Has the time come to organise a general strike?
The government’s response to the cost-of-living crisis is nothing short of class war. Workers can’t be expected to take these attacks lying down, says LORD JOHN HENDY QC
IN PART one of this series in yesterday’s Morning Star, I argued that the fight of those on strike this summer and autumn, workers and unions who still have the right to bargain collectively, fight for the whole working class.
That right covered 85 per cent of workers in the 1970s. Now it’s less than 25 per cent.
From the history of the 1970s, we should take something else. In the summer of 1972, 50 years ago, five dockers were imprisoned in Pentonville for picketing in defiance of a court order.
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The Star publishes the Karl Marx Graveside Oration delivered by Lord JOHN HENDY KC at Highgate Cemetery on Sunday, on behalf of the Marx Memorial Library
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It’s the steady erosion of collective bargaining over a number of years that has led workers’ pay to fall, while employers’ profits continue to rise, says LORD JOHN HENDY QC in the first of a two-part article series
Instead of these weak and often unclear proposals from the government, we needed unions themselves to be put back into the heart of negotiations and given the freedom to defend their members, writes LORD JOHN HENDY QC
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