Harry Paterson

We could be here ‘til next century, discussing the legacy of Thatcher, such is the landscape-altering impact of that vile woman’s contribution to British politics. So we won’t bother, then.

Instead, let’s take a look at one of the more insidious, but no less damaging, phenomena for which she can be rightly blamed. Namely, this mean-spirited, resentful and uncharitable world-view shared by so many. This is best illustrated by a conversation I heard on a radio ‘phone-in, the other day, discussing public sector pensions.

The outraged caller railed furiously against trade Union bosses’ plans for industrial action in defence of public sector pensions (they’re always ‘bosses’, aren’t they? Mob bosses, Mafioso chiefs and crime lords, being the comparison we’re supposed to make).

Why should public sector workers have gold-plated pensions? She demanded, angrily. Where do they get off having such a sense of automatic entitlement? Her pension, from the private sector, was nonexistent so she certainly wasn’t supporting any such action, she’ll have you know!

Depressingly, it’s this sort of attitude that’s largely responsible for getting us into this mess in the first place. Older readers will recall the huge industrial battles and bitterly charged disputes that defined the 80s. Wapping, GCHQ Cheltenham and, of course, the miners’ strike.

Then, as now, the same surly and jealous attitude pervaded. We’re all suffering, we’re all making cut-backs so why should Scargill’s greedy, commie miners be exempt? This also had the knock-on but devastating effect of alibiing  the craven, spineless capitulation and outright treachery of Neil Kinnock, Norman Willis et al, as the miners were left isolated, unsupported and abandoned by the Labour party and TUC bureaucracy.

We all know the result. The miners  lost and the trade union movement as any kind of vehicle for progressive social change was shattered for generations. Over the following decades, wages plummeted, protection from unscrupulous employers all but vanished and job security and a living wage dropped to a low not seen since before the war.

We’ll join those particular dots shortly, but for now let’s look at some of the most common objections to the strikes on November 30^th. This one, from a friend of mine, is typical “…I’ve had pay-cuts in my job in the private sector and simply cannot afford to keep subsidising over-generous public sector pensions”

There are a lot of obvious responses to this; firstly, well why didn’t you join a union and/or fight against the slashing of your terms and conditions? Why resent another group of workers who have the balls to defend their pay and conditions when you didn’t?

Of course, his objections, and those of many others, basically fall into the category of ‘well I’ve been punched in the face, mugged and then shit upon and I didn’t do a thing about it so you should just lie back and take it too’ Not very noble that, is it? Not particularly logical as any kind of argument against, either.

Put more simply, though, look at it this way: you go for an interview, discuss the role, pay and conditions and maybe do a bit of haggling, maybe not, and then you and your employer sign a supposedly legally binding contract which lays out the obligations and benefits for both sides.

Imagine, then, a year or two into the job, you turn around, one day, and say to your boss, “Hey, you know that bit of my job we agreed on? Signed a contract to say I’d do it? Well, not really feeling that anymore so I aint doing it” Can you imagine the response? Yeah, your ass would be sacked PDQ.

So, with that in mind, why is it ok for the government to now turn around and tell their workforce that a significant part of their pay and conditions, a part significant enough to have been the deciding factor in millions of workers taking the job in the first place, is scrapped?

Striking, as a last resort, to resist this seems to me not only perfectly reasonable but clear-cut and morally, legally and logically unassailable. Apparently not, though…

Because as well as the the jealous, the resentful, the cowardly and the terminally stupid, there are also those who trot out Cameron’s hypocritical mantra that we’re all in it together. We simply can’t afford for teachers, nurses, firemen, dinner ladies etc to have “over generous” pensions subsidised by the tax payers. We all need to make sacrifices in UK PLC’s hour of need.

I see. Like Vodafone did when they got off scot-free with £8 BILLION POUNDS of dodged tax owed to the exchequer? You’d think, given the current climate, us tax payers could’ve done with that cash in the public coffers. What with us all being in it together and that.

Or how about the chiefs of effectively nationalised banks continuing to rake in multi-million pound bonuses for being crap at their jobs? Yeah, be nice to see those boys taking one for Team Britannia. You know, what with us all being in it together and that…

This, of course, exposes another lie they’d love you to swallow. You see, we’re not all in this together as patriotic Brits, doing our bit and making sacrifices. Bollocks to that! After all, what sacrifice are the bankers making? What cuts are we seeing among those made fabulously rich by stealing, ripping-off and driving the economy into the ground?  No, the working class are in this together; employed, unemployed, public sector, private sector, young, old, working, retired and all scraping by on a pittance in comparison, while the super rich and their mates in government want those at the bottom to pay for the greed of those at the top.

So, as Arthur tried to point out during the miners’ strike, this is not just about one group of workers defending their interests. It’s about all of us because if the coalition gets away with stealing the pensions from their own workforce, you can bet your bottom dollar they’ll be coming for the rest of us next. Count on it.

Find your back-bone, find your integrity and take a stand. Join the strike. If you’re not in the public sector, support the strikers and their actions. Make your support known. And if you can’t do that then at least allow cold, hard, self-interest to motivate you because remember; today it’s the public sector, tomorrow it’ll be you. Don’t say you weren’t warned…