February 5, 2001
LUTON, England — Ten thousand working people marched here Jan. 20 to protest the decision by General Motors to cut 10,000 jobs at plants across North America and Europe. Workers reported plans for plant-gate demonstrations in Portugal, Spain, Germany and Belgium.
Workers from GM-owned Opel plants in Bochum, Germany; Antwerp, Belgium; and Zaragoza, Spain, had a big impact on the demonstration. A worker at Opal Bochum, Steffen Reichelt, explained that the workforce there has been reduced from 20,000 workers in the early 1990s to 13,000 today.
Reichelt said a successful strike last June against bosses’ plans to put part of the workforce under a separate management structure had boosted the confidence of union members. “The strike lasted 35 hours, and after 20 hours or so it caused other plants in Europe to stop work. We could see our power.”
February 6, 1976
BOSTON — The violent city-wide action of racist high school students, spearheading the antibusing movement here, has dealt court-ordered desegregation — and the very safety of Boston’s Black students — the biggest blows since mob attacks met the start of busing in the fall of 1974.
Schools remain tense in the wake of a week of disruptions at Hyde Park High School. Bat- and pipe-wielding thugs roamed school corridors and grounds in search of Black students after two days of provocations that led to the explosion.
Under the guise of “retaliation” for the burning of an American flag by a Black student, the school’s racist youth put out the word that “the n—–s are going to get it.” As the disruptions spread, the city’s antibusing leadership went on a hysterical media campaign to blame the violence on the Black community and the Black students.
February 5, 1951
Unless Nehru’s government agrees to obey the orders of the U.S. State Department, the Indian people will be left to starve to death by the scores of millions — that was the ultimatum which Capitol Hill served last week on New Delhi when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee pigeonholed India’s request to send two million tons of American grain to that country.
The American imperialists have always found it “reasonable” to use the plight of hungry peoples in order to bludgeon their governments into submission.
Hostility mounting to hatred of the U.S. is now sweeping over India. This ”anti-American feeling” must not be permitted by American labor to rise to such a pitch as will make the Indian people think that our workers are no different from their masters. Sad to say, the official labor press has remained silent.