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Star Comment: Labour must take a stand

UNISON general secretary Dave Prentis speaks no more than the truth when he says it’s time for the Labour Party to make up its mind and give support to low-paid workers striking for decent pay.

Despite the government’s claims that yesterday’s massive industrial action lacked support, the presence of hundreds of thousands on marches up and down the country showed that Britain is on the side of the strikers.

Polling by Unite backs that up — 61 per cent approved the right to strike in yesterday’s walkout and 56 per cent oppose the government’s real-terms pay cuts for the public sector.

That should act as a warning to the Tory Party that its draconian proposals to introduce arbitrary thresholds on strike ballots will not go down well with voters.

It should also act as an alarm clock for a torpid Labour Party leadership that struggles to articulate what exactly their party is for.

The current watchword of Ed Miliband, parroted faithfully in the media by his colleagues, is that the government is “ramping up the rhetoric” and revelling in confrontation.

By contrast, Labour “does not support the strike” but is not going to condemn it either, because that would be “ramping up the rhetoric.”

Miliband should grow up. 

Certainly arrogant ministers have indulged in poisonous jibes at Britain’s public servants, but two million public-sector workers did not walk off the job yesterday because they are engaged in a shouting match with the Cabinet.

They walked out because years of pay freezes and below-inflation rises have left them struggling to put food on their tables and pay their heating bills.

With a majority of people in poverty now in work, and with a million people now dependent on foodbanks, the issue is not one of rhetoric — it is deadly serious.

These are, as Prentis says, Labour’s natural supporters. Cooks, cleaners, carers. A Labour Party that does not offer them an ounce of support should hang its head in shame.

Blairite dogma still pervades the party’s higher ranks. For some reason Labour cannot support strikes, even when the public does — just as it apparently cannot renationalise the railways, though almost the whole country would back such a move, and it cannot stand up to the super-rich though Britain’s people are crying out for it to tackle burgeoning inequality in our society.

Cynically relying on working-class voters having nowhere else to go will not wash. 

Striking workers will have noticed that in contrast to Miliband, Green Party MP Caroline Lucas was marching with them yesterday, as was Communist Party leader Robert Griffiths.

So, too, of course, were many Labour MPs, whose example Miliband would be wise to follow. 

Shadow Cabinet Office minister Michael Dugher branded the Tory response to the strike “pathetic” yesterday. His own party’s performance was not much better.

 

Stop war on Gaza

AS THE death toll from Israel’s brutal bombardment of Gaza rose above 80 yesterday, any pretence that this is an even-handed conflict with faults on both sides, as the BBC is so fond of implying, is a non-starter.

The kidnap and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the occupied West Bank was a terrible crime. But Israel’s response is to wreak bloody vengeance on an entire people.

This is not new. The collective punishment of the Palestinian people simply for existing on land Israel wants has been Tel Aviv’s policy for decades.

UN secretary-general Ban Ki Moon says the situation is “on a knife edge.” It is not — it is the open slaughter of scores of innocents by Israel’s military juggernaut.

All pressure must be brought to bear on Israel to force it to end this carnage.

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