N30 open thread
Posted on Wednesday 30 November, 2011
Filed Under Industrial relations
‘The collapse of decent pension provision in the private sector is not much of an argument for cutting provision for nurses.’ – Philip Stephens, Financial Times.
I’M SHORTLY off to display private sector wealth creator solidarity with public sector colleagues by joining the London N30 demo. Workers of the world unite, and all that. The comments box below is open for reports, observations, comments etc.
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the crisis of the system is not located at the point of exchange.
1,200 on the Ipswich March *official Police Figures*.
I am updating my Blog on this. But to add that having people clap you as you march in the street is not a common event.
2,000 on the Wolverhampton March according to the local paper which is no friend of the labour movement. Probably about right – I don’t remember anything so big since the 1970s.
Video on YouTube at http://youtu.be/KCNNOkQvoa0
From a friend in Stornoway: “Comhairle (council), Health Board, Hospital, Schools, DWP, Coastguard and Harbour Authority all involved and picketing this morning.
Rally from Comhairle offices to Perceval Square had several hundred. Never seen the like on the Isle of Lewis!”
Wrexham today:
Lots of pickets (big picket outside the local hospital), rally in the town centre followed by a march through town.
PCS, Unite, Unison, GMB, NASUWT, ATL, UCAC (Welsh teachers’ union) all represented, plus presence from FBU & RCN who aren’t out today.
I’m not that good at estimating crowds (and it’s even more difficult when you’re actually in the crowd), but I would say a touch over a thousand there. The BBC, of course, said it was “over 200″ which – whilst being factually incontravertible – is typically downplaying (perhaps they’ve been taking lessons from the Met).
The Dundee March had nigh on 10,000 on it – there’s a video on youtube of the whole thing going past if anyone wants to do a headcount
Clapped into the square by a few thousand more. Today was big…
About 5000 in Exeter, the march through the city centre greeted by people lining the streets and applauding!
Estimated 15-20,000 at Bristol.
Good sized picket lines at North Devon District Hospital at Barnstaple.
We need to learn to counter forms of management intimidation of union members wanting to strike but frightened to There has also been misinformation (deliberate or innocent?) at local e.g. hospital ward, level pressurising lone groups of staff in unions into staying at work when they were not needed to provide emergency cover or this could have been done by non-union staff.
We need to improve the communication to and from stewards and other officials and the rest of our members – both to counter local and media propaganda and to tighten up the way we organise.
We must learn from this experience, the positive and negative.
Inspite of the weather thousands hit the cobbles in Glesga followed with a mass meeting in the Barrowland. I managed along to support my wife and her colleagues. Many people on the sidelines were clapping including shop assistants. It would seem the Libs have joined the Cons with their divisive language about public and private sector pensions. Fucking scum. That piece of piss from Bermondsey needs a good spanking.
Ye gods, I’m agreeing with Jimmy Glesga. Nurse! Nurse!
Jimmy Glesga is temporarily off the list.
Royal Holloway University students have gone into occupation in solidarity with our lecturers and in opposition to education cuts.
Tom Harris. Occupation is a good idea. I used to suggest this as an alternative to strike. UCS, Lee Jeans (Greenock)etc. The bosses sometimes love strikes. They padlock the doors and fuck aff. Suits them. The other thing is the polis are not keen in smashing heads in during occupations especially women.
Well, in Bolton today there was a couple of thousand at the rally and march (5000 at Manchester down the road) and the mood was friendly, warm, and yet fiercely angry and determined at the same time. I’d say optimistic too – we knew we were supported by the people around us, and that everyone knew just how vile, just how morally bankrupt this government is. It’s like they’ve forgotten to pretend not to hold the public sector and the poor in open contempt. Well, they wanted war and now they’ve got it.
I think that explains both the hysterical vitriol from the right-wing commenters currently over at Liberal Conspiracy (I seem to have been banned from there for using the word “scum” incidentally, que sera sera)and elsewhere, and the exagerated contemptuous nonchalance of Davic Cameron today. They can see that despite hostility of the press, despite the hostility and omnipresence of the government propaganda machine, despite the fact millions of people have been inconvenienced, and despite the fact it only directly affects a minority of the workforce, people STILL support this strike, over 60% of the population. They can’t believe it, it doesn’t compute with their view of the world.They can’t believe people still believe in justice.
Well the hatred towards this government is only going to grow.
So they’d better get used to it.
Approx 10,000 on the march in Brum
You made me laugh Jimmy. Cheers
Ditto in Nottingham comrades. A bloody brilliant day. Certainly over 5000 through the city. Some estimate up to 8. Whatever, the march took well over 2 hours to snake through the city, and yes the applause from some shoppers was a first for me and will be my abiding memory. Bloody heartwarming. The biggest demo the city has seen certainly in my lifetime.
We may not have shut Britain down exactly but I am pleased it was not me snarled up for hours in the traffic.
Plus the other thing that struck me is how so many grasped this is about a damn site more than public sector pensions, even amongst the public.
From big beginnings as they say. Bring it on.
Kenny Gibson Scottish SNP MSP is against the strike but supports the aims. This Tartan Tory was once my councillor in Glasgow.
The silent left in the SNP should be ashamed. No recognition of the SNP WAS SEEN IN GLASGOW TODAY. All the defector lefties from Labour that joined the SNP are up their own arses and hiding. SNP/LIB/CON Scum.
My mistake, wasn’t banned from LC after all. Do carry on.
As Jimmy G says, the SNP failing to give any support does giev the lie to them being genuine radicals of any kind. My God, agreeing with Glesga for me too, the moon must be in the Eigth house!
It should be said, Ed Miliband and the Labour leadership are being pretty sound on this. No he hasn’t given wholesale support to the strike, but you know what, no Labour leader EVER has! He’s come as close as is possible. Today’s comments in the Commons were very good, speaking up for the lowest paid staff while Cameron claimed like everything was going fine, and wasn’t fooling any fucker.
Oh my Arthur, how I wish I could agree with you on Milliband, Balls and the rest of the Labour panto. ‘It’s behind you!
You are being so generous in calling it leadership. All Milliband leads is a small band of neo Blairites whose only purpose and objective is to sit in Camerons seat in Parliament, doing practically the same shit to the rest of us as Cameron is. In it for themselves and the City.
No parliamentary Labour party leader has supported a strike? OK. Fucking shame on all of them.
Just how many more deaths in care homes, how many more terminally ill people will be found ‘fit’ for work, how many more young people will be consigned to 200 job applications a week, before Milliband get’s in touch with either his scrotum, or his morality.
Never for one minute pretend, forget or forgive it was Blair and Brown who out Tory’ied the Tory’s. Milliband could lead now. He chooses not to.
I hope the splinters in his arse from the fense he pretends to sit on keeps him awake at night. Yes Arthur he can do patronising very well. As ever it’s solidarity they have trouble spelling
Vanity: Photo of Tendance Coatesy leading Ipswich March next to Megan Dobney of the TUC.
http://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2011/11/30/ipswich-november-30th-day-of-action-brief-report/
Very good display but not yet a mass movement. It should be remembered that these actions are not yet the result of pressure from below but the trade union bureaucracy trying to retain their social relevance with minimum fuss. They’ve been forced to mobilise the membership against their better judgement. `If you want to cut pensions you must negotiate with us to do it’ they are telling the Tories which chimes nicely with New Labour’s `to far to fast’ mantra and Milliband’s insistence of negotiations as if there was anything to negotiate. No, the bureaucrats won’t be leading a revolution any time soon but yesterday’s strike does show how uncomfortable their situation is becoming as the cuts bite and how hard they are going to have to work to keep a lid on things.
P.S. of course the demagogues of the SNP are not the answer to the years of betrayal.
It was sort of inevitable the ultras would come along after such a magnificent day and blame the “bureaucracy” for either not doing it sooner or not doing it right and try to talk down the reversal of 30 years of decline.
Peter Emms live in a fantasy land where angry workers are all at work crying out to each other that if only their leaders would let them, they’d all be out on the street on permanent strike. It is a world where all union members hang on the every word of their respective general secretaries above any other person.
In this world workers are incapable of making their own decisions about taking action without permission from union officials yet simultaneously at a revolutionary level of consciousness and ready to bring down the government if asked.
The awful truth is that yesterday saw millions of people take their first ever strike action in the face of the most hostile propaganda imaginable and it has taken quite painstaking work over many months to get to that point after several decades of defeat and demoralisation for the UK labour movement. Now, at long last, many workers have glimpsed their own power.
You’ll find that most union officers are not, in fact, busy colluding with the bosses to preserve capitalism on the golf courses or wherever. Maybe they once did, but I can guarantee you not now.
Maybe there are still some shit organisers and officers tucked away in the bigger unions, that is true.
But yesterday every union officer I know so very glad that at long last people have woken up to their potential power to actually change and overthrow this rotten system. And I hope to goodness they ratchet the pressure up.
But Philip Stephens doesn’t know his arse from his elbow!
`Peter Emms live in a fantasy land where angry workers are all at work crying out to each other that if only their leaders would let them, they’d all be out on the street on permanent strike.’
That’s precisely what I didn’t say. Any chance you could respond to the written word instead of the voices in your head in future?
Just a small and belated psychological observation from todays horrendous enforced works Christmas meal. Great food. Great restaurant. Terrific staff. Practically every body on strike on N30 tipped generously (we should not need to I know). Not one of the scabs did.
The Tory shows itself in so many ways what?