More on the strangest strike in history

The railway strikes of 2022 are surely the oddest in our history. The rail workers, when on strike, forfeit their wages, but their employers not only save on their striking employees’ wages, they also receive full compensation from the government for income lost from travellers fares.

I have already explained that, whereas the railway trade unionists have every inducement to find a solution to the strikes, because their members are forfeiting their wages whilst on strike, their employers lose nothing by being intransigent.  This is the way the government wants it.  If the members of the RMT  and other unions eventually lose heart by virtue of having no income, their cause may be lost and their unions smashed. The employers  –  mainly foreign-owned  companies  – will then have a defeated, subdued workforce and the government will boast victory against their enemies.

Who are these foreign entities carrying out the bidding of the British government to refuse to negotiate with the unions on matters of pay and conditions?

The so-called privatisation of the railway in 1997 was a crime against the people.

Ownership was transferred from the British government to foreign governments.

Virgin was sold by Richard Branson to the Italian State operator.

London Overground and Grand Central now belong to the German State railway.

Merseyrail, West Midlands and Scotrail now belong to the Dutch State railway.

Thameslink and Transport for Wales are owned by The French State Railway.

British rail fares are among the highest in the world. British travellers are paying through the nose in order to subsidise the fares paid to all those foreign companies. Passengers across much of Europe pay lower fares thanks to the excessive prices we have to pay.  Isn’t that generous of us?

The British public swallowed the lie that privatisation was a requirement of EU membership. Our railways  –  the first in the world  – were dismembered and flogged off in a fire sale, while the rest of the EU  kept their state-run railways and gobbled up ours as a handy additional source of income.

Following BREXIT, when, according to that lying scoundrel, Johnson, we would “have back control”, were the railways re-nationalised? Of course not. Our scoundrel politicians and the foreign ones are all in it together.

When, in the run-up to the 2019 General Election, Jeremy Corbyn proposed re-nationalisation of our rail industry, it proved to be a very popular idea with the British public, so popular that Keir Starmer, in his bid for the Labour leadership, undertook to honour that policy.

Being the scoundrel that he is, as soon as he was elected, he dropped the policy.

The Labour MPs sit back and do nothing in support of the rail unions and the travelling public, seeing protection of their parliamentary jobs as being all-important

The government’s strategy  with regard to the current rail crisis, mirrors that pursued by Thatcher, with the connivance of the Labour MPs, in defeating the miners in 1984-5.

A strange strike, indeed. The employers are paid by the government, using tax-payers money, to prolong the strike, whilst shedding crocodile tears for the woes of the inconvenienced travelling public.

Hypocrisy rules supreme.

Between 1822 and 2022 we have moved hardly an inch. Workers have the vote, but it is doing them no good.

 

Colin Yardley

23 December 2022