PRESIDENT’S COLUMN

President’s column On Sunday 2 October RMT General Secretary, Mick Lynch and I joined thousands of noisy Brummie trade unionists, their families and friends in Birmingham’s Victoria Square, for a joyful and occasionally hilarious protest rally against the Tory Party Conference taking place in their city. As Jacob Rees-Mogg sauntered past flanked by two policemen, a protester shouted out “Egredere de Brum, you wazzock!”, which is Latin for ‘sling your hook, mate!’ Birmingham was the tipping point for a Tory party political meltdown, which saw Liz Truss become Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister. Having sacked her Chancellor and Home Secretary in short order and told us that she was “a fighter, not a quitter”, Liz promptly quit. Her replacement, Rishi Sunak is the political frontman for Goldman Sachs (one of the world’s biggest banks and his former employer) and has been greeted by most of the supine British media and political establishment as a ‘safe pair of hands’. The same Tory-supporting newspapers who puffed up Liz Truss last month, are now ululating over the coronation of Prime minister Sunak. What’s that smell? It’s bullshit. Sunak’s principal tactic to unite warring factions of Tory MPs will be to attack workers’ rights and trade union freedoms. Super-rich Sunak has been installed as PM without a vote, or any popular mandate. He bandies around words like “compassion”, yet appoints a cabinet of austerity junkies, anti-migrant bigots, profiteers and proponents of human misery. We all know when Sunak says he faces “difficult decisions”, he means austerity, wage cuts, rising bills and suffering for millions of us while his sleazy pals profit and expand their wealth and power. To that end, Sunak has appointed former Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps (an old friend of ours) as his new Business Secretary. Shapps - a cousin somehow of Clash guitarist, Mick Jones - once described his values as “work hard, play by the rules”. Spirit of punk, or what? In August this year when he was still Transport Secretary, while refusing to meet or speak to trade unions representing striking rail workers, Shapps outlined his 16- point plan to 'take on militant unions’ including new powers to outlaw strikes that he deems threaten a ‘national emergency’. Professor Keith Ewing of the Institute of Employment Rights told the Morning Star newspaper: “Shapps’s proposals contain yet another clumsy attempt to attack a fundamental freedom, likely to breach UK international legal obligations … The suppression of liberty by executive order is the hallmark of authoritarian government and worse. It has no place in a properly functioning parliamentary democracy underpinned by the rule of law.” You know why Tories like to call themselves ‘libertarians’? They can’t stop taking liberties. Our proud trade union has been in existence for 151 years. Our railworker members were blacklisted by rail companies after the 1926 General Strike. Our seafarer members were imprisoned for ‘mutiny’ in Brixton prison for taking strike action on board merchant ships as recently as the 1960s. There’s nothing these two-bit Tory conmen can do that will intimidate our members. We know our history and we’ve seen their kind before. This October, myself and our NEC Maritime Representative, Andy Gordon were able to represent RMT members at the 150th Anniversary Celebrations of the Maritime Union of Australia - a union with a proud history of fighting for the rights of dockers, seafarers and working-class people around the world, particularly Australia’s indigenous First Nations peoples. A full report will appear in next month’s RMT News. The MUA continue to celebrate their greatest victory, the 1998 Waterfront Dispute, when the Patrick Stevedores corporation sacked its entire workforce in the dead of night using balaclava-clad Security Guards backed by attack dogs. The MUA refused to be cowed by the Australian Government of John Howard, which declared war on them. They fought industrially, legally and politically and they won. Their motto is ‘MUA – Here to Stay!’ RMT members can take pride in the international movement we are part of. Show Sunak and Shapps we won’t be bullied either. Vote YES to strike action. Get ready for more Tories. Alex Gordon RMT – READY FOR MORE TORIES RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 ::november/december2022 :: RMTnews 27 Copies of RMT - 150 Years of Trade Unionism are available from your branch or the RMT website. C A pictorial history of the union from 1871 to 2021