem is linked to the foreign domination of the region and the pressure it generates to deny even the existence of these languages. Consequently their use has been looked down upon socially and there has been enormous pressure from the forces of the status quo in the Caribbean through the education system and mass media to discourage their use in favour of language varieties from North America and Europe.

Major challenge

Until recently, very little work had been done on developing writing systems for these languages and on promoting them through the mass media. Recently in Dominica and St. Lucia some work has been done on agreeing a writing system for Kweyol and there has been an increase in public broadcasting in this language, although the issue of its use in the education system is still outstanding. However, in those countries where the languages have developed by using mostly vocabulary from English, this process has still not got off the ground.

The Caribbean languages are part of the cultural heritage of the Caribbean people linked to the national identities of the different Caribbean nations. Their cultivation and development is a major challenge facing Caribbean people around the world.