Because of the shameful and unforgivable media blackout many people will not be aware of what is going on in Turkey right now (see the video at the end of this article). The use of austerity to subdue the working population is happening on a global scale and is by no means unique to Britain, although our island mentality means we can often overlook events abroad. The wide spread suffering that is sweeping across Britain through the vilification of ordinary working people and benefit recipients, the bedroom tax, benefit sanctions, Atos finding chronically sick and disabled people fit for work, the housing benefit cap, the erosion of workers rights, the cuts in legal aid, the loss of employment rights and protections, the rising use of food banks, raising the retirement age, attacking pensions and so on, are both deliberate and malicious. When Margaret Thatcher set out to crush the miners, it was the unions and industry she was after. Not only did she destroy our industrial base she smashed the unions and thereby the power of workers to assert themselves, Since then we have seen a slow degradation of all the protections and rights so fiercely fought for and won by the unions. Many people are not aware of the enormous benefits that the unions have gained for us and, indeed, believe the propaganda that has been maliciously pursued against the unions.
This is a short list of the benefits that unions have achieved for all working people:
Two-day weekends
Eight-hour working days
Maternity leave
Retirement ages
Occupational health and safety
Workplace pensions
Paid holidays
Equality laws
The right not to be sacked because you got married, had a baby, or became ill (strange how they’re seen as similar things)
Pay increases
The minimum wage
Collective bargaining
The right for the working classes to organise themselves
A standard of living above that of 1850’s Britain
Oh, and children no longer have to go up chimneys.
When the present coalition came to power little did we realise that plans long laid were about to be unleashed which were already well under way across the globe. The neoliberal agenda is a global corporate land grab of the world’s resources and that includes people. What the global corporate powers and the proponents of the free markets had discovered was a way to control people. It is what Naomi Klein, in her ground breaking work, describes as the Shock Doctrine. If people can be reduced to a state of shock whether through natural or man made disasters, then during the period of disorientation ever more draconian and sweeping powers can be gained by the corporations and the state whilst stripping away peoples protections, freedoms and liberties. As people recover their senses, further, systematic, shocks can be applied to push forward the neoliberal agenda with the implementation of ever more draconian policies. Indeed, as we are seeing in Britain, policies can be brought out systematically and they themselves produce the necessary shock, the bedroom tax being a prime example.
That is the position we are in today in Britain, three of the water cannons seen in the video have been ordered for Britain from Germany and our police are armed in exactly the same way as the Turkish police in preparation for what is already being described as a summer of discontent. If there is an eruption of protest, as there already is almost every weekend across the country, on a mass scale, peaceful or otherwise, the media will promote the language of riots and the containment of protest is likely to be swift and brutal. The good news is that there is peaceful resistance on a broad scale from very individual campaigns like my own ‘a letter a day to number 10’ to a growing national political and humanitarian dialogue, as with the Peoples Assembly. At local levels groups are emerging to challenge the bedroom tax and to resist the eviction orders that are being issued for debts as little as £20. There are also peaceful initiatives emerging like Loafing for Britain (a stay at home initiative) and the Pointless Party which encourages social gathering, for discussion, entertainment, sharing and of course egg and cucumber sandwich’s. Mobilising a nation is not easy and far too many people are, as yet, unaware of the real situation, not least because of very selective reporting by the media, yet despite a general lack of enthusiasm of anything remotely political, the people are awakening and there is much to do. The more we inform ourselves, the stronger we will be and the sooner we can return to some level of sanity in this country.
https://www.fleetstreetfox.com/2011/11/what-have-unions-ever-done-for-us.html
https://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine
https://www.coalitionofresistance.org.uk/
Keith Lindsay-Cameron
