On the latest episode of Radio 4‘s Any Questions Green Party MP Caroline Lucas made this exact point. Responding to an audience member who asked, “How have we got a situation where strikes are effecting the majority of public sector services?”, Lucas explained that the government is “made up of millionaires and is running the country for the millionaires”.
She told the audience in Sussex: “Well, we’ve had 13 years of austerity, and a government that frankly is made up of millionaires and is running the country for the millionaires, and doesn’t much care about the rest of us.”
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“I think there’s a real concern that they were just hoping they could sit out these strikes weren’t they. They were hoping that there wouldn’t be enough public support for public sector workers and that they would just be able to tough it out.”
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“And when you see as well, the government’s priorities – that they will find the money for the richest, but they won’t find the money for some of the poorest.”
Striking members of the National Education Union (NEU) on Piccadilly march to a rally in Trafalgar Square, central London, in a long-running dispute over pay. Picture date: Wednesday March 15, 2023.
THE Tories are “waging war on working people,” unions warned today as Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s Budget coincided with a massive day of strikes by hundreds of thousands of workers nationwide.
Unions slammed the ex-Tory leadership candidate’s “fiscal event” for failing to tackle pay disputes across the country, with teachers, university lecturers, civil servants, junior doctors, London Tube drivers and BBC journalists all downing tools today.
As Mr Hunt delivered his speech, thousands of workers rallied outside.
They gathered as the Office for Budget Responsibility, which the former health secretary praised for predicting Britain would now avoid a technical recession this year, warned that people still face the biggest fall in living standards on record.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt leaves 11 Downing Street, London, with his ministerial box, before delivering his Budget at the Houses of Parliament. Picture date: Wednesday March 15, 2023.
BRITAIN’S biggest strike surge in decades was the elephant in the room, almost ignored in the Chancellor’s Budget speech.
The huge strike march winding through Whitehall wasn’t referenced by either front bench. Yet the demands for proper pay rises and investment in public services it championed speak more directly to people’s concerns than any of Jeremy Hunt’s headline announcements.
Hunt referred vaguely to inflation as the cause of industrial disputes — before dishonestly citing it as the reason the government is denying workers the pay rises they need and deserve.
His dishonesty didn’t end there. The government is doing everything it can to resolve the disputes, the Chancellor claimed.
Junior doctors wear scrubs and masks as they sit down in a silent protest outside Bristol Royal Infirmary on the second day of all-out strike action in April 2016
JUNIOR doctors in England have voted overwhelmingly to take strike action over pay, their union the British Medical Association (BMA) announced today.
Almost 37,000 members of the union took part in the ballots with 98 per cent saying they were in favour of striking, which the BMA said will be a three-day action.
The vote is the largest turnout for a ballot of doctors by the BMA, and a record number of junior doctors voted for strike action.
BMA junior doctors committee co-chairs Dr Robert Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi said: “The government has only itself to blame, standing by in silent indifference as our members are forced to take this difficult decision.”
Unions warn of further action as nurses and ambulance workers down tools in biggest-ever walkout
Workers on the picket line outside Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton during a strike by nurses and ambulance staff
A“CONSTANT cycle of national NHS pay strikes will continue for as long as it takes,” unions warned today, as tens of thousands of nurses and ambulance workers downed tools in the biggest-ever health service walkout.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN), which began a 48-hour strike, said members at 73 health trusts across England withdrew their labour — a massive increase on the 44 that saw action in December’s first walkout.
Unite and GMB paramedics, call handlers and other staff at ambulance trusts also joined the massive industrial action, which NHS leaders said caused “huge disruption.”
Ahead of further strikes by physiotherapists on Thursday and ambulance staff — including Unison members — on Friday, union leaders urged Tory ministers to act on years of falling take-home wages, saying the situation is driving a worker exodus and endangering patient safety.
Half a million workers down tools over pay, jobs and working conditions
Protesters outside Downing Street, London, demonstrating against the new law on strikes
BRITAIN faces its biggest day of strike action in more than a decade today as up to half a million workers down tools over pay, jobs and working conditions.
Teachers, lecturers, civil servants and train and bus drivers are set to withdraw their labour simultaneously, as the fightback against more than a decade of Tory austerity gathers pace.
The TUC is holding events nationwide as part of its “protect the right to strike day” after ministers rushed “authoritarian and draconian” anti-worker legislation through the Commons on Monday night.
The union body demanded the government drop the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill, which is likely to face stiff opposition in the House of Lords, and instead “get round the table to negotiate in good faith on public-sector pay.”
