Stop the Arms Fair!

by New Worker correspondent

Londoners gathered at vigil last week organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) to oppose the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) arms fair in London. The vigil in Cundy Park in East London highlighted DSEI’s role in arming Israeli apartheid, and other repressive states around the world.
The PSC protest on Tuesday 5th September was just the start of a wave of protests against the biennial arms fair that opened on Monday at the Excel Centre in London’s Docklands. The fair, one of the largest arms festivals in the world, is attended by hundreds of arms companies to showcase weapons and military technology on the international market. Over the years the DSEI arms festival has faced sustained opposition from a variety of anti-racist and international justice groups who say the arms fair fuels the transfer of weapons and military technology used in assaults against indigenous and other marginalised communities across the world.
The protesters condemned the presence of Israeli military officials and Israeli arms companies, which develop and use weapons in violence against Palestinians, before selling them as ‘battle-tested’ to other states. This year alone, Israel has killed over 200 Palestinians in military incursions, air raids and assassinations.
They called on London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who has previously stated his opposition to the fair, to act to bring a halt to the event. Protesters also turned their fire on the Government, which helps organise the event through the Ministry of Defence and the Department for International Trade.
PSC Director Ben Jamal, said “The DSEI arms fair provides a venue to Israel’s apartheid regime to buy weapons, and allows Israeli arms companies to sell their lethal weapons developed through Israel’s attacks on Palestinians to other repressive states. The arms fair must be shut down.
“In addition, we call on the British government to end the arms trade between the UK and Israel through the introduction of a comprehensive military embargo, as Palestinian civil society has repeatedly demanded”.

In the departure lounge

 By New Worker correspondent

At London City Airport in Docklands workers are up in arms about how they are being treated in the present crisis that has seen air travel drop to almost nil.
    The grievances include the lack of a fair and transparent system for implementing the airport’s current redundancy programme, concerns that long-term employees and union members were being unfairly selected for redundancy, incorrectly paying notice pay when workers are made redundant. In addition, bosses failed to halt the redundancy programme and furlough workers after the job redundancy scheme was extended until the end of March and using the Job Retention Scheme (JRS) to prevent potential employment tribunal claims.
    Their cause has been taken up by the Labour mayor of Newham Rokshana Fiaz, who has condemned Robert Sinclair, chief executive of the airport, for refusing to have a transparent redundancy process and for refusing to discuss matters with Unite the Union.
    Unite regional officer Mercedes Sanchez said: “It is to be hoped that senior management take heed of the growing disquiet about their actions and actively engage with Unite to ensure that workers are treated fairly during the redundancy process and their basic rights are not diminished,” warning: “If City Airport does not take account of this letter and does not alter its procedures then Unite will be forced to consider all legal and industrial options to defend its members.”
    The airport announced in September that it was making more than a third of its staff redundant and consultations began over up to 239 job losses in what it called a restructuring plan to safeguard its future.
    It now only has 17 routes and on Monday Logan Air announced it was transferring the vital Isle of Man to London route from the City Airport to Heathrow. It does not expect to get back to normal until 2024. In September Robert Sinclair claimed: “We have held off looking at job losses for as long as possible, but sadly we are not immune from the devastating impact of this virus.”

Emergency hospital opens in Docklands

By New Worker correspondent

A giant emergency hospital was opened by Prince Charles last week in London’s ExCel conference centre Docklands. The prince, himself recovering from a mild case of COVID-19, conducted the ceremony through a video-link from his Birkhall mansion on the Balmoral estate in the Scottish Highlands.

The 4,000 bed NHS Nightingale hospital was erected inside the cavernous ExCel centre in just nine days. Essentially a ‘field hospital’, it was built with the help of some 200 soldiers from the Anglian Regiment and the Gurkha Rifles, working long shifts alongside NHS staff and contractors.

The 87,328 square metres of double exhibition halls have been fitted out with the framework for more than 80 wards, each with 42 beds. Some 500 fully-equipped beds, with oxygen and ventilators, are already operational. The nearby City Airport, currently closed for normal flights due to the coronavirus plague, will be used by military planes to bring supplies and equipment to the hospital.

“It’s nothing short of extraordinary that this new hospital in London has been established from scratch in less than a fortnight,” NHS England Chief Executive Sir Simon Stevens told the media. “Now we are gearing up to repeat that feat at another four sites across the country to add to the surge in capacity in current NHS hospitals.”

Opened in November 2000, the ExCel Centre in east London was bought by the Arab-owned Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Company (ADNEC) in May 2008. ADNEC was originally going to charge the health service some £2–3million per month for use of the site; but this provoked an angry response from Labour and the giant GMB union that has many members in the NHS and the ambulance service.

Labour Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said the deal was “an absolute outrage. Staff and patients will be disgusted at the billionaire owners. They should be prepared to offer the facilities for free”. And Lola McEvoy, a GMB organiser specialising in outsourced workers, said it was “simply wrong that the government could funnel cash to crown princes to deal with an urgent public health crisis while the future of low-paid outsourced workers hangs in the balance”.

In the end the owners soon backed down. ExCel chief executive Jeremy Rees said an initial agreement with the NHS to house the temporary Nightingale Hospital "included a contribution to some fixed costs" but "We have since decided to cover the fixed costs ourselves. The Excel London facility is fully available to the NHS and we are here to support all their needs and requirements during this crisis”.

This was repeated by Humaid Matar Al Dhaheri, the managing director and group chief executive of ADNEC, who said: “To be clear, profit has always been the furthest thing from our minds. It is our firm commitment that we will not charge a penny for the use of our facilities, and we will provide the NHS with the operational and logistical support it needs for NHS Nightingale London.”