PM Sunak yesterday accused RMT leader Mick Lynch of causing ‘misery for millions’ with the ‘cruelly timed’ pay rise walk-outs by rail workers. He added this was holding Britain to ransom with a ‘class war’.
Writing in the ‘Sun on Sunday’ he said: ‘The unions are causing misery for millions , with transport strikes in particular cruelly timed to hit at Christmas.’
He alleged: ‘An increasing number of union members want a deal. They are tired of being foot soldiers in Mick Lynch’s class war,’ and that ‘caving in to union demands for “massive pay rises” will kick Britain into an “inflation spiral” that will end up clobbering the poorest hardest.’
In fact, Sunak and Co are the sponsors of the current rampant price inflation that workers are determined to smash with wage rises to equal the inflation rate before their standard of living and their lives are completely shattered.
Sunak, Johnson and Truss took the conscious decision to finance and arm the right wing Ukrainian regime to weaken Russia despite the fact that they knew that this would drive food and oil prices sky high and pauperise millions of British workers and see their children freezing.
They are hypocrites! As far as Sunak is concerned the patriotic thing for workers to do is to accept the fact that their families are going to freeze, go hungry and some die this winter. Workers will never passively allow this to happen. This is why there is the current strike wave, a prelude to a general strike!
No workers will passively watch their children go hungry and freeze in the winter.
Sunak and Co are pressing ahead with their plans. The would-be great dictator Sunak is in fact preparing to announce new laws to legally prevent rail strikes and to impose huge fines on unions that take strike actions to win wage rises to keep pace with inflation.
He is to give ministers what are being called ‘new Henry VIII-style powers’ to force schools, hospitals and fire crews to lay on a minimum service during strikes, making winning a wage claim legally impossible and establishing permanent wage-cutting.
There is to be no set minimum threshold for union elections, announced in law. Instead, Cabinet ministers will get delegated powers to decide what their threshold is – so it could be higher in hospitals than schools. This is what is called an anti-union dictatorship.
Lynch, to his credit, has hit back against this, saying: ‘Clamping down on wages is the sort of tactic we had in the depression in the 1920s and 30s, which impoverished people. We don’t want to go back to that.’ In fact, workers are determined not to return to the conditions of the 1930s Great Depression. In fact, they will organise a socialist revolution to stop it!
The Unite union has now entered the fray. It states in a press statement: ‘There are two statistics, drawn from recent Freedom of Information (FOI) answers from an ambulance trust, which exposes the mountain of hypocrisy and falsehoods being trotted out by the government, its spin doctors and the health minister, Steve Barclay.
‘It has emerged from FOI inquiries that West Midlands Ambulance Trust has had a staggering increase in patient deaths due to ambulance delays in reaching patients. In 2020, according to the official figures, one patient died because an ambulance didn’t get to them in time. This year until September 37 people have died because of ambulance delays.’
Sharon Graham, general secretary of Unite, said: ‘The shocking statistics from West Midlands Ambulance Trust tell the real story. Where were the government’s “tried and tested plans” in the West Midlands all year before the NHS strikes? Where were their “well-rehearsed contingency plans” when people were dying in the West Midlands because the crisis in the ambulance service meant an ambulance couldn’t get to them in time.
‘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 issues are plain for all to see. The Tories accept galloping inflation as the best way to beat down Russia in the Ukraine. The fact that this inflation pauperises the UK working class and weakens the trade unions is, as far as they are concerned, a big bonus.
They have been trying to knife the trade unions since 1926. No begging or pleading by trade union officials will halt the anti-union offensive.
The only way forward is for the masses of workers inside the trade unions to tell their leaders that they must recall the TUC to declare a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers government that will nationalise the banks and the major industries, and bring in socialism. This is the only way forward!
