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English Radicals are disgusted by the actions of the two sides in the BA dispute: Chief Executive, Willie Walsh, grins like a Cheshire cat as he contemplates the freehand he will get to sack and bully his workforce following the Unite union’s decision to go on strike; while for their part, Unite leaders are less interested in the future for their members than they are about dictating the future of the Labour party. Both sides in this dispute have clear goals: Walsh was brought in to BA to prune its workforce and turn it into a flying version of Netto. Whilst the Unite leaders want rid of the New Labour leadership and beating up the flying public on the eve of a General Election was the obvious weapon of choice.  Sadly, it is the BA workforce, bullied by the management and by the union, and the general public who want to fly, who are the innocent victims of this Left versus Right industrial battle.

Many people have commented on how this ‘Spring of Discontent’ is like some throwback to the 1980s and, in some ways, they are right. Like then there are industrial leaders who want to shed jobs in a time of recession, regardless of the poverty and hardship this will cause for their workforce. And also, like then, the workforce was part of a trade union that had political motivations as its primary goal, rather than the welfare of its members. Sadly, this is always going to be the case when our businesses are part of global corporations and our unions are run by extremists. The BA workers have a strong argument; BA’s problems are not caused by the workforce but by the decisions made over recent years by its management, yet it is the workforce who will pay the price by losing their jobs, or by working longer hours for less money (and won’t that be a comfort for you when you’re half way across the Atlantic?). But, and it is a big but, being right doesn’t get you anywhere if you are badly led and badly advised. The miners were right in the 1980s, but they were lions who let themselves be led by a donkey called Arthur Scargill, a man more interested in bringing down a government than in protecting his members jobs. And so it is with Unite, they are led by men who want to bring down Gordon Brown and the New Labour leadership, even if that means losing the General Election and, therefore, allowing into power a party that would decimate the public and private sector workforce in order to maximise the profits of its global capitalist backers.

The sad fact is that the BA workforce should have given greater consideration to guerrilla action against BA management rather than taking on Walsh AND the public with a strike. They should also have examined the motives of their union leadership and not allowed themselves to be cannon fodder in the class warfare ambitions of a pair of Marxist losers like Derek Simpson and Tony Woodley. Crucially, the union leaders have failed to bring out the majority of their members and have left those on the picket line at the mercy of Willie Walsh’s axe. However, before the public blame the workforce for this strike, they should also examine the actions of Willie Walsh. He has deliberately set out to provoke a strike regardless of how this will affect the general public. He’s been clever. He knows that, with a General Election due, he will get the support of both major parties. Whilst, for their part, the travelling public will obviously support him (solidarity with a bullied workforce will be low on the priority list of a modern ‘me-first’ society). And so, after this strike, he will be unopposed when he sets out to decimate the workforce and trample on its working conditions.

English Radicals believe that companies such as BA would be better-off being owned by their workforce rather than by global corporations who can hire hit men like Walsh to duff up the workforce and make the customers lives difficult. Furthermore, co-operative businesses would not require the presence of obnoxious Marxist-led unions, whose sole reason to exist is to bring chaos and disorder to our lives. The BA strike is a primary example of how Capitalism and Socialism cause hardship and disruption to our society, there has to be a better way of doing things.

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