“There are further indications today that this announcement will be followed by an even greater slashing of jobs by AIB and Bank of Ireland as low and middle income bank workers in the main are being made to pay for the mistakes of Senior Management.
“Bank of Scotland, who were among the beneficiaries of a UK government £17 billion bail out, say they are closing these branches because they cannot see themselves achieving a profit in ‘a realistic timeframe’ and that they have no strategy for the bank’s future.
“This admission taken together with the absence of any evidence that the banks will lend to working people and small businesses makes a fresh case for the banks to be taken into public ownership and run democratically with boards made up of the workers, the government and customers. This in the only means by which jobs can be protected and lending policy be controlled by anything other than the discredited existing bank boards of management.
“I will support every effort made by the Halifax workers and UNITE to defend their jobs which given the scale of compulsory redundancies the company want means strike action.”
Defend the Right to Protest
Working people are facing a future of cuts and falling living standards. The new Assembly and Executive have taken over from where the last left off. As we go to press, the exact cuts the main parties are planning remain shrouded in secrecy but it is clear that savage attacks are just around the corner.
Following approaches from friends and family of Mr Brendan Lillis, a prisoner in Maghaberry prison, who is close to death, Socialist Party MEP for Dublin, Paul Murphy, is appealing to Northern Ireland Justice Minister, Mr David Ford, to intervene with a view to allowing Mr Lillis to spend his last weeks at home on humanitarian grounds.