You might have heard the clarion call? Today is November 30th – a national day of strike for the United Kingdom. In Aberdeen, Plymouth, Cardiff, Belfast, London and Birmingham, indeed in all major cities and towns of the UK the streets are filled with picket lines and the angry voice of a rightly impassioned public. All major news sources in the UK are calling this the biggest strike ‘in a generation’ – more people are turning out for today’s strike than the protests of ’79 in the Winter of Discontent. Of course, the media will reify those who join the emotion of the day and turn what is a justified political stand into a ‘riot’, but today’s protest is fundamentally different from the student protests of the previous year. Today, it is not just students, but public workers from all walks of life. There will be nurses, teachers, social workers, carers, civil servants, paramedics, careers advisers, and even the police are under attack from the government’s current initiatives, so with this being taken into account we can expect a highly successful and organized protest throughout the country.
Their protest is in response to cuts in public worker pension schemes. The government are expecting public workers to work more and take a simultaneous cut in their pensions. People who have been paying into the scheme for over 40 years could suddenly find themselves with far less return on their investment than they were previously promised – so much for the ‘gold-plated pensions’ so long hailed as a defining reward of public service! The protest is being organized by unions across the UK; more than twenty of the major unions in the country are participating in a JOINT march, causing more than 2 million people to walk the streets in demonstration of this clearly unjust policy.
George Osborn, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, has urged continued ‘talks’, stating that strikes won’t achieve anything. The official logic behind this policy move is to cut public spending in a time of national financial hardship. The reality though, is that despite numerous promises of a steady recovery, the UK economy is teetering on recession again, unable to increase its growth figures under the austerity package the current ‘Conservative and/or Liberal Democrat coalition’ are implementing with frightening speed. Many have claimed that this official rhetoric is merely a brush to paint over the underlying ideological fervour with which the current government is implementing such drastic cuts to public spending. This specific policy, some claim, is a way of sending a sharp message to public sector workers, ‘that they’ve been getting too many benefits, and not working hard enough for it.’
This idea alone demonstrates the clear disconnect there currently is between the political leadership of the country and the people of the country. The top positions of the current government are largely filled by Prime Minister David Cameron’s old Etonian and Oxbridge school friends, and their inability to understand the public’s genuine and righteous indignation is indicative of their propinquity with an elite upbringing.
The government are trying to paint a picture of the union leaders as squaring up for a fight. However, the reality is they are doing what their jobs require of them. If they were not to act now, at this time when their role as protectors of workers’ rights is so prescient, then they would guilty of negligible duty. Whatever colour the government want to paint this in though, the numbers speak for themselves. Public services across the UK are being closed down or put on hold.
The widespread appeal that this JOINT strike has garnered amongst the public is threatening to any political elite. The government are staying firm and continue to condemn the strikes, yet the reality is that this will play powerfully into the consciousness of the electorate in the next elections in 2015. The government have already lost the hearts of the people, if indeed it ever had them, but it concedes nothing over the next few days, then it will spur anger, and sow the seeds of electoral defeat in two years from now.
