Counterproductive!

Len McCluskey, the Unite (a major trade union) general secretary has suggested that civil disobedience could be timed to coincide with the Olympics. This is a bad idea.
In the winter of 1978-9 (the winter of discontent), unions disrupted Britain to such an extent that the majority of the voting public decided that Margaret Thatcher was a necessary Prime Minister. Her seeming ability to restore order to a chaotic situation was more important to people than workers’ rights. But the British public cannot be blamed for this; if bin bags are piled high in the street, gravediggers won’t dig, and the NHS is only open for emergencies, then of course people will lose faith in the current system. This may seem like an extraordinary analogy, but nowadays unions are much more easily condemned than they used to be, so it is vitally important to preserve the public faith.
I personally am not a fan of the Olympics; I would prefer to see millions of pounds spent elsewhere. But there are a significant number of people who are delighted that the Olympics has come to London, and this section of society cannot afford to be isolated. If they are, then how long will it be before the majority of people resent the unions and begin to feel that right-wing governments are necessary for orderly preservation? Then we will see another government like Thatcher’s! The one that made greedy, materialistic capitalism an acceptable aspiration. We must never promote that again to such an extent!
So please, for the sake of socialism and equality, do not strike during the Olympics.

Negotiation And Manipulation

Difficult Issues

The postal strikes are continuing unabated with no end currently in sight. The sides are now even becoming petty as the Royal Mail accuses the Communication Workers' Union of talking "cobblers"! The ability to compromise is apparently impossible on both sides. But surely this is not the way to behave. As much as I loathe the way in which competition in capitalist business structures cause the workers to lose out to unsocial working hours, insulting wage increases and a domineering attitude from managers, strike action will never be the solution. If an organisation were to give in to the strikers' demands then a precedent would be set which would be extremely difficult to reverse: every time the workers had a grievance they would simply strike, get their demands granted and the business would quickly sink without trace for being uncompetitive causing everyone to lose their jobs. I also don't believe that the postal workers are gaining a great deal of sympathy with the general public as more and more post gets delayed in a backlog which will inevitably cause some of that post to go astray; it's certainly not a situation that I'm happy with! Surely a more intelligent line of attack would be to exploit the fact that Trade Unions are a major source of funding for the Labour Party. If the CWU made a pledge that all of its members were immediately switching their allegiance and their money to the Liberal Democrats, the government would go into a panic-stricken frenzy in order to solve the conflict. Just a suggestion, I really wouldn't expect anybody else to come up with anything that bright. However, I'm not trying to make these issues sound simple and I certainly don't support the fat-cat bigwigs and their typical coercive tactics, but in the current climate of people getting increasingly irritated at not receiving their post, it will only take one cheap and efficient competitor to close in on the domestic postal-service market for Royal Mail to vanish from people's minds like an old memory.












Patronising Politics

Gordon Brown has recently indulged in (or at least failed to damp down) profligate speculation on whether a General Election was going to be called. After seeing the Conservative Party do so well at their conference and the subsequent polls, the Prime Minister elected to restrain himself, lying to the general public by telling them that this was the decision he would have made anyway. But it gets even worse from the Labour spin doctors. During the Tory conference, Shadow Chancellor George Osborne had been forced to unveil a policy (due to the possible looming election!) of increasing the threshold of inheritance tax. Now that the election is not happening, Chancellor Alistair Darling has released his plan in his pre-Budget speech today to - surprise, surprise! - increase the threshold for inheritance tax, apparently something he had planned on doing all along. What a coincidence! Exactly how stupid are British people meant to be nowadays? This sort of political manipulation is abhorrent and is something I was hoping Labour would get away from now that Tony Blair had cleared off to Europe. Seemingly this is not to be, and for the time being politics will continue in its condescending lunacy.