December 2011

Well if ever there is a place in England that isn’t
revolutionary or willing for workers action you might think it would be Bury St
Edmunds – or so you might think. Bury is a town that is typically seen as
bourgeoisie and reactionary with quaint villages surrounding it which keep to
themselves. The 30th however saw something that has not
entered the consciousness of the people of Bury (after discussion with locals)
ever. By this of course I’m talking about the mass strike action.  As the UNISON rep for West Suffolk College I was able to
draw upon my own reflections of the day and discuss with others why this was
necessary.

There were unprecedented scenes in Birmingham on N30 after the
Tory-Lib-Dem coalition that runs Birmingham City Council tried to ban
the planned TUC protest march.

On
the day it turned out to be the biggest trade union demonstration in
Coventry since the 1970s. They came in their hundreds from all parts of
the city and from all public sector trade unions as well as from trade
unions that were not on strike that day – the FBU was well represented.
By the time of the rally at the end of the march through Coventry city
centre some 2,500 trade unionists and their families were crammed into
the area known as Speakers Corner opposite the Council building.

At least 20,000 – perhaps as many as 30,000 – marched through Glasgow in support of the strikes.

Here are some impressions of the Nov 30 protest from Birmingham.

Tourists
looking down from the Castle saw history being
made
below them as Johnston Terrace was jammed with
clerks, cooks and cleaners,
teachers, librarians, radiographers, nurses,
lectures, bin men and women,
jannies, curators, students, thousands more of
good humoured but determined
public sector workers and their bairns
determined not to be “robbed of their
pension”, as I was told by a First Davison
Association (top management
union) picket at the court.

More than two million public sector workers took strike action yesterday. That amounted to a virtual general strike of the public sector. In terms of numbers, the action was bigger than the “Winter of Discontent” in 1979  – bigger even than the 1926 General Strike. Even The Financial Times, the organ of Big Business, surprisingly described Wednesday’s strike as “undoubtedly historic”.

On the eve of the 30th November  I, like many other public sector
workers in Worcester, was making sandwiches, filling flasks full of
coffee and digging out themal T shirts ready for cold picket lines.The
pickets were set up before sunrise at the hospitals in Worcestershire.