Daily Mail, 22 March 2010
As British Airways and Unite bicker about the impact of the cabin crew strike, those of us above a certain age might be forgiven for having a bleakly distinct sense of deja-vu.
It’s beginning to feel horribly like the dreary Sixties and Seventies when life was regularly blighted by strikes, three-day weeks, shortages of essential provisions and a sense that the lights were going out (literally) in Britain.
Then along came Mrs Thatcher who famously went to war against the unions and introduced a swathe of new laws which were supposed to put an end, once and for all, to the union wreckers.
Now we seem to be back where we started.
It’s not just BA’s cabin crews which are holding the public to ransom — transport workers and public sector staff are also set to stage a wave of strikes around the Easter period to increase the general misery.
Thousands of Network Rail signallers and maintenance workers belonging to the RMT union have voted for industrial action over proposed changes to their working rotas. Combined with the BA strikes, this threatens wholesale transport chaos.
Not to be outdone, the Public and Commercial Services Union has also announced that more than 200,000 civil servants and other officials will strike this Wednesday, the day the Chancellor delivers his pre-election Budget.
It’s like discovering there’s yet another sequel to The Godfather – only this time the Marlon Brando role is being played by Charlie Whelan, political director of Unite and for many years Gordon Brown’s chief spin doctor and infamously brutal enforcer.
He is now reportedly back at Brown’s side, holding court to a steady stream of Labour MPs queuing up to pay him homage — for all the world like a mafia boss holding out his ring to be kissed.
But despite Unite’s bravado, it looks as if BA may have the upper hand in this showdown.
The aim of such strikes is to cause lethal levels of disruption. Certainly, many travellers are being badly inconvenienced. The union insists that half of all BA flights on Saturday were grounded.
Yet many flights departed on schedule. BA claimed it was able to reinstate more flights than planned because the vast majority of cabin crew members showed up at Gatwick on Saturday, as did half at Heathrow.
Thus, the main weapon of such strike action — the sense of powerlessness and helplessness it induces — appears to have been significantly diminished.
Nevertheless, the damage to BA’s brand remains considerable. And so one has to wonder at the motivation of the strikers, who surely realise that their action is likely to hasten the demise of BA altogether.
The claim made by various unions that they are resorting to such action only to protect low-paid workers rings hollow. BA cabin crew members — whom I have always found to be outstandingly efficient and friendly — are actually relatively well paid.
Yes, a number are on low salaries. But since their average wage is twice that paid to Virgin crew members, it is hard to feel much sympathy for industrial action, which should only ever be a last resort.
Similarly the rail signallers, only 54 per cent of whom voted in support of striking, earn an average of £50,000 a year. Jarrow this is not.
The real point of this militancy is surely rather different. With inevitable cutbacks looming in the public services and the likelihood of job losses, the message from these unions is not to mess with their members’ jobs, perks and privileges.
The economy may be going to hell in a handcart unless the bloated public sector is reduced and cash-strapped companies prune their workforce but, say the unions, ‘not in our feather-bedded back yard’.
Out in the real world, everyone else is bracing up to the new harsh reality. But unionised labour is once again behaving as if it is a class apart.
These grievances also stand proxy for an extreme Left-wing mindset which seeks to wreck the country and looks for any pretext to do so.
The RMT general secretary Bob Crow, who belonged to the Communist Party of Great Britain until it disbanded, has never made any secret of his militant tendencies.
The aim is simply the exercise of brute power by union bosses; it matters not one whit to them whether people already suffering from the general belt-tightening are now having their precious holiday travel plans ruined.
The real question is, how has such destructive union power been able to resurface like this?
Clearly, the laws passed by the Thatcher government, which were principally to protect workers from being intimidated into strikes and to prevent unfair industrial action, only went so far.
Arguably even more important in reducing the number of strikes was the fact that the Conservative government showed it was prepared to do whatever it took to face down the unions.
The cause of stopping them from taking the country hostage enjoyed massive public support and helped keep Labour out of power. That’s a pretty powerful disincentive to strike — and it helped Tony Blair in turn keep the unions at bay.
But now the situation is totally reversed. Gordon Brown refuses to adopt such a tough approach.
Undoubtedly, behind the scenes he is trying to bang heads together because of the potentially catastrophic consequences for Labour of such a ‘Spring of Discontent’ at a time of imminent general election. Indeed, the current recovery of Tory momentum, such as it is, most likely is due to the Unite effect.
Though he has condemned the BA strike itself, the Prime Minister has conspicuously refused to criticise the unions, leaving it to the Transport Secretary Lord Adonis to fume about their contempt for the public.
Mr Brown is powerless because the Labour Party has once again become the puppet of its union paymasters.
Unite alone has given more than £30 million to Labour since 2001 and has links to more than 160 Labour ministers, MPs and candidates. Last year, the unions in general provided more than 60 per cent of Labour’s funding.
As a result, far from acting in the best interests of their constituents and the country, a number of Labour MPs will refuse to cross the civil servants’ picket line at Westminster on Wednesday — while some will even shut down their Commons offices to show their ’solidarity’ with the strikers.
With Tony Blair reportedly poised to take a cameo role in the election campaign by accusing David Cameron of flunking real change in the Tory Party, it is now clear that the person who really flunked changing his party was Mr Blair. Having created New Labour to break the union stranglehold over his party, his abject failure is now plain to see.
It is vital that such union militancy is nipped in the bud now. Whoever wins the election will be forced to cut spending and take tough measures to address the economic crisis.
So even if David Cameron arrives in No 10 — perhaps on the back of public anger over these strikes — he may find that he comes up against a wave of industrial action.
Although the unions are not the Tories’ paymasters, such a challenge will still require backbone and nerves of steel if the unions are not once again to turn Britain into an economic basket-case and the laughing-stock of the world.
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