GOING POSTAL

As the previous blog post shows, history is on my mind; looking back to the last time we were contemplating the real prospect of the Tory vultures returning to power – 1978/9, and part of the simplistic analysis of that era is that the intransigence of the trade unions and striking workers ushered in a Tory government. However, I would point out again the fundamental contradiction in the New Labour analysis – they manage to suggest the 1979 election result was both a push (anti- old labour vote) and a pull (pro Tory free market vote), and given that the Tory medicine has been prescribed by New Labour from Day One of Year Zero (and before, as Brown announced before the 1997 election that he’d stick to Tory spending limits), they obviously favour the “pull” argument. It would be heresy of the most heinous kind in their minds to suggest that the confrontational industrial policy imposed by the IMF on the Labour governments of the 70’s ushered in the Tories.

So I would suggest that the parallels with the post dispute are not the miners strike (as at least one backbench Labour MP has observed and his whips interview must be pending), but those of the Labour government taking on public sector workers in late seventies.

Surely the lesson is not that workers shouldn’t defend their rights but that Labour governments should support them more or lose power – discuss?

Hopefully the talks on-going will resolve the bitterness that is festering on both sides.

The most despicable aspect of this episode is the disgraceful behaviour by Royal Mail, and influenced by the hand of the Dark Lord Mandelson to attack Union rights of the Communication Workers Union, as a result of this dispute.  Documents leaked to the media showed a strategy that dates back to the Victorian days.

The facts are that Royal Mail have ripped up agreements on pay, terms and conditions, and pensions,  signed with the CWU, without consultation,, who have no other option than to withdraw their labour.

The arguments against the dispute are the same old tired ones, with an obsession in indulging in a race to the bottom. 

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