No Labour frontbencher has ever been disciplined for having crossed a picket line. Across all parties, and whether in Government or in Opposition, the supposed requirement of neutrality in industrial disputes only ever applies to the workers' side, and is thus in fact a taking of the other, which is the stronger, side.
Keir Starmer himself has recently and rightly stood on picket lines, but they were UCU ones, and while the UCU is also not affiliated to the Labour Party, it is safely middle-class, unlike the RMT. ASLEF and others coming down the line, such as the CWU and my union, Unite, are indeed affiliated to the Labour Party. But for how much longer? The day that a frontbencher was sacked for having stood on one of their picket lines, then all hell would break loose, and not before time.
The unions and the left really have had enough this time, haven't they?
ReplyDeleteThere have been false dawns before, but this is starting to feel as if it might actually happen at last.
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