UK Rail Strikes: Class Matters Borders Don't

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired
GED/HEO

1-19-23

This video is about the rail strikes in Britain and a Conservative Party (Tory) politician is answering questions. I hope some of my former co-workers and other workers who follow my posts watch it because it shows how the relationship between workers and employers are the same, with the same conflicts and antagonisms no matter which country we are in or what language we speak. What color or religion the boss is or what gender they are. And it is not because this individual politician is a bad guy. It is, as the narrator say, an issue of ideology. Political parties have class content, they represent class interests and that's what these disputes are about; they’re not about “greed” in the abstract, or personality flaws of human beings. Is it greedy to want a home to live in or to want good public health, education or transportation?

 

So we have to address the system and how we produce the necessities of life if we are to resolve these never ending conflicts. But the class that owns and controls the means of producing the necessities of life does not want us to consider how society is organized. They deny there is such a thing as classes and class antagonism and that their wealth is the product of others’ labor. It’s all about individual worth and personal choices which is nonsense and they know it. So they lie.

 

In the video, the politician admits the issue in the rail strikes is not money as the public are told. It’s a political conflict in that sense.

 

I remember during the PATCO strike in 1980 that Reagan smashed. He fired 11,000 air traffic controllers and banned them from working in their industry for life. That was an act of violence against US workers and their families. He was able to do this so easily because the heads of organized labor did nothing to stop it because when it comes to ideology, they have the same world view as Reagan did and Bush, Obama, Trump Biden, all of them do. The market is god and there is no alternative to capitalism.

 

As usual, the mass media portrayed the PATCO air traffic controllers as greedy and made sure we knew how much take home pay they got and so on. One news reporter I remember asked a stranded traveler at an airport what it felt like to be “held hostage” by the strikers. The media always plays the same role.  But when I spoke to a PATCO striker about the situation he responded that it wasn’t so much about money but stress on the job. He asked me if I ever played Pac Man and I did, I loved Pac Man. He said, well I watch a screen like that in a way and when two blips collide I lose a few hundred people.

 

As we watch this charade let it remind us that one of the most important reasons Marx and Engels are demonized by the ruling classes of the world is not fear of the three volumes they wrote analyzing the capitalist economic system and how it works, but a few quite simple words. “Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains”

 

It is that statement, who it is addressed to, and the consequences of it being adopted that terrifies that class of extremely wealthy people whose policies are destroying lives and threaten environmental or nuclear Armageddon. Perhaps both.