Miliband’s weak and belated plea on Gaza

 LABOUR leader Ed Miliband last week condemned David Cameron’s “silence” on the genocidal onslaught by Israel on the people of Gaza, which has been continuing now for a month.

Miliband said that Cameron’s “silence” on the issue was “inexplicable” and called on the Prime Minister to publicly oppose the deaths of “hundreds of innocent Palestinians”, which he said was “wrong and unjustifiable”.

Cameron’s response was to accuse Miliband of “undermining attempts at peace negotiations”. As the carnage raged, Cameron told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu he had his "strong support" for Israel's right to take "proportionate action" to defend itself.

Earlier this year Miliband visited Israel and was shown sites where Hamas rockets have landed in the past.

Appearing on LBC radio last weekend, Miliband said: "If I was David Cameron... I would be spending my time on doing everything I can to put pressure on both sides to have that ceasefire that is required.

"I think he is in the wrong place on this, because I agree with him about Hamas – Hamas is a terrible and disgusting organisation – but I think he should have said from the outset that this incursion by Israel into Gaza was not going to solve the problem."

So there is little hope for justice for the Palestinians from either the Tory of Labour leadership.

But clearly the stance of both is being affected by the massive and rising level of protests throughout the country and the world at the continuing massacre.

Last Friday 1^st August saw another massive demonstration outside London’s Israeli embassy and on Saturday 2^nd August pro-Palestinian demonstrators occupied the BBC in Bristol for its biased reporting of the ongoing massacre.

Campaigners occupied the lawn outside BBC Bristol over its Gaza reporting.

"Seems likely to be the only time an occupation is commented on,” said comedian Mark Thomas.

“If BBC coverage of Israel’s systematic destruction of lives wasn’t sufficient to make people hot under the collar, the corporation’s justification of its role should do so,” said a spokesperson.

“Our role is to explain what is happening and why and we endeavour to reflect a range of voices amid deeply held views.

“If that’s what it’s supposed to do, the BBC is failing its own criteria. At no time do its correspondents explain that the Palestinians are a people under military occupation and that Israel is pursuing a relentless colonisation of the West Bank, which, under the 1993 Oslo accords, is supposed to be the site of an independent Palestinian state.

“Israeli occupation forces should have evacuated the land they conquered in 1967 so a Palestinian Authority could be established and a permanent settlement finalised.

One reason alone stymied that agreement — Tel Aviv’s refusal to end its occupation of the West Bank, preferring instead to construct Jews-only settlements and infrastructure.”

St Pancras Eurostar cleaners “rock solid and determined”

 CLEANERS working on the St Pancras station and Eurostar contracts for high-profile facilities company Interserve are “rock solid and determined” on picket lines at the station, organised by the RMT transport union last Friday morning in a fight over jobs and workplace justice.

The cleaner’s downed tools at 5am on 1st August in 24 hours of high-profile action in the heart of London designed to shame the company, and those who hire them at the top of Eurostar and St Pancras International, into reversing their savage cuts plans.

RMT had demanded that morning that Interserve call off immediately a campaign of intimidation and bullying targeted at union members who have overwhelmingly voted for the strike action.

Like many contract cleaners, the Eurostar contract is subject to regular tender with cut-throat cleaning contractors competing to win the work.

Staff get transferred from one contractor to another like pieces of meat, but the business model of the companies is all the same – hacking back on pay and conditions to maximise profit while offering the workforce as little as possible.

Interserve won the St Pancras/Eurostar contract from Network Rail in exactly this fashion – through a massive cut in the price for the work.

In order to protect the company profits and hand-outs to shareholders Interserve have imposed 30 per cent job cuts on their cleaning workers.  This means massive pressure on the staff making up for the people who have been cut.

Staff are also sick of the workplace culture - continual aggression and bullying from the employers who expect the same standards of work and output, but with a third fewer staff.

 As RMT says “They call it efficiency – we call it harassment.”

As a result staff have had enough and are making a stand by taking 24-hour strike action from 5am today.  The workforce already suffer from low pay, no sick pay and get only the statutory minimum from our employer, but they are not prepared to be intimidated anymore.

The workloads that Interserve is imposing are too much and will not be tolerated in the culture of bullying and harassment that is rife at the prestigious Eurostar, St Pancras International terminal.

The RMT union demands are simple:

•    An agreement with our union on staffing levels at St Pancras/Eurostar;

•    A fair and reasonable workload for cleaners at St Pancras/Eurostar;

•    To be treated with dignity and respect.

No Glory in War

 by New Worker correspondent
 

HUNDREDS of people gathered in Parliament Square, Westminster on the evening of Monday 4th August to make a counter balance to the official ceremonies commemorating the start of the First World War exactly 100 years ago.

Peace campaigners came to express their horror at the glorification of war and to express concerns it could all too easily happen again.

Chris Knight was one of the protesters. He wore a Tommy's helmet and with a placard around his neck emblazoned with the words of First World War veteran Harry Patch: "War is nothing better than legalised mass murder."

"I think that we do have the country with us,” said Knight, “and the Government are going to have problems, for example, when it comes to the war's Christmas truce, when they will try to conceal the fact that it was fact a mutiny by ordinary British and Germany troops."

The rally was organised by Stop the War and was one of dozens of similar events around the country.

Speakers included Neil Faulkener, Lindsey German and Jeremy Corbyn MP, who read Keir Hardie's anti-war speech of 1914, and supported in absentia by Carol Ann Duffy, whose poem [The Last Post] was read aloud by the writer AL Kennedy.

Neil Faulkener sought to link the Great War to present-day conflicts, telling a crowd of about 150 people: "The first world war created the Middle East of today."

Lindsey German spoke of the role of British imperialism in the Middle East at the time of the First World War, in dividing up the region and creating the problems that have created strife and misery for the people there ever since and laying the basis for the suffering of today’s Palestinians.

Anti-fascists picket Ukrainian embassy

by New Worker correspondent

 

A GROUP of London anti-fascists, including communists and trade unionists, staged a picket outside the Ukrainian embassy in west London on the evening of Tuesday 22nd July to protest at repression in Ukraine.

The picket was organised by Solidarity with Anti-Fascist Resistance in Ukraine (SARU) to express outrage at ongoing military operations in eastern Ukraine and the recent vote by the Verkhovna Rada to dissolve the communist faction in the parliament on Wednesday.

David Ayrton, speaking on behalf of SARU said that the banning of the communist MPs will translate into the scores of people voting for the party having their democratic rights removed.

Protesters also spoke up against the media coverage of the downed Malaysian flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine, criticising the haste attribution of guilt to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Two days later news broke that a local secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine was tortured and killed by National Guard Posted. Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Kovshun, the 58-year-old secretary of the primary party organisation of the Communist Party of Ukraine in the village of Glinky, the member of the village council of the Starobeshevo district of the Donetsk region was tortured to death at the National Guard checkpoint near the village Luzhky.

A phone link to him broke up during the night of July 22nd. And in the morning the tortured body of a communist with numerous bruises and gunshot wounds to the legs and to the chest was discovered in a pool of blood.

Protests for Palestine multiply

by New Worker correspondent

 

AN ESTIMATED 60,000 protesters filled London streets last Saturday – for the third week in a row – to show their anger at the continuing slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza by the Israeli war machine.

And around Britain and the world scores of similar protests took place. Saturday 26th July also saw demonstrations worldwide; from Tehran to Paris, Islamabad to Berlin, Jammu in India to Wellington in New Zealand, Singapore to Buenos Aires, Tunis to Seoul, from Durban in South Africa to Dublin in Ireland, from Oslo to San Francisco: hundreds of cities and towns in every continent all calling for an end to the attack on Gaza and a lifting of the siege.

            And notably, 5000 protesters gathered in Tel Aviv, the capital of Israel, under the banner, "No more deaths – Israeli-Palestinian peace, now." Demonstrators chanting “Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies” called for an end to the occupation and the siege on Gaza, and lit candles to commemorate the victims.

In London tens of thousands of people filled Kensington High Street outside the Israeli embassy as they assembled for a march to Parliament Square.

When the marchers reached Parliament Square, among the many speakers they heard were Labour MPs Diane Abbott and Jeremy Corbyn, musicians Brian Eno and Dave Randall, the poet and broadcaster Michael Rosen and CND's Bruce Kent.

On 29th July the student movement in Britain issued a powerful united statement in solidarity with the people of Palestine. Amongst the signatories is National Union of Students Officers representing millions of students across Britain and over 100 pro-Palestine student leaders and activists from colleges and universities.

Meanwhile British unions have backed a Gaza emergency medical supply drop

The global International Transport Workers’ Federation has sent a lorry load of medical supplies to Gaza.

The ITF, which counts Aslef, Balpa, CWU, GMB, RMT, Nautilus, Prospect, PCS, TSSA, USDAW and Unite as its affiliates, has called for an immediate ceasefire.

It has organised a programme to help trade unions send food and medicines to Gaza. The federation’s office in Amman, Jordan is coordinating the provision of aid and is putting together the first cargo load now for despatch and is expected to reach Gaza on Friday.

The supplies will be handed over to UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) and the Jordan Hashemite Charity Organisation, whose support includes the running of a mobile hospital there.