THE ARMED forces are being mobilised to break NHS workers’ picket lines this week, Dowden, the Tory minister in charge of the capitalist state’s COBRA committee confirmed yesterday morning.
Following the first national strike in their history last Thursday, nurses are striking again tomorrow, followed by ambulance workers on Wednesday, while postal workers and train drivers are striking again later in the week, with PCS civil servants on strike next week.
Cabinet Secretary Oliver Dowden, chairman of the Cobra (Cabinet Office Briefing Room A) committee, repeatedly declared as he did the rounds of the TV studios yesterday morning that NHS workers’ pay claims are unreasonable and irresponsible.
Dowden told the BBC: ‘We will be resolute to this, because it would be irresponsible to allow public sector pay and inflation to get out of control and we owe a wider duty to the public to make sure we keep our public finances under control.’
Raising the pay of nurses and other public sector workers would ‘stoke’ inflation and have ‘huge impact’, Dowden said, claiming however that he would ‘dearly love for the government to be able to write the cheque’.
He went on to claim that doing so would cost every household in the UK an extra £1,000-a-year.
Speaking about the armed forces being trained in preparation for breaking the strikes of ambulance and Border Force workers, Dowden said: ‘I know the sacrifice that they are making in fulfilment of their duty.’
The Tory government has said that along with 1,200 personnel from the Army, Navy and RAF, more than 1,000 civil servants are being mobilised.
Tory PM Sunak wrote a vicious attack on the trade unions in the anti-union Sun on Sunday yesterday.
He particularly targeted RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch.
He claimed: ‘The unions are causing misery for millions, with transport strikes in particular cruelly timed to hit at Christmas.
‘Rail workers and border officers have been offered deals that are fair – and affordable to taxpayers.
‘An increasing number of union members want a deal. They are tired of being foot soldiers in Mick Lynch’s class war.
‘Caving in to union demands for massive pay rises will kick Britain into an “inflation spiral” that will end up clobbering the poorest hardest.’
Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham said yesterday: ‘The government, its spin doctors and the Health Secretary are guilty of building an Everest of hypocrisy and falsehoods on the NHS crisis.
‘This government is guilty of criminal negligence in its hollowing out of the NHS long before now. The strikers are actually trying to save the service.’
• The Tories are to publish a ‘resilience framework’ today, elaborating some of the methods that the capitalist state’s armed strike-breakers intend to use starting on Wednesday this week.
