Tomorrow the RMT take strike action again. Wait for the headlines, we’ll see demoralised commuters and no doubt derogatory comments about selfish and irresponsible trade unionists. This is what Mick Lynch, General Secretary of the RMT has to say:
When I listen to Radio 4 news about this dispute it sounds a bit like the reporting of strikes in the 1970’s, though no one yet has used the expression “reds under the beds.” That was a reference, I believe, to Jack Jones and Hugh Scanlon, trade union leaders in the 1970’s.
How I can remember this beats me when I can’t remember what I did last week. Is this senility?
In my minds eye I’m in the kitchen with Mum. She’s doing the laundry, putting clothes through the wringer, while a Radio 4 commentator whines on about the trade unions insisting on “petty differentials.” The kitchen windows are steamed up, mums hands are red raw. I watch as a raindrop drop outside slips down and runs into another. I ask mum, “What’s a differential?” This leads to a fairly lengthly explanation of what both sides were saying. Mum was like that, she’d give me both sides of the argument but was in no doubt which side she was on most of the time.
I Google “reds under the beds” to check if my memory is accurate and among other things find this: Wilson government used secret unit to smear union leaders In this report from 2018 it’s all there and more. “Senior figures in Harold Wilson’s Labour government plotted to use a secret foreign office propaganda unit to smear a number of left-wing trade union leaders, according to government papers released on Tuesday to the National Archives at Kew.” Wilson’s actions make Keir Starmers threat to Labour Party members attending picket line sound a bit lame, and believe me I’m no fan of the present leader of the Labour Party who has carried out a vicious witch-hunt of the left since taking the position.
And, it would seem, this the government smear played out it the press; Radio 4, blaring from the kitchen, (Radio 1 was off limits until I was about fourteen) was the back drop to my life as as a child and teenager and the report I remember so vividly one of many that attacked trade unionists.
What is in common now and back then is the idea that the demands are completely unreasonable, that the unions are being stubborn and selfish. Read that again from Mick Lynch and decide for yourself if you think that’s the case today.
A thought occurred to me just now: after the success of the miners in the 70’s the government really gunned for the NUM in the 80’s, and then brought down everyone else. The RMT, until recent years have been very successful at maintaining decent pay and conditions and always put safely issues on the agenda. No wonder they are such a target for scorn and misrepresentation.
Guess I’ve been a bit slow on the uptake, how important their action is, it’s not just another group of justifiably pissed off workers, it’s not just another strike; if they lose, what do you think will happen next?
I figure that it game over for all public sector workers and the private sector could follow suit in pay freezes which are effectively pay cuts. So if the RMT (and Asleff and TSSA) lose we all lose.
And let’s not forget, “A fight for public transport is a fight against climate change” RMT London Calling 2009
We can support by:
Sending a message of support to info@rmt.org.uk
Making a donation at https://www.rmt.org.uk/about/national-dispute-fund
Joining a picket line find news here of upcoming action https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/rmt-news/
South London Action
Lambeth and Southwark Unite are urging people to join picket lines at
Thursday 18th – RMT mainline, London Bridge Tooley St near Shipwright’s Arms, from 7am
Friday 19th – RMT London Underground – Bakerloo line station, Elephant, from 5am but we aim to get there by 7am
Saturday 20th – RMT mainline, London Bridge Tooley St near Shipwright’s Arms, from 7am
The summer of discontent made real?
According to a recent tweet from Rotherham TUC twenty other groups of workers are set to take action in the near future over the cost of living. And looks at what’s trending… The important thing is, as the RMT do, to link the issues of pay and conditions to safety and wellbeing and the threat we face with the climate emergency.
This situation gives us the opportunity to envision and work toward a new world in which our basics needs, whether it be housing, food and fuel, are not provided by companies further lining the bloated and bulging pockets of CE0s and the profits of multinationals.
Surely now we can all see this neoliberalism, introduced across the world in the 1970’s, the idea that the market will solve all ills, that the state’s role is only to introduce the conditions for the market to flourish, can be seen for what is is. Not a trickle down of wealth but a flooding upwards of wealth.
It is fitting that Rotherham TUC draw on the words of another poet, Percy Shelley who died 200 years ago, in their appeal for solidarity, as true today as then. And while Shelly in The Mask of Anarchy railed against the poverty, inequality and lack of representation at that time we too must organise against all of that and the condition of how such power and wealth in so few hands has brought the earth itself to the brink of destruction. We have now so much more to lose than our chains.
A blog post by Anne Enith Cooper
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