1.gif)
2.jpg)
payup.jpg)
5.gif)
4.jpg)
42.jpg)
.jpg)
‘David,
Today, 500,000 workers are taking strike action because they’ve been given no choice.
Instead of tackling the cost of living crisis, the Prime Minister is attacking key workers and clamping down on our most basic rights.
It is the national day of action to Protect the Right to Strike. And it is a powerful display of our collective strength, our solidarity and our power.
Working people are coming together at rallies and picket lines up and down the country to fight for decent pay, conditions and our right to strike. It’s not too late to join an event near you!
Key workers will present our petition at Downing Street, passing on the names of 260,700 people who have joined the campaign so far.
There will be huge media coverage of working people taking action today, and we must do everything we can to make sure this government get our message loud and clear.
Send a tweet
We have a lot to fight for.
Our right to choose to withdraw our labour. To be safe on the job. To earn a decent wage so we can feed our families. For the decent public services we deserve.
It’s vital that we echo and amplify the energy of the hundreds of thousands of people braving the streets, in every way we can.
In unity,
Anthony,
Megaphone UK’
I’m not on Twitter, but I certainly would if I was. If any of my readers are and support the right to strike, perhaps you’d like to send a tweet supporting the strikers as suggested.
Just got this from the Arise Festival of Left-wing Ideas:
Hello David
We are writing to share the breaking news that Firefighters have delivered a decisive mandate for strike action, with 88% voting Yes on a 73% turnout. You can:
Yours in solidarity.
The Arise & Labour Assembly volunteers.‘
This is so overwhelming that the vote would still be valid and binding even under Sunak’s proposed cruddy legislation to stifle strikes. We’ve seen the firefighters before lock horns with the government over pay and redundancies. This is shows how massively discontented they are, and with good reason.
So maximum support to our firefighters, and out with Sunak and the Tories.
That Preston Journalist, whose real name, I am assured by the great people who comment here, is Ashley Kaminski, put up a genuinely heart-breaking video last night. People had been queuing outside a soup kitchen in Glasgow. Among the adults were ten children, including a babe in arms. Kaminski thought that this was terrible, as he should. He’s an avowed opponent of Nicola Sturgeon and all her works, dubbing her ‘McKrankie’ after her supposed resemblance to one half of a double act back in the 1980s. From the tone of his piece, he clearly wanted to blame her, but couldn’t quite. It was wrong, he said, whoever was responsible.
Okay, I don’t know what powers the devolved Scots parliament has, especially regarding welfare policies. I am sure that many Scots voted SNP, not because they wanted independence, but simply because they wanted a proper welfare state, something that wasn’t being offered by Jim Murphy’s Scottish Labour party. But this scandalous situation has been around far longer than the SNP’s administration, and it afflicts communities right across Britain. In Scotland there was a parliamentary inquiry into food banks a few years ago. One of those speaking before the committee was a volunteer, who described the intensely dispiriting deprivation and poverty he saw as he did his job. And I can remember putting up a 19th-early 20th century poem about children queuing outside a food kitchen. It’s disgusting that Britain has returned to such levels of poverty.
But Krankie isn’t responsible. The Tories are. They’ve insisted on wages so low working families can’t make ends meet, and cut welfare payments again and again, all with mantra of encouraging ‘welfare scroungers’ to look for work, making work pay and all the other nonsense. They’ve also introduced benefit sanction after benefit sanction, all with the same intention. It also helps to fiddle the unemployment statistics, as if they’re off the DHSS’ books, they aren’t counted as unemployed.
It’s possible that Sturgeon’s policies aren’t helping the situation north of the border. But the ultimate blame lies with the Tories, and it started when Ruth Davidson, the head of the Conservatives up there, was in power. And Sturgeon definitely isn’t responsible for it down south in England and Wales.
The Tories are. It started under Cameron.
They’re starving children.
Get them out!
I saw a video about this posted on YouTube by GB News, which could be described as the Heil’s televisual equivalent. Oswald Mosley’s favourite paper published a piece today railing about Britain’s ‘something for nothing’ culture because they’d done some kind of survey which found that some households received more from the state on benefits than they did from work. I didn’t watch it, as I knew exactly what it would be like. The Heil’s published stuff like this before. Anyone remember one they ran a few decade ago, in which they ranted about the people of Britain all being on benefits because they’d found a street where most of the people were receiving some kind of welfare support. Coincidentally that street seemed to be occupied mostly by members of ethnic minorities, though I’m sure that this wasn’t part of the reason it was chosen by the paper.
The article was so stereotypical of the wretched rag that you could guess what would follow: rubbish about how welfare payments were too generous and were acting as a disincentive to finding work and should therefore be cut. More drivel along the lines of the Tories’ ‘make work pay’ campaign, which simply cut benefits and increased sanctions and pressure on benefit claimants even further instead of really making work pay by abandoning the wage freeze policy and actually encouraging firms to pay workers proper wages. But that would violate one of the central tenets of Thatcherite Conservatism: the poor should be penalised for being poor, in order to make them compete against each other in a desperate struggle to improve themselves, while the rich benefit from their cheap labour. As for GB News, they’re a right-wing broadcaster and so I’m sure they have the same mentality. The article was a classic example of how the Tories, the Heil and GB News, whatever they may say to the contrary, want working people poor, desperate and turning on each other rather than the people who are really causing their misery.
Get the Tories out, and ignore the right-wing propaganda in the Mail and on TV.
‘We must do everything we can in support of the strikers – Diane Abbott
Be part of the fightback – Register here // Retweet me here // FB share here // Read article here.
HelloDavid
Whatever the Tories may tell us, the current strike wave that has been unleashed is as a direct result of government policies to benefit big business by impoverishing workers. Now, ministers are directly involved in attempting to defeat the strikes in numerous ways. As a result, these strikes are objectively highly political. The government has made them so, and is willing to use every type of divide-and-rule tactic and press vilification to defeat the strikers.
The unions taking action on pay, conditions and jobs are therefore effectively taking on the government head-on. There is no doubt the public is with the strikers. The strikers are the big battalions in the fight against this government, but everyone has a part to play. All of us must now do everything we can in terms of moral, political and financial support for the strikers because they really are fighting for us all, and I will be pleased to join with speakers from the PCS, CWU, FBU, GMB and NHS Workers Say No on the national day of action on February 1 at the Building the Fightback rally.
I hope to see you there,
Yours in solidarity,
Diane Abbott MP (via Arise.)
PS: Register for February 1 today here.
Online rally, 6.30pm, Wednesday February 1. Join us on to hear about & build on a day of action across the country!
Register here // Invite & share here // Retweet here.
Mark Serwotka, PCS General Secretary // Diane Abbott MP // Dave Ward, CWU GS // Richard Burgon MP // Helen O’Connor, GMB Southern Region & Peoples Assembly // Liz Cabeza, Acorn (Haringey) // Nabeela Mowlana, Young Labour // Holly Turner, NHS Workers Say No // Matt Wrack, FBU GS & more.
Join leaders of key industrial disputes – and who are at the forefront of fighting proposed anti-union laws – at this vital event! Now is the time to build the growing fightback, co-ordinate the resistance & popularise policies that put people before profit.
Hosted by Arise – a Festival of Left Ideas. All other pages listed on social media are kindly helping to promote the event. ‘
I’ve had some of this blog’s great commenters wondering what the Labour left is doing to challenge Starmer’s stranglehold on the party and his determination to turn it into another version of the Tories. And not necessarily one further to the left. The Labour left is still around and organising events. I’ve had some emails about them, but didn’t put them up as they were in-person meetings in London, and so difficult to get to for people like me in the provinces, or they were about foreign politics, like Latin America, which I didn’t think many people would be interested in. Yesterday I had another email from Matt Willgress through the Arise festival of left ideas and the Labour Assembly against Austerity, giving details about events coming up in what remains of this month and February.
Let’s make 2023 the year of growing waves of resistance.
Read my article here // Retweet it here to spread the word // Register for Feb.1 here
Hello David
Last week, Tory ministers met numerous unions to discuss public-sector pay, but no movement was made, meaning that strike action is set to escalate, including with the PCS announcing 100,000 will be on strike on what is shaping up to be a major day of industrial and other forms of action on February 1st, the day of our #BuildingtheFightback rally.
The Tory refusal to budge on pay is the logical follow-on from locking-in austerity for years. On the Left we need to understand the scale of what we are up against politically, the extent of the crisis Britain is facing, and the nature of what is to come if the Tories aren’t forced out, including that this is an increasingly authoritarian Government.
We need to be organising resistance right now – and we need to be backing those movements taking direct action and backing those workers taking industrial action. Let’s make 2023 the year of growing waves of resistance to the Tories – join us at Building the Fightback on February 1 (details below) in solidarity with workers in struggle and to map out our next steps.
Yours in solidarity,
Matt Willgress, on behalf of the Arise volunteers.
Online rally, 6.30pm, Wednesday February 1. Join us on to hear about & build on a day of action across the country!
Register here // Invite & share here // Retweet here.
Mark Serwotka, PCS General Secretary // Diane Abbott MP // Dave Ward, CWU GS // Richard Burgon MP // Helen O’Connor, GMB Southern Region & Peoples Assembly // Liz Cabeza, Acorn (Haringey) // Nabeela Mowlana, Young Labour // Holly Turner, NHS Workers Say No // Matt Wrack, FBU GS & more.
Join leaders of key industrial disputes – and who are at the forefront of fighting proposed anti-union laws – at this vital event! Now is the time to build the growing fightback, co-ordinate the resistance & popularise policies that put people before profit.
Hosted by Arise – a Festival of Left Ideas. All other pages listed on social media are kindly helping to promote the event.
OTHER 2023 DIARY DATES:
1) FORUM: The economic crisis – was Marx right?
Online. Monday January 23, 2023. Register here // share & invite here // retweet here to spread the word
Here in Britain and around the world the economic crisis is deepening. Join economist Michael Roberts for debate and discussion – was Nye Bevan right, wrong, or both when he said “Marxism put into the hands of the working class movement… the most complete blueprints for political action the world has ever seen?”
Labour Outlook forum as part of the Socialist Ideas series – kindly streamed by Arise – A Festival of Left Ideas.
2) CONFERENCE: The World At War – A Trade Union Issue
Register here. Saturday 21 January 2023, 10.30am, Hamilton House, Mabledon Place, London WC1H 9BD (Nearest tube: Euston/Kings Cross).
Jeremy Corbyn MP // Mick Whelan, ASLEF // Salma Yaqoob // Fran Heathcote, PCS // Alex Gordon, RMT // Ricardo La Torre, FBU & more.
Organised by the Stop the War Coalition.
3) DIARY DATE: A Society in Crisis – Building a Progressive Policy Platform.
Sat 11 Feb, 2023, 10:00am, Brunei Gallery, SOAS, London, WC1B 5DQ. Register here – Retweet here.
“The economic, social and environmental crises we face mean the need for a transformative policy agenda is more urgent than ever. For this reason, on February 11, I will be bringing together academics, think tanks, policy researchers and experts, campaigners and others to develop a progressive policy platform – and hope you can join us there.” – John McDonnell MP.
Organised by Claim the Future & Influencing the Corridors of Power’
It’s a pity the last meeting is in London, as this is what the left really need to challenge neoliberalism, in the Labour party as much as anywhere else. Perhaps they’ll release a video of it later on YouTube.