Britain on strike

 Britain on strike

The natives are restless. In fact Britain was in a state of revolt and mutiny, raging at obvious injustices and determined to express itself in no uncertain terms. Yesterday the voices of anguish and trade union militancy were once again vocally apparent, shouting from the rooftops and deeply unhappy. The nation ground to a standstill. Britain was fuming, livid and incandescent. There comes a point in our lives when you simply can't abide those stubborn politicians who refuse to listen to you. You begin to boil over with resentment and refuse to back down. Enough is enough.

Yesterday the nurses, teachers, train workers and every conceivable member of the blue collar movment in Britain walked out of their respective profession, trade and place of labour. It was time to down tools and just hit the streets of London, Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, Nottingham, Leeds and any other centre of industrial excellence where the every day and important businesses of our lives, were up in arms. They were furious at gross underpayment, the domestic struggles, trials and tribulations that millions of families will now have to undertake and their increasingly desperate plight. 

We have of course been here on countless occasions throughout the years. When Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister the once thriving mining industry was constantly threatened with extinction. Then there were the vehement protests and demonstrations, the cries of angst and well entrenched hatred, the feeling that they were the majority and therefore the deprived ones, the marginalised ones, alienated by the powers that be at Westminster and the House of Commons. They were the overlooked, ignored and just silenced by the Tories who simply told them to go back to work immediately. 

Now this is where we are at the moment. For well over a decade ago all of the above trades and professions have been criminally neglected by both the Labour and Tory party and if they don't play ball now then this could get very nasty. There has to be room for compromise and negotiation but neither the Government or our strikers can find any common ground. Does this sound like a familiar narrative? Of course it does. Yesterday was the culmination of violent disagreement, protests over and over again, flags, banners and slogans indicating a real groundswell of impatience and vociferous disapproval. 

Neither side is prepared to back down from their moral high ground or seething intransigence. What we now have are the people who provide Britain with a vital backbone, now rising up en masse clearly on the warpath and just ruthless into the bargain. And yet you feel duty bound to sympathise with the working classes, the ones who work themselves into the ground every week and month of the year just to survive, putting food and water on the table but unable to do so because they simply can't afford the weekly bills or the food banks seem the only plausible option.

Here we have a Britain more sharply divided than they were at the height of the endless Brexit rhetoric. Then nobody knew whether we were in or out and none, significantly, knew which direction the country was heading. We were squabbling over complete control of our trading laws in Europe, being bossed about in an annoyingly overbearing fashion by those who told us what to do in the EU. But now everything has come to head and we're none the wiser.

For the last three years a global virus destroyed the confidence and resolve of our everyday waking moment. It almost seems as though the aftermath of both Brexit and Covid 19 has quite literally broken the spirit of everybody. So we look to the rest of the world and find that they may be coping with their economy in much more sensible way. But then a certain Vladimir Putin, president of Russia came along and from what had been a hitherto position of strength, Ukraine has now been blown into oblivion and the rest of us are suffering the damaging consequences.

So here in Britain, the cost of living crisis has bitten savagely into our everyday lives, food and drink prices are now astronomically high, the young professionals can forget about a four bedroom terraced home in suburbia and today's generation may have to settle for scraps. It is all very disconcerting and dispiriting, enough to drive you around the bend. But somehow the cyclical nature of the British economy  is such that boom or bust may be with us for many years.

But yesterday an impassioned Prime Minister Rishi Sunak got off his green bench and delivered the usual patronising tosh about our poor schoolchildren. How dare the teachers go out on strikes! These children are our future and those teachers ought to be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. But now Sunak repeatedly got on his soap box and lectured the teachers in a way that was so uncomfortable that you feared that the only reaction he was going to get was a hostile one and so it proved to be the case.

He turned his body to one side, confirming once again that every Prime Minister since time immemorial has always spoken at a profile of their choosing. He looked at his sneering opponents in the House of Commons and seemed to enjoy being the centre of attention. He ranted and raved, lifted his voice so loudly that everybody could hear him and then might have been privately shocked when nobody was listening to him properly. Oh how we love the body language of British politicians.

Sadly we are no further forward than we were at the beginning of the week and passions are still running high. Sir Keir Starmer, the Shadow leader of the Labour opposition, still gives the impression of a man whistling in the wind. He can argue his point for as long as he likes but the rest of Parliament still think of him as a gibbering buffoon. At some point we will reach a point in the proceedings when something will give in Westminster.

Today the blue collar workers went back to work reluctantly but not before the metaphorical bloodied noses were wiped and everybody just retreated into a world of almost reluctant silence. Mick Lynch, our trade union head honcho, almost spat out his annoyance and then promised that one day those who work their fingers to the bone will get their just desserts. We must hope that this time will be with us sooner rather than later.