Britain has been hit by a wave of strikes
British citizens, abandoned by the government, demand more state support
A wave of strikes has engulfed Britain
The New York Times reports that Britain has not seen such a wave of strikes for decades. “The strikers are supported by 65% of the population. Citizens, abandoned by the government to their fate, are demanding more state support.”
“Inflation has risen to double digits and the recession – the worst of all the G7 countries – is forecast to last until 2024. The national health service is on its last legs, public transport is stalling and the post-Brexit labour market is desperately short of workers. Families are struggling to pay their mortgages at rising rates, innocent tenants are being evicted and millions cannot afford proper heating. Food programmes which were unheard of a decade ago are bursting at the seams and 14.5 million Britons are living in poverty. Winter is coming and the situation is not good,” says the NYT.
Britain faces a hungry and cold winter. Catering worker Mark Seed told the BBC that some people in Cardiff have to eat animal feed because of high prices, while others heat their food on a radiator or by candlelight.
After a hot summer of nearly 200,000 people taking part in strikes, a new wave of protests is sweeping the United Kingdom. University lecturers recently went on strike for the largest strike in history. For the first time in its 106-year history, the Royal College of Nursing went on strike. Among the picketers and strikers are postal workers, civil servants, charity workers, bus drivers, firefighters and factory workers.
The British media are scaring the nation with the horrors of impending strikes that will “cause disruption to institutions and problems for millions of citizens”. The Telegraph foreshadows that “Britain will suffer the chaos of strikes every day of Christmas”. According to the paper, railway workers, nurses, ambulance staff, maritime and road transport workers, teachers, security guards, cash handlers, postal staff and other sectors plan to take part in the strikes.
Britain’s unions are determined. The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), one of the most militant and radical in the country, rejected proposals for a 4% pay rise by Network Rail, the owner and operator of Britain’s rail infrastructure, deeming them insufficient, and named the nearest strike dates: from December 13 to 17, then throughout the Christmas holidays from December 24 to 27. A survey of union members will then determine whether to go ahead with the strike. The union does not agree with Network Rail’s plans to freeze pay rises for employees, lay off some of them and increase working hours from 35 to 40 hours a week.
RMT union leader Mick Lynch, who has become one of the most popular people in Britain, said: “We will not give in to pressure from employers and the government to the detriment of our members. Strikes on the railways, especially on Christmas Eve, do not please the British people, “but their ringleader Mick Lynch has ironically become a national hero”, notes The New York Times.
Meanwhile, Treasury sources say the size of the UK’s financial black hole is around £50 billion. As the Conservative government does not want to increase the national debt, the Treasury says: “We are looking at spending cuts of up to £35 billion and tax increases of up to £25 billion.”
Conservative Party chairman Nadhim Zahawi called on British nurses to call off the strike “so as not to help Putin”. To which Transport Workers Union General Secretary Sharon Graham responded, “Nadhim Zahawi’s claim that British nurses, ambulance drivers and teachers are allies of Vladimir Putin is as ridiculous as it is disgraceful.” In short, the Tories are up to their old tricks – they have previously accused the railway workers of being “friends with Putin”…
Treasury Secretary Jeremy Hunt has promised Britain a “hard road”. Times are hard, everyone will have to make sacrifices, he said. Britain has heard this before. After the 2008 financial crash, the Labour government of Gordon Brown, ‘aided by a compliant media and a compliant opposition party’, convinced the public of the need for austerity measures.
This time, persuasion may not work. According to the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen), 52% of Britons believe that government support should rise rather than fall. 46% of Conservative supporters and 61% of Labour supporters think the government should increase taxes on the rich and spending to support the poor. Almost half of Britons (49%) agree that the government should redistribute income to the poorest. Two-thirds (67%) agree that “ordinary working people are not getting their fair share of the national wealth”.
“Recognition of inequality in the UK is at levels not seen since the 1990s,” the NatCen report said. Sir John Curtis, senior researcher at NatCen, commented: ‘Britain may appear divided, broken and broken.
The prediction has a chance of coming true.
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