The New Coalition Takes Shape

This editorial appeared in yesterday's Morning Star:

Previous right-wing governments, when imposing a pay freeze on public-sector workers, have often made exceptions for the police and judiciary.

The reasoning was, quite clearly, to ensure that the state’s forces of repression were on board in the event of the peasants revolting.

New Labour is either so confident of its omnipotence or so reckless in its adventurism that it feels no need to build links with any public servants.

It is par for the course that civil servants and NHS staff should be treated badly, with pay review board recommendations further eroded by the government by means of staging the award.

And to them can be added firefighters and prison officers who are not only given inadequate pay rises but are also treated as the enemy within - except when they are dealing with infernos or prison riots when they are promoted once again to heroes whose valour is second to none.

This is the position that the government has now carved out for the police who are being shown that there will be no favouritism for them.

It plans to do away with the Police Negotiating Board, which has operated effectively and fairly for decades, in order to set up pay review body.

The government gains twice with pay review bodies. First, it picks the bodies’ membership and sets the terms of reference, effectively forcing them to opt for modest improvements.

But, second and most outrageous, it adopts what has now become a routine attitude of claiming that modest recommendations are unaffordable and imposing a staged implementation.

This cuts the police award from a below-inflation 2.5 per cent to a belt-tightening 1.9 per cent, which is so despicable that it gives the appearance of a government looking for a row.

Police have been legally barred from striking since the end of the first world war when their trade union was crushed and replaced by the Police Federation.

But a legal ban on strikes is meaningless if working people feel so disgusted by their treatment that they defy the law and simply walk out.

Prison officers illustrated this reality recently when they reacted to government repression by refusing to go through ballot procedures - which the government simply met with an injunction - and walked out without notice.

In such circumstances, the government has to decide whether to let the situation go or take the consequences of picking up the big stick and sacking everyone who has gone on strike.

Closer co-operation between the Police Federation, Prison Officers Association and the Fire Brigades Union, to say nothing of other public-sector unions, offers new possibilities of defending workers’ rights.

As POA leader Brian Caton noted, this government is “too tightly tied up with commerce and capitalism.”

If the government ignores the vital interests of working people while championing the cause of private profit, as it is doing consistently, it cannot complain when workers resist and take action in their own defence.