Former New Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair used a speech in September 1999 to stupidly declare ‘The class war is over.’ I remember ridiculing his statement while speaking in a Scottish Parliament debate on poverty in early 2000 and posing the obvious question – if the class war is over who won?
The truth is the ruling classes and British Establishment don’t like talking about the class war because they are too busy practicing it every day on behalf of their tiny minority at the top of society which usurps more and more profits and resources from the labour of ordinary workers like the human parasites they are. Wealth and income inequality within the UK is obscene and getting worse. On the back of a decade of declining real wages and living standards workers are forced to organise and fightback through their trade unions and every progressive person should declare for the workers.
Andrew Bailey is not a household name, but he is one of the UK’s most powerful men and his recent comments epitomise the arrogance, ignorance, and sheer hypocrisy of the boss class. As Bank of England Governor you think he would have some basic command of economics but his call for wage restraint to curb inflation exposed his pig ignorance as workers have faced over a decade of falling real wages and the worst assault on their real life living standards in eight years yet inflation of over 9% represents the worst level for 40 years and has nothing to do with wages and everything to do with rising energy prices, fuel costs and grocery bills.
BANK BOSS CAN’T REMEMBER HOW MUCH HE IS PAID
Bailey is part of the problem not the solution to falling living standards and the despair and anxiety caused by the Cost of the Tories crisis. This guy is so well paid he can’t even remember the size of his salary. He has no concerns about fuel bills, petrol costs, food prices, and putting clothes on his children as his £575,538 pay packet and bumper pension deal means he is well insulated from the everyday concerns that haunt millions.
When asked if he knew care workers were paid £9.01 on average and 77% of them were paid below the Living Wage across the UK he shifted uncomfortably in his seat and then proceeded to confirm his privileged existence when he couldn’t even remember the size of his own obscene salary when grilled by MPs in February.
Andrew Bailey is not alone in inhabiting a different planet from the rest of us. He is from the same elite club as pampered Boris who regularly complains that his £157,000 basic salary is inadequate to live on while the Chancellor Rishi Sunak is now officially one of the richest people in Britain after his inclusion at number 222 in the top 250 UK super-rich list with wealth in excess of £730 million.
SUPER-RICH SUNAK LIVES ON A DIFFERENT PLANET FROM ORDINARY FOLK
Sunak is in charge of the UK’s public finances and lectures ordinary workers in the midst of the worst wage squeeze for decades to temper their demands and accept employers offers of derisory amounts below inflation whilst he carries out a multi-million pounds renovation of his country manor home in North Yorkshire.
The super-rich, out of touch Chancellor is set to pay £13,000 a year to heat his new swimming pool. That is more than 42% of adults in the UK have to try and live on a year. Almost half of the UK’s adult population try to survive on less than Sunak pays to heating his personal fucking swimming pool. That is class Britain. That is where we are now in society and why every group of workers courageous enough to organise themselves and fight back against wage cuts and reduced working conditions deserves our backing.
Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) workers across the UK are balloting for industrial action to not only secure a higher wage increase but to prevent management slashing thousands of jobs and reducing safety on trains and in stations. The very same staff we applauded as ‘key workers’ getting us through the Covid19 crisis are now resisting further cuts to their living standards and every other trade union member and progressive member of society should be supporting them. Over 40,000 RMT members are being balloted and the result will be announced today.
Either fight against continued exploitation and face even deeper cuts to living standards or fightback together is the stark choice. I’m confident the combative RMT union members will choose to fight rather than allow employers to walk all over them.
The RMT members in Scotland are nominally now working for a public company as Scotrail has been taken back into public hands after years of failure to improve services across Scotland by the previous private operators. It is something I proposed in a Private Members Bill sponsored by the RMT in 2006. Unfortunately, the Parliament then rejected the measure and we have suffered 16 years of poorer services, higher fares, and significant profiteering in the meantime representing a waste of public resources.
PRIVATE RAIL OWNERS LEFT RAIL SERVICES IN SCOTLAND IN A MESS
The fact train drivers in the ASLEF trade union in Scotland are also balloting for industrial action for better wages and against work practices that compel drivers to work on holidays and rest days is simply evidence of the chaos private rail ownership has brought to the railways. More drivers should have been recruited and trained years ago instead of relying on a group of workers effectively forfeiting holidays and rest days essential to a proper work/life balance.
The drastic reduction of rail services in Scotland from Monday is the responsibility of the former private owners of rail services in Scotland not the Scottish Government but they must now urgently raise their game and introduce a wage and conditions package that halts the slide in living standards. A 2.2% wage rise offer with inflation running at 9% is simply insulting and shameful.
The Tories are the party of the bosses and pay cuts. They always back the employer and constantly scheme and plan to make it harder for workers to organise and trade unions to act on behalf of their members. Remember strike ballots now must reach a 50%-member involvement threshold, a participation barrier many politicians would never reach if applied to their own elections. Workers don’t strike lightly. It is a major decision taken only with reluctance and foreboding.
Employers seek to intimidate and harass staff to ignore union ballots and make it difficult to even join trade unions. A non-unionised workspace is what Tories want. That would make it easier for the Dubai based P&O Ferries of the world to act like Victorian mill and mine owners able to sack and hire at will, reducing wages and conditions with gusto.
P&O SCANDAL IS FUTURE UNDER THE TORIES
Make no mistake about it the arbitrary sacking of 800 P&O workers without proper notice and the hiring of replacement staff on wages set at less than half the legal minimum wage in the UK and some even on as little as £1.80 an hour is the bleak future if the Tories get their way. Already plans are afoot to further curtail the rights of transports workers to withdraw their labour and the RMT and others are committed to resisting this latest assault on basic human rights.
All socialists, trade union members, and progressives who oppose the obscene inequalities of wealth and power that scar society and condemn millions to the swamp of poverty and a minority to life on a different planet must resolve to back RMT members, ASLEF drivers and all other groups of workers who stand up and fight this rotten, corrupt, deceitful bunch of liars within No10 and their fat cat employer friends who fund them.
I had the pleasure of spending many hours with the former leader of the RMT Union the late Bob Crow. I first met Bob in the headquarters of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in Barnsley in late 1995 when I travelled to discuss with him and Arthur Scargill the plans to launch the Socialist Labour Party.
It was a privilege to meet both Arthur and Bob. He was at the time the Deputy leader of the RMT but went on to become a great General Secretary who presided over a big rise in membership and widespread improvements to the pay and conditions of his members. Bob led from the front and never shirked from his responsibility to wage war on the bosses on behalf of the RMT despite the outrageous attacks that were made on him by the hired liars in the press and media.
WE HAVE TO FIGHT IF WE EVER WANT TO WIN
One of his favourite sayings has always stuck with me and serves as a motto for the trade unions and working-class struggles. “If you fight Tommy”, he used to say, “we may not always win. But if we don’t fight, we will always lose”. The RMT, ASLEF and the wider trade union movement must fight.
Last week I applauded Pope Francis for his recent comments in relation to Ukraine, NATO and the industry of death know as the arms trade. This week I feel compelled to publicise his views on the importance of trade unions in society. He declared in 2017 that trade unions were “essential” to society. Views we should adopt and promote:
The pope said organized labor had two major issues to “face and defeat if it is to continue to perform its essential role for the common good.”
First, he said, comparing labor to biblical prophets, labor must “give a voice to those who have none, denounce those who would ‘sell the needy for a pair of sandals’, unmask the powerful who trample the rights of the most vulnerable workers, defend the cause of the foreigner, the least, the discarded.”
Second, he called on labor to expand its mission from protecting its own members to become advocates for people excluded from work, most especially the young, women and migrants.
“The union does not carry out its essential function of social innovation if it watches over only those who are inside,” he said. “This must be done, but it is half of your work. Your vocation is also to protect those who do not yet have rights, those excluded from work who are also excluded from rights and democracy.”
“There is no good society without a good union, and there is no good union that isn’t reborn every day in the peripheries, that doesn’t transform the rejected stones of the economy into corner stones,” …
“There is no justice together if it isn’t together with today’s excluded ones…”
The trade union movement is indeed essential to society for without it we would be even more vulnerable and exposed to the greed, malevolence, and exploitation of the rich and powerful. Don’t just support the trade union movement join a trade union.
Author Tommy Sheridan
NUJ Member and former MSP & Councillor
A Time To Rage 
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