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.
One of the biggest protest marches held on Nov 30 was in London with thousands of workers and students joining feeder demonstrations from various parts of the capital. These merged with the main protest through Central London from Midday – official estimates put the number on the march at over 20,000.
Here is a brief report from a London picket line – one of many which were held yesterday as part of the Nov 30 strike and protest.
800 public sector workers marched through Barnsley yesterday – and an estimated 4,000 did the same in Sheffield.
Around a thousand trade unionists marched thru the centre of Chelmsford in Essex in what must have been the largest such protest since the days of the Peasant Revolt!
Tomorrow’s Public Sector strike will be easily the biggest
strike day since the General Strike of 1926. In fact far more workers will
participate in the strike than on the first day of the 1926 General Strike.
Schools, Government Departments, Council Depots, Offices and Health Services
will grind to a halt as workers protest about massive increases in contributions
and cuts to their pensions.
News last week of 27 higher
education institutions lowering their 2012/2013 tuition fees to £7500
appears to have failed to have had a great impact on students/university
applicants. This could partly be put down to the lower fee still being
of a similar level to those being charged by other universities; many
potential students feel that they are going to be in so much debt when
they leave university that £4500 will not make much difference.
On Friday more than a million Egyptian
youth, workers and poor yet again assembled in Tahrir Square. The
masses have once again risen in an attempt to remove the remnants of the
Mubarak regime, which are still in power. Not far from Tahrir, in
Abbassiya Square, not more than a couple of thousand people gathered in a
pathetic demonstration in support of the SCAF. To the sceptics who did
not believe in the revolution, this should be a clear demonstration of
the real balance of forces. But at the same time the revolution clearly
faces obstacles, not from external forces, but in its own internal
contradictions.