General secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions GAWAIN LITTLE calls for support and participation in the national partnership organised to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 1926 general strike
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Compassion or cost-cutting? The slippery slope of assisted dying
Labour must fight to ensure any new laws do not become tools for social cleansing of the poor and disabled, argues JOHN McINALLY, as some begin considering NHS savings that could come at the cost of working-class lives
Campaigners against voluntary euthanasia
After brutal police crackdowns on pensioners and the forced approval of secret IMF deals, trade unions are finally responding to grassroots pressure and fighting back against savage neoliberal reforms, reports BERT SCHOUWENBURG
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AS THE government considers the issue of assisted dying with a view to legislation, the question of who frames the debate, and how, should be of real concern for working-class people and the labour and trade union movement, which cannot afford to be a bystander in the discussion.
The case for legalising assisted dying will be championed by the liberal political class and personalities as a “human right,” a matter of personal autonomy and “choice,” even a social justice issue and a progressive moral principle, elevated above and distinct from other factors, including class interest.
When liberals demand a “human right” it invariably means the moral right of the individual abstracted above that of the collective, with scant regard or consideration of the potential consequences for wider society, and certainly not of the working class.
More from this author
JOHN McINALLY argues trade unions and socialists must demand properly funded healthcare instead of a change that, combined with neoliberal capitalism, will see working-class people pushed towards suicide
JOHN McINALLY warns that Labour’s hasty push for legislation ignores the international evidence of expanding eligibility criteria, potentially normalising the ‘social murder’ of working-class people under the guise of compassion
JOHN McINALLY calls for militant trade unionism and overt socialist politics to counter the new government’s pro-capitalist agenda and a looming authoritarian turn that threatens to muzzle working-class resistance
At the helm of Britain’s eighth-largest union for a quarter of a century, he is rightly seen as one of the most principled and effective class fighters of our times, writes JOHN McINALLY
