NICK TROY lauds the young staff at a hotel chain and cinema giant who are ready to take on the bosses for their rights
WHEN the Radio 4 news at 7pm on March 15 could report first on Jeremy Hunt’s Spring Statement, and then secondly note that it had almost been overshadowed by strikes on the day, it’s clear something significant is moving — at least potentially.
The strikes involved a range of unions — Prospect and PCS in government employers across Britain, NEU teachers in England, Aslef and RMT on London Underground, BMA junior doctors in England, and UCU university workers across the UK.
There was an impressive central London march and rally. I attended one called by the Wales TUC in central Cardiff. At the Cardiff rally, there were of course veterans of many previous fights, but there were also numbers of younger trade unionists. Indeed, such was the scale of the action that many on strike would have been doing so for the first time.
Research shows Farage mainly gets rebel voters from the Tory base and Labour loses voters to the Greens and Lib Dems — but this doesn’t mean the danger from the right isn’t real, explains historian KEITH FLETT
KEITH FLETT revisits the 1978 origins of Britain’s May Day bank holiday — from Michael Foot’s triumph to Thatcher’s reluctant acceptance — as Starmer’s government dodges calls to expand our working-class celebrations



