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This anti-strike law amounts to an existential challenge for unions
General secretary of the National Education Union DANIEL KEBEDE argues that anything less than total demolition of the new strike legislation will bring the very point of unions into question
Members of the National Education Union (NEU) take part in a rally through Westminster to Parliament Square, London, as teachers stage walkouts across England in an ongoing dispute over pay. Picture date: Wednesday July 5, 2023.

WE live in a time of neoliberalism that has turned deeply authoritarian. Those who have power aim to protect it by removing every democratic check upon them. They do this through measures that are legal in form but profoundly undemocratic in content. They want freedom for themselves and coercion for others.

As a result, rights to assembly, freedom of speech, and freedom from surveillance have all been put at risk. And governments have searched in ever more ingenious ways to strip the right to strike of any real meaning.

In the process, they are willing to rip up the agreements of the past: ILO conventions and the European Convention on Human Rights are seen as relics from another age, impediments to the right’s will to power.

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