UK government

A series of 20 Freedom of Information requests have shown that the number of prosecutions by the government watchdog has dropped by a third over the last year since the executive brought in a new ‘business-friendly’ strategy.

HSE brought 712 prosecutions in 2004/05, down from 928 in 2003/04. It secured just 673 convictions, down from 887 the preceding year.

The latest of New Labour's attacks on working class people has been announced. The aim is to abolish Incapacity Benefit (IB). Of course, the radical sounding rhetoric has been applied. Alan Johnson, the Work and Pensions secretary, described the changes as the most radical benefit reform for sick and disabled people since the Beveridge report.

A proposal to extend the ability of the police to detain without trial to 90 days has been defeated. The bill, which lost by 322 votes to 291, was stopped by a major rebellion of Labour MPs.

However, the doubling of the detention allowance to 28 days, a separate bill to supplement the failed 90-day one, passed.

Britain’s Labour government has given police unprecedented powers of arrest for any criminal offence whatsoever, even minor misdemeanours. Civil rights groups have denounced the new law as akin to a police-state measure.

The Pension Protection Fund (PPF), which released the figures as part of its latest calculations on 12th July, said that the government's previous figures, based on estimates from December 2003, were outdated.

A detailed investigation into anti-fascist magazine Searchlight, and its links with British intelligence services. Despite causing a lot of problems for fascists, Searchlight gathers intelligence on both the right and the left and amongst other things has launched smear campaigns against anarchists. Its agenda is firmly set in the interests of the British liberal capitalist state

By Larry O' Hara
First Published by Phoenix Press, PO Box 824, London N1 9DL, in October 1996

ISBN 0-948984-33-3