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In 2012, the United Kingdom (UK) National Health Service (NHS)—the country’s public healthcare provider—proposed changes to healthcare policy in the UK. These changes would raise the retirement age for medical doctors from 60 years of age to 68 years of age, and increase fees on retirement funds above the normal level for public workers. The changes also made it easier for the NHS to subcontract care to private firms. Medical doctors in the public system, led by the British Medical Association (BMA)—their union—proposed a strike.

The enclosure system involved fencing off plots of arable land. The land would then be deeded to an individual or group of owners who could use it as they saw fit. Despite slowly losing access to the commons, commoners preserved their access to rights of ways (the right to pass through someone else’s or public property on a specific path), even those now enclosed on private land, through the countryside. Foot paths, roads, carriageways, and trails were considered highways to which all individuals had the right of way.

“Pink-washing” refers to a practice used by entities or corporations to market themselves as LGBTQ friendly and supportive, while  simultaneously committing other ethical violations. BP was a British oil and gas company that came under fire in recent years for various environmental violations, in particular an oil spill, considered one of the most damaging in history. BP spilled approximately 4.9 million barrels of oil in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010. The spill had extreme environmental and health concerns.

Approximately ninety-seven percent of publishing climate scientists agreed that climate change was occurring in 2013, and that the primary cause was human activities. If the planet was to remain within safe levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and maintain temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius of warming, four-fifths of the known fossil fuel reserves needed to stay in the ground and not be burned.

The Fossil Free SOAS’s (the School of Oriental and African Studies at University of London) divestment campaign began in the autumn of the 2013 school year as part of a cluster of divestment campaigns led by People & Planet, a network of student campaign groups in the UK focused on alleviating global poverty, defending human rights, and protecting the environment. On 13 November 2013, SOAS students, staff, and alumni joined together in signing a divestment petition to Professor Paul Webley, the director of SOAS at the time.

The ozone layer absorbs ultraviolet radiation that can be very harmful to all forms of life. In 1974, however, scientists discovered that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), a chemical used in aerosol sprays, refrigerants, and the creation of synthetic materials, break down when they enter the stratosphere, and produce a chlorine atom, which then contributes to breaking down the ozone layer. In 1985, British Antarctic Survey scientists discovered a massive hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica.

In August of 2008, Tibetan filmmaker Dhondup Wangchen was premiering his new documentary, “Leaving Fear Behind”, to a group of journalists in a Beijing hotel when Chinese police interrupted and forcibly shut down the screening.

In June of 1967, a Sikh man named Tarsem Sandhu returned to his job as a bus driver in Wolverhampton after a three week break, wearing a turban and newly grown beard. His supervisor immediately assessed that his turban violated the dress code and being unshaven was considered unprofessional, and sent him Sandhu home without pay. Sandhu called upon C.S. Panchhi, a prominent Sikh community leader in Birmingham, for help.

Visteon is a global automotive company that spun off from Ford Motor Company in June 2000. In the U.K., during this transition period, Ford and the trade union Unite made a deal to guarantee that all former Ford employees – now Visteon workers – would keep the same wage and pension conditions. However, Visteon placed all newly hired employees under inferior contracts.

In January of 2009, protests broke out worldwide to condemn Israel’s military actions in Gaza. The weekend of the 10th and 11th of January, crowds gathered in cities worldwide for demonstrations of up to 250,000 people. In London, 100,000 people gathered to protest the war in Gaza. A couple of days following these demonstrations, student occupations at universities in the United Kingdom (UK) began to break out, starting with the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) on 13 January.

In January of 2009, protests broke out worldwide to condemn Israel’s military actions in Gaza. The weekend of the 10th and 11th of January, crowds gathered in cities worldwide for demonstrations of up to 250,000 people. In London, 100,000 people gathered to protest the war in Gaza.

Many West Indian settled in England during the 1960’s due to looser immigration restrictions. In Southwest England West Indians easily found menial jobs in Bristol, but found themselves shut out of higher positions. It was hardly a secret that the Bristol Omnibus Company constantly turned away black and Asian applicants for drivers and conductors, but neither management nor the union, the Transport and General Worker’s Union, seemed interested in dealing with the “colour bar”.

In January of 2009, protests broke out worldwide to condemn Israel’s military actions in Gaza. The weekend of the 10th and 11th of January, crowds gathered in cities worldwide for demonstrations of up to 250,000 people. In London, 100,000 people gathered to protest the war in Gaza. 

A couple of days following these demonstrations, student occupations at universities in the United Kingdom (UK) began to break out, starting with the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) on 13 January. 

Apartheid was a legal and political system of racial segregation in South Africa in which the National Party used violence to uphold political and economic control by the white minority. Apartheid began under colonial Dutch rule and was officially introduced as an official policy in 1948.

At the start of November in the year 1995, a new system was instated in the correctional institution of Full Sutton, located near York in New Yorkshire, United Kingdom. Over the few months before November changes to the system had begun to surface. The changes culminated in the incentives and earned privileges scheme, which added another level of control to prisons, to the prison rules, and to govenors' discretionary powers. In Full Sutton Prison, prisoners were already allowed to be punished for what seemed to be virtually anything according to the inmates. 

Wales, a country that is bordered by England to the east, is part of Great Britain and the United Kingdom. The Welsh people have their own distinct national identity, with a unique culture and language. There has long been a Welsh Nationalist movement, which in modern times has been represented by the political party Plaid Cymru, literally “the Welsh Party”. 

The exportation of live animals had been a subject of great debate in Britain during the early 1990’s. Britain’s harbors were being utilized to transport live sheep, cattle, and veal calves across Europe, but there were few laws protecting the rights of these animals as they were being exported. Animals were forced into cramped living quarters and could be without food or water for up to 24 hours while in cargo ships. 

In November of 1960, the United States and British governments reached an agreement on the use of the Holy Loch in the Firth of Clyde, Scotland as an overseas base for the US Navy. The governments believed the U.S. military required an overseas nuclear base for refit and crew overturn for its new Polaris missile submarines, built to serve as a deterrent to Soviet military might. 

Artificial baby milks—so called “infant formula”—became widespread commercial product during the early decades of the twentieth century. Among many companies involved, Nestlé’s was the biggest promoter, controlling more than 40% of the estimated $1.72 billion market. Nestle aggressively pursued the interest from infant formula with indiscriminate marketing. The marketing that evoked popular indictment was their promotion of infant formula in the Third World.

The economic plight of the people of Manchester in the early eighteenth century was rooted in three major historical developments: the Industrial Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and the Corn Laws of 1804. The first solidified an enormous and conspicuous gap between rich and poor, leaving Manchester’s lower classes—mostly spinners and weavers of cotton—to grapple with unemployment, poverty, hunger, and heavy reliance on social welfare. It also contributed to an unprecedented boom in population (Manchester’s quintupled in four decades).

In 1998, Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Pvt Ltd, a subsidiary of the multinational beverage company, was granted a license to operate a bottling plant in Plachimada, a small village in the state of Kerala in southern India.  Within two years of the plant's opening in 2000, indigenous people living near the plant, known as the Adivasi people, began protesting the bottling plant's presence in their community.  The local population complained that Coca-Cola was lowering the water table and polluting surface and groundwater within the plant site and in the local community.

The Industrial Revolution brought prosperity to Britain’s upper classes and in the process created a new industrial working class.  To this class belonged, in 1842, 350,000 textile workers, 120,000 coal miners, and 400,000 metal workers.   Most of these laborers lived in the coal-rich counties of Lancashire, Cheshire, Yorkshire and Staffordshire in western Britain.  Far from sharing in the newfound industrial wealth of their employers, however, workers endured abysmal working conditions, unpredictable wages, and no job security.  The constant advancement of technolo

The world voiced its opposition to the National Party’s apartheid government ruling in South Africa in a new way in 1964. International sports tours and matches had become a focal point of cultural identity for whites in South Africa. Victories, to them, demonstrated a kind of symbolic power of white South Africa. White elite South Africa was considered “sports mad.” Once this became apparent to other countries in objection to the political state of South Africa, they found a way to use the situation to send a message.

In 1996, there were 204 reported attacks on prison staff in English prisons. Ten years later, the number of attacks soared to 1,050 attacks. After a 400% increase in attacks, prison officers were more than outraged with their apparently dangerous working conditions.