Tribune – Comment, news and reviews from Britain's democratic left

RAIL SERVICES from Brighton to Liverpool look set to be stricken next week after the RMT union announced a series of co-ordinated strikes across three rail networks in disputes over job losses and Sunday working.

THE National Housing Federation has warned that council house waiting lists are set to soar by 200,000 to more than two million in the next two years.

THE only two Central American states that do not have diplomatic relations with Cuba announced last week their decision to restore ties with the communist island. El Salvador and Costa Rica severed ties with Havana in 1959 and 1961 respectively after the Cuban revolution in which Fidel Castro overthrew the despotic dictator General Fulgencio Batista.

MEMBERS of the European Parliament elected under a new left-wing anti-EU platform will not go to Brussels but campaign in Britain instead, organisers confirmed this week.

GORDON BROWN’S increasingly cosy relationship with the European Union earned both praise and scepticism in the European Parliament on Tuesday when the Prime Minister briefed MEPs on preparations for the G20 summit in London and called for united action to restore global economic health.

A CONCILIATION meeting aimed at finding a compromise on the long-delayed revision of the European Union’s controversial Working Time Directive has failed to reach agreement.

THE inaugural meeting of the new Tribune board has conferred the title of lifetime honorary Editor-in-Chief on Michael Foot.

IN AN attempt to lure Belarus away from the controlling influence of Russia and thereby weaken Moscow’s power in eastern Europe, the European Union announced last week that Minsk is to be included in the Eastern Partnership programme.

WORKERS who have been turned down for jobs at the Isle of Grain power station near Rochester in Kent held a demonstration outside the site on Tuesday.