A British Prison in Nigeria?

Note: I'm going to be away for a week or so, so don't expect any posts until next saturday at the earliest.

The government has announced that it is in negotiations with the Nigerian government over proposals to upgrade the prison infrastructure in that country to allow them to forcibly transfer around 400 prisoners back to Nigeria.
The current UK prison service policy is to offer foreign national prisoners a transfer back to their country of origin where a treaty for such a course of action exists with that country. Such prisoners would then serve out the remainder of their sentences in their country of origin. However, given the appaling prison conditions in many countries around the world it is somewhat unsuprising that many imprisoned foreign nationals do not take up this offer. Even with the governments Facilitated Returns Scheme, with the 'incentive' of giving prisons who opt for a transfer £46 in cash (the equivalent of the amount that all prisoners receive upon release from prison to pay for any immediate needs) has not upped the return rate significantly.
The new plans are similar to a scheme that the prisons service has previously funded in Jamaica, where a prison was partially funded to help speed up prisoner transfers. In both Nigeria and Jamaica prison conditions are notoriously bad, Nigeria's prison system has been condemned by Amnesty International. Over 65% of those in Nigerian prisons have not being convicted of any crime, with waits of up to 10 years for a trial and as a result the prison system there is notoriously overcrowded.
The proportion of foreign nationals imprisoned within the UK prison system has grown largely over the past few decade or so, yet according to the Prison Reform Trust the overwhelming majority of these are first time offenders from some of the poorest countries in the world who have been convicted of drug trafficking. This means that rather than a wave of immigrant violence as some of the press have tried to paint these figures, the rise in foreign national prisoners is mostly down to increases in sentences handed out for drug related crimes, especially given that 4 in 10 male foreign nationals and 8 in 10 female foreign nationals in UK prisons have been convicted of drug offences.
In criminological theory, imprisonment is said to be justified on several grounds, either of incapacitation of those likely to commit crimes or of deterrence of people from committing future crimes. But it is not the people who are getting caught in these cases that are the serious criminals, those at the top of the drug cartels can simply sit back as the capture of another expendable mule means nothing to them. It is the criminological equivalent of chopping off the head of the weed but doing nothing about the roots.
A British funded prison will not do anything about the underlying problems within Nigerian society that lead people into the desperation of becoming drug mules, in particular the rape of the oil wealth by the Nigerian state and capitalist class which has led to poverty for the masses. Incidentally this is the same Nigerian government which has been backed by the British government despite widespread claims of fraud in the most recent national elections. So small are the hopes for even under this scheme convincing Nigerian prisoners to even transfer to a specifically built prison, as being proposed, that the government as part of the proposals is aiming to convince the Nigerian government to change its constitution to allow forcible prisoner transfers.
Schemes like this are only being proposed as a result of years of hiking up the prison sentences for crimes that are either trivial or are committed by those who would be unlikely to re-offend anyway as a repsonse to populist pressure for 'tough' action against crimes. Such prisoners are easily convicted and allow government bureaucrats to present figures that show they are 'winning the war on crime', yet do not tend to represent genuine steps towards seriously dealing with major crime problems. Removing the corrupt, theiving Nigerian ruling class and replacing them with democratic committees of workers and other oppressed layers and giving them control of the countries resources to alleviate the widespread poverty in the country would represent a serious step towards reducing the numbers of Nigerian drug traffickers, far more than any of the prison services schemes. But such a step would never be advocated by the UK government who rely on the Nigerian regime to support the interests of British capitalist companies in the country. Hence why only socialists can seriously solve the criminal justice crisis and under capitalism we see high crime rates and an escalating prison population.

Review: An Unbroken Agony by Randall Robinson

This is the second, long overdue, post in my series on the 5th anniversary of the second overthrow and exile and Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The first can be found here and a posting dealing with current events in Haiti can be found here.

An Unbroken Agony is a much different kind of book to Damming the Flood, the book we had previously reviewed in this series. Damming the Flood is a highly detailed and well researched account of the rise and fall of Jean-Bertrand Aristide examining how and why he came to power as well as how and why he was overthrown.
Whilst An Unbroken Agony attempts to tell this story too as well as putting the events in a longer historical context than Damming the Flood, there is nowhere near the same amount of depth of research and explanation. Instead the main value of this book is in its insight into the life of Aristide through his friendship with the author.
Indeed, the book solves the question that Damming the Flood suggests an answer to but lacks the inside knowledge to conclude definitively on. That is the question of how Aristide ended up leaving Haiti for the second time on February 29th 2004 – did he flee or was he kidnapped?
Robinson is rather equivocal on the subject, he was kidnapped. In the book Robinson reproduces e-mail correspondence with Aristide and his wife and other information that make it blatantly clear that in the space of a few short hours the plans of the Aristide’s changed dramatically, they had made plans for a major interview on the 29th which was never cancelled. The change was precipitated by the arrival of US soldiers at Aristide’s house who escorted him to the airport.
Robinson points out that US TV news stations showed old footage of Aristide making a trip by himself abroad and attempted to pass this off as Aristide fleeing the country (as Robinson points out, his wife is nowhere to be seen in this footage. Moreover, why would Aristide flee to the dictatorship of the Central African Republic when neighbouring Jamaica had offered him asylum?
Although the book makes contributions on a few other points it is its utter demolition of the argument that Aristide fleed Haiti of his own free will, that is its strongest point.

Haitian Election Boycotts: Masses Reject UN Occupation

Whilst the mainstream media maybe talking up US forces pulling out of cities and towns in Iraq there is another occupation that the US initiated that is still ongoing. On February 29th 2004, US special forces kidnapped the Haitian President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide and dumped him in the dictatorship of the Central African Republic after funding guerrilla insurgents and others to destabilise the country. US, Canadian and French forces moved to occupy the country, ostensibly as peacekeepers, and were later replaced by a Brazilian-led UN peacekeeping (read occupation) force.

Even 5 years on thousands still marched through Port-au-Prince to mark the anniversary of Aristide’s overthrow demanding his return to the country. Aristide is still associated with the hope the masses felt with the end of the hated Duvalier dictatorship and is seen as having achieved improvements for the mass of the population (such as increases to the minimum wage) despite the concession he made to imperialist countries to get international aid, such as the privatisation of public services. Indeed, the 2006 election of the Lespwa candidate and former associate of Aristide, Rene Preval, to the presidency was seen as a vote for the return of Aristide. But with huge food shortages leading to rioting in the capital, Post-au-Prince last year and no return of Aristide, support for Preval has massively diminished.

On April 19th the first round of Haiti’s senate elections were held with a record low turnout. According to the Provisional Electoral Council (Conseil Electoral Provisoire - CEP) the turnout was 11%, although other observers place the figure as low as 5%. Prior to the elections, the CEP excluded all 14 candidates of Aristide’s party, Fanmi Lavalas.

In the run-up to the second round of elections, a prominent Fanmi Lavalas supporter, who was imprisoned in the run-up to the 2006 to stop him being a candidate in the Presidential elections, Father Gerard Jean Juste died from cancer. His funeral was used as a rallying call by Fanmi Lavalas activists to call on the population to again boycott the elections. Yet the funeral was yet another scene of vicious attacks by UN troops, killing one of the mourners. Despite denials by the UN force, a video has emerged showing two Brazilian troops firing into the crowd. The boycott appears to have been equally effective the second time round prompting the government to claim that imaginery ‘violence and intimidation’ are to blame for the low turnout.

Whilst Marxists support the right of Fanmi Lavalas to take part in the elections, and the right of Aristide to return to Haiti, neither will solve the problems of the Haitian masses. If either were to return to power, they would be forced into the position that they were in previously of giving concessions to foreign imperialist and capitalist interests in return for meagre aid packages. The Haitian masses must look towards the small but significant working class in Haiti and the development of a revolutionary party that can lead serious struggles to improve their living standards.

Socialist Party’s first North Wales District meeting

Picture: The Stilletoes performing at the Youth Fight for Jobs gig

On Sunday the 21st of June the Socialist Party’s first North Wales District meeting was held in Rhyl, a demonstration of the growing support for the party in the area as several people who do not have a local meeting to attend, came to their first party meeting. The meeting was opened by Keith Pattenden discussing the recent gains of the BNP in local and European elections and what could be done in Wales to campaign against their racist poison. He examined the reasons for their rise in votes and members over the last decade particularly looking at New Labour’s abandonment of the working class. We discussed how people without a viable alternative of a progressive party can turn in frustration to the BNP to express their anger. However, an important point was made that in this years Euro Elections the BNP vote actually dropped and they won MEPs only because many working class people didn’t vote! This showed how a new workers party is the only way to win over those people who feel utterly disillusioned with the main three parties and give them a positive place to put their vote.

The second session on building the Socialist Party in North Wales was introduced by Bangor Socialist Party branch secretary Iain Dalton. The branch in North Wales has expanded massively over the last half year with members now in several towns in Gwynedd as well as in Rhyl and Wrexham with mnay contacts even further afield, there has also been an influx of sixth form and college students over the last few months too. We reviewed our activities over the last few months from the protest against the onslaught in Gaza we organised to our recent activity around the Youth Fight For Jobs campaign, particularly emphasising the need to link this campaign with trade unionists locally. The importance of our Students Societies was highlighted too, owing too the NUS’s current unwillingness to campaign for students shown by their acceptance of fees and lack of support for UCU lecturers action against cuts was mentioned, particularly at Bangor University where cuts of 10% across all departments are being discussed.

In the week since the meeting we’ve already begun putting our plans into action with a fantastic Youth Fight for Jobs fundraising gig held near Bangor which raised over £100 as well as excellent stalls in Bangor and Colwyn Bay against the privatisation of Royal Mail where we sold record number of papers at both. We are also holding our first party meeting in Wrexham this week, which will hopefully be the beginning of a new branch building on the activity in the town over the last few months.

Titans Scrapped, But Large Prisons Still in Pipeline

An edited version of this article was published in last weeks edition of the Socialist.

The government’s flagship programme for increasing the prison population, 3 2,500 capacity Titan prisons have been scrapped and instead are to be replaced by 5 smaller 1,500 place prisons. These prisons will still be bigger than all but one of the currently existing prisons existing at the present in the UK. As government finances become tightened due to the impact of the recession, combined with the massive barrage of criticism they faced over the issue of ‘warehousing’ prisoners, the governments plan is to build 2 of the 5 immediately whilst leaving the other three prisons hanging in the area with the possibility of being scrapped.
More over, these new prisons will be privately built and run – proving that Straw and New Labour have learnt nothing from the disaster of PFI and privatisation of prisons and other public sector institutions over the past decade or so.
Yet a report in The Times (6 April) says that even before these new prisons are built twenty UK prisons already hold over 1,000 prisoners each. Colossal sums of money have been spent on prison building in the last few years.
This includes £430 million to create over 4,000 extra prison places and £2.3 billion to be spent by 2014 to create 20,000 new places including the five new 1,500 capacity jails as well as eight new prisons with a combined capacity of 5,400 alongside expansions of existing facilities.
However, the government constantly says that crime as a whole is falling and official figures back this up. So why does the prison population keep increasing, reaching a new record of 83,810 last August?
Certainly the nearly 5,000 prisoners serving (up to January 2009) indeterminate sentences for public protection have increased the figure. This is just one of many new sentences and criminal offences that the government has created over the last few years. Average sentence lengths have been creeping up over the last decade too.
But magistrates are pushing for even greater powers, doubling the length of prison sentence they can hand out up to 12 months. They claim they can deal with 18,000 more cases a year making huge savings for the Courts Service (the average cost of a crown court trial is £18,000 compared to £1,800 for a magistrates’ court trial).
The cases at present can be tried ‘either way’, by a magistrate or judge and jury – so this potentially could restrict such cases to magistrates courts only, removing the right to a jury trial. But should these unelected judges be given more powers?
As we have outlined in The Socialist before, only socialist measures using democratic methods to reduce the prison population and tackling the social issues at the root of crime as well as providing serious rehabilitation for prisoners can overcome the crisis.

Legality and the Lindsey Oil Refinery Dispute

There seems to be a trend in recent disputes of law-breaking. Of course the thing that has been highlighted in the media is that much of the action taken by workers in these dispute has been illegal. For example, Rob Williams sealing himself into his office after being sacked was technically trespassing, as was the occupations by the sacked Visteon workers. At Lindsey Oil Refinery (LOR) and other construction sites, the wildcat strikes are of course illegal under the anti-union laws.

Yet in most instances they have been proceeded by illegality on the part of management. The sacking of Rob Williams was illegal, all the proper procedures were simply ignored in their rush to get rid of a militant trade unionist. At Lindsey Oil Refinery the disputes have been over management breaking agreements with the trade unions (not sure whether thats technically illegal - but the principle is the same.

I think the recent disputes demonstrate the class bias within the law where it favours company management over the workers - anything illegal the management does they are able to cost out and work out whether its cheaper to break the law than to face militant resistance. Fortunately, where workers are in position to take action they can overcome some of this bias and acheive a form of justice for themselves as the case of Rob Williams shows.

I'm sure someone can probably do a better job with these thoughts!

Anyways, a few quick plugs:

Latest Socialist Party LOR leaflet http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/latest/7466
New blog based in Wrexham http://wrexhamsocialist.blogspot.com/

Defend the Sacked Lindsey Oil Refinery (LOR) Workers!

As people may have heard over 700 workers at the Lindsey Oil Refinery (LOR) have been given the sack and told to reapply for their jobs today. Below is the latest Socialist Party LOR newsletter. An older one can be found http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/latest/7464 . There is also a support group on facebook which can be found http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=233431010584#

You can also find a report from the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8111648.stm and an interview with striker John McEwan and a Total representative http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8108000/8108720.stm

Photo: Workers strike in solidarity at Aberthaw in South Wales

Lindsey Socialist Party Newletter no. 18, 22 June 2009

Supported by Keith Gibson ex LOR strike cttee, Trevor Grewar Hull Amicus/Unite branch chair, John McEwan national stewards forum, Steve Jones LOR steward (all in personal capacities)

ALL OUT FOR 'TOTAL' SHUTDOWN
SOLIDARITY WITH SACKED LINDSEY WORKERS
DEFEND TRADE UNIONISM & NAECI AGREEMENT

By dismissing 647 LOR workers, Total have declared war on trade unionism and the NAECI agreement. This dispute is no longer just about 51 sacked workers, its about the future of our industry. The employers want to break the solidarity of construction workers and smash effective trade unionism so that they can get rid of the national agreement to bring in cheap labour and drive down wages to boost their profits.
We must stand united together to defeat these greedy bosses. They say they won't talk unless we return to work - that's what they said in February, but we forced them to talk. They say we should have an official ballot - but the ECIA are organising to make the ballot illegal! They say we can apply for our jobs back by 5pm today - we won't let them pick and choose. We all came out together, we'll all go back together, together with our 51 comrades.

UNITY IS STRENGTH. WE WILL WIN!

17 SITES HAVE TAKEN SOLIDARITY ACTION

Fiddlers Ferry
Aberthaw
BOC Scunthorpe
South Hook
Drax
Ferrybridge
Eggborough
BP Saltend
Conoco
Staythorpe
West Burton
Ratcliffe
Cottam
Didcot
Stanlow
Wilton
Hinkley

Socialist Party suggestions for taking strike forward:

• Monday morning - burn the dismissal notices
• Organise 24 hour picketing of Total/LOR
• Appeal to tanker drivers and train drivers not to cross
• Continue to send pickets out to spread strike nation-wide
• Tuesday - mass rally outside Lindsey to be attended by workers from all sites on strike, and supporters
• Stewards from all NAECI sites should convene after Tuesday's rally to set up an unofficial shop stewards network
• Call for boycott and blockades of Total petrol stations
• Contact French trade unions at Total in France for support
• Expand the LOR shop stewards cttee into a Strike Cttee to organise - picket rotas, leaflets & placards, press & media, fundraising & hardship fund, trade union support, speakers at meetings, etc.

Messages of support

From Joe Higgins, Member of the European Parliament, The Socialist Party, Dublin , Ireland
"The threatened sacking of 900 Lindsey workers by the Total oil company is an absolute outrage.
As a newly elected MEP I will be raising your case in the European parliament. I would like to add that I will also be calling for the EU directives on 'posted workers' to be withdrawn as soon as possible because they are a licence for European companies to undermine trade union pay and conditions as part of national agreements."

SOLIDARITY FROM SVEN NAESSENS, UNION CONVENOR AT TOTAL, ANTWERP, BELGIUM
"Will give support with email now, leaflet on Monday, and discussion with our management on why you have been sacked. The national trade union secretary has sent emails out to refineries in Belgium."

RAIL, MARITIME & TRANSPORT UNION (RMT) from Alex Gordon (NEC)
"Solidarity to sacked Lindsey workers. We support your cause. Union jobs for trade union members"

MATT WRACK, GENERAL SECRETARY OF FIRE BRIGADES UNION
"Please pass on solidarity greeting to all sacked Lindsey workers from the Fire Brigades Union. Please let us know anything we can do to assist - including financial support, physical support on pickets or whatever is needed. We will circulate any such information throughout the union."

DAVE NELLIST, SOCIALIST PARTY COUNCILLOR in COVENTRY
"Please pass on to your members that we in the Coventry trade union movement will be doing all we can to build support for your campaign for reinstatement."

MESSAGE TO GIBBO FROM YOUNG LOR STRIKER!!
"We'll beat these all day - we'll step it up a gear next week. I'm not giving my life, my kid's life, or my girlfriend's life up for no-one! We'll win together. We'll get a slice of the pie instead of the crumbs they want to take away from us. We will win!"
Plus dozens more...

"Unfortunately Mr.Hardacre, You are politically motivated - in bed with New Labour!"

Whilst we have had dozens of messages of support from other unions and other countries, Tommy Hardacre, our UNITE national officer, sent an email to regional officers on June 17th asking them to tell shop stewards at other sites not to support LOR's action!
We have also been told by a reliable source that he has alleged that the strike is politically motivated by a socialist party.
Why are you not just repudiating, but working actively against our strike?
Could it be that you, and your boss Derek Simpson, don't want to embarrass your New Labour government? The same New Labour government that hasn't scrapped the Tory anti-trade union laws that force us to take unofficial action. The same New Labour our union gives £millions of members' money to.
How dare you attack Socialist Party who are supporting us when you are stabbing us in the back.
Socialist Party members and supporters have been active in supporting construction workers in this industry for years.
Keith Gibson was a spokesperson for the LOR strike committee in Jan/Feb and John McEwan got a start after threatening to picket out LOR because of Total blacking him.
Our members have been at Staythorpe pickets every week and produced regular newsletters (this is No.18) providing information and making proposals on how to take the struggle forward.
The Socialist has carried weekly reports, including ones by Steve Acheson (Fiddlers Ferry) exposing the industry blacklist and Paul McDowell exposing IREM's lack of health & safety.

If you would like to find out more about the Socialist Party, and/or join us in the fightback against the bosses' system - then contact us.

Knights in Parliament and their Corruption

In my last post on this subject I posed a few suggestions of how to examine the significance of knighted mps in parliament and whether one particular party was any more corrupt than the others. So below I've started with a list of Knighted MPs

(7 Featured on Nasty Knights Blog)
Sir Michael Spicer (Con)
Sir Alan Haselhurst (Con)
Sir John Butterfill (Con)
Sir Gerald Kaufman (Lab)
Sir Nicholas Winterton (Con)
Sir Menzies Campbell (Lib)
Sir Peter Viggers (Con)

And the rest with any allegations against them (or at least the rest I could find)

Sir Alan Beith (Lib) (see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/5364659/MPs-expenses-would-be-Speaker-Sir-Alan-Beith-and-his-wife-claimed-177000.html)
Sir Peter Soulsby (Lab) (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8039273.stm#soulsby_peter)
Sir Stuart Bell (Lab) (see http://www.opendemocracy.net/blog/ourkingdom-theme/guy-aitchison/2009/05/12/sir-stuart-bell-wrong-again-on-expenses and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8039273.stm#bell_stuart)
Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Con)
Sir Anthony Steen (Con) (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/may/21/mps-expenses-anthony-steen)
Sir Peter Tapsell (Con) (see http://www.louthleader.co.uk/news/Sir-Peter-Tapsell-MP39s-expenses.5325277.jp)
Sir Patrick Cormack (Con) (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8043530.stm#cormack_patrick)
Sir George Young (Con) (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8043530.stm#young_george and http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/5364194/MPs-expenses-Sir-George-Young-claimed-127000-on-London-flat.html)
Sir Paul Beresford (Con) (see http://www.thisissurreytoday.co.uk/ashtead/MP-denies-dental-surgery-claim/article-1009276-detail/article.html)
Sir Michael Lord (Con) (see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/5431758/MPs-expenses-Sir-Michael-Lord-claimed-8000-for-garden.html)
Sir John Stanley (Con) (see http://www.thisistotalessex.co.uk/searching/MP-reveals-expenses/article-231597-detail/article.html)

So that puts the parties having (Total MPs for each party from UK parliament website http://www.parliament.uk/mpslordsandoffices/mps_and_lords/stateparties.cfm)

Conservatives - 13 Knights (Out of 193 MPs total = 6.7%)
Labour - 3 Knights (Out of 349 MPs total = 0.9%)
Liberal Democrats - 2 Knights (out of 63 MPs total = 3.2%)

Now the above information needs going through but one or two I think may be clean (if you call having huge salaries and then claiming a fair bit of money legitimately clean!), but certainly there are several more which can be added to the list that has featured on the Nasty Knights blog. It would be interesting to see whether knighted MPs are more likely to have dodgy expenses than 'normal' MPs too.

NB. This is a follow-on post to Knighthoods and Corruption

Billy Bragg Gig - Caernarfon 11th June 2009 - part of the Miners’ Strike Tour.

From the Socialist Party Wales website http://www.socialistpartywales.org.uk/

Review by Jan Underwood

Under the South Wales Area NUM’s banner with the words “Forward to a Socialist Britain and World Peace”, Billy Bragg treated us to a great concert and political rant, declaring that he was proud to stand in front of those words.

To kick off the evening Billy had found a young group Dan Amor from Penmachno [a feat in itself, as few in the North know where that is!!] They sang beautifully in English and Welsh about various struggles and life in North Wales. Their rebelliousness mostly amounted to different coloured shoelaces, and their sweet harmonies would only contrast Billy’s gruff – however, it was great to see Billy backing local youth.

A hard-line political poet, Patrick Jones from South Wales followed. He really set the scene, staring with an anti-BNP poem. Other poems were daringly anti-organised religions and pro-female. He finished the set with a tribute to Aneurin Bevan and his vision of the NHS ‘free at the point of entry’ ideals, ‘The Healing House’, set to music by Billy.

On to Billy’s cracking start with ‘The Sound of Ideology Crashing’ – no prizes for guessing the topical subject! He continued with several rare Woodie Guthrie songs, arising from a collaboration with Woodie’s daughter, which could have been written today, such that we are still in the same political mess! Onward with many more political rants which included ‘Oh Freedom’, ‘From Red to Blue’, ‘Which Side Are You On?’ and ‘All You Fascists Are Bound to Lose’. He interspersed ‘I keep Faith’ and ‘There is Power in The Union’ with a call to action. He defined his use of the word ‘faith’, stating: “Faith is international solidarity – there is power in the Union”, linking these two great songs brilliantly.

Whether you love him or hate him, he is a man of action, working constantly at grass-roots level. He even found an opportunity to raise funds for his charity ‘Jail Guitar Doors’ keeping all his fans happy with original signed pictures. He didn’t stop until he had spoken to everyone who wanted a chat and an autograph, which was well after midnight.

The Bangor Socialist Party also had a great night, selling 15 papers, two copies of Socialism Today as well as various books and pamphlets – including a paper and our bilingual pamphlet “The Great North Wales Quarry Strikes” to Billy himself! Countless ‘Youth Fight for Jobs’ leaflets went home with many at the gig. The good feeling spread over to donations on the night (£10), and the following day at a Socialist stall in Bangor, where £15 was raised. If this is his influence, he is very welcome to come again!

VICTORY AT LINAMAR! Rob Williams reinstated

From the Socialist Party website

100% Victory! Rob Williams has been unconditionally reinstated as convener at the former Visteon / Fords car parts factory from tomorrow!
Rob and all the Linamar workers want to thank everyone for their solidarity. There will be a victory event in the near future.
Rob Williams was summarily sacked from Linamar for being uncooperative with managment.
See Action to defend union rights and Rob Williams dispute at Linamar: management given notice of strike for background information to the dispute.
This means that the demonstration on Saturday will not be going ahead.