and finally...


Why I was ashamed to be a trade unionist


Demands by strikers lack ambition, says Chris Proctor W


hen all those strikes were going on at the end of last year, I was ashamed to be a trade unionist.


That is a hard thing for me to write.


For one thing, I’m never sure if the ‘trade’ is singular or plural. I have my trade but I’m in favour of unionism as a broader concept. So it might be ‘trades’. Anyway, I’m disgusted, and


bordering on enraged. You see, I spent most Saturdays of my


youth making a disturbance in central London. Marching side by side (if there were as many as two of us), we roared slogans at surprised tourists. Favourite was the call-and-response ditty: “What do we want?” “Everything.” “When do we want it?” “Now.” Those were aspirations a person could support with enthusiasm. We’re not taking any crumbs from the table. Oh, no. We were after the cake. And the bakery. Which is where the shame comes in – from comparing these lofty ideals with the wimpish demands of the strikers of 2022. What were their demands? Their rallying cry? Their objectives? Nothing. They weren’t asking for an


improvement in their standard of living. Not even a bit. They were happy to tread water, matching wages with inflation. Yes, they said, we don’t want more. We’d just like the same. The same, for god’s sake! How


terribly embarrassing. We could be mistaken for Conservatives with this kind of aspiration. And, incredibly, faced with this


no-improvement demand, employers were outraged and refused.


“You say you want nothing?” “That is our claim, yes.” “Well you can’t have it.” Union leader Campbell Christie once told me about when, during an international conference, he was sharing a room with an armed fugitive Panamanian liberationist who spent hours chronicling the struggles of his homeland. Campbell squirmed. His union wanted war service to count in full for pension calculations for senior civil servants. I know how he felt. His roommate


sought national liberation; he only wanted a tenner a month. It didn’t feel he was being sufficiently ambitious. Well, it was ambitious compared with


the strikers’ demands before Christmas. Without insisting on pay decreases, we couldn’t have asked for less. On the positive side, this appeared


achievable – and could have even chalked up an unlikely victory for the TUC, who could, with a bit of luck, have got it backdated. My shame led to outrage when the


smug rich started lecturing nurses about wage levels. Cabinet minister Oliver Dowden says £30K is quite enough for healthcare workers, while he pockets £70K for being chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster on top of his £85K plus staff and vast expenses for being an MP. And Mishal Husain can talk down to


nurses as she trousers £275,000 for helping present Radio 4’s Today programme. And don’t get me started about Rishi Sunak, who has an income even Rebekah Vardy couldn’t spend. I was almost lured into liking Sunak


when I thought he was supporting the strikers. He piped up with, “It is my duty to take action to protect the lives and livelihoods of the British public.”


“ ”


Excellent, I thought. Top man. But then it emerged Sunak believes that if you carry a union card, you cease to be a member of the public. You become more alien than a Ridley Scott film. So ‘the public’ actually means ‘anyone who lives here who I like’. That doesn’t include you. It was also remarkable how quickly – and radically – our national media changed its mind. The Daily Mail once led the applause for ‘ambulance driver Covid heroes’ who risked all to save others. paladins, every one. Fast forward to strike threats. Ambulance drivers have become ‘contemptible’. They ‘use the lives of sick patients as a bargaining chip in pay negotiations’; they are the sort who refuse ‘life-saving cover’. Conducting this U-turn was difficult enough for our industry without an accompanying upsurge in demand for adjectives. This came about because editors generally believe that you mustn’t repeat yourself (too) often. So, if ambulance workers are


The Daily Mail led the applause for ‘ambulance driver Covid heroes’. Fast forward to the strike threats and they have become ‘contemptible’


‘contemptible’, rail workers will have to be something else. ‘Odious’, maybe. But then what about nurses? They’d be upset to be left out. ‘Callous’ proved popular. Driving examiners were merely ‘bigots’. But this still left words needed to cover postal workers, teachers, bus drivers, Border Force officers, highway workers and baggage handlers. The search continues. In the interim, I remain ashamed at


the lack of ambition of strike claims. As the government and the media are going to label us all as lunatic crypto- revolutionists whatever we do, why not stick to the ‘everything/now’ formula? In fact, I’m in favour of revising the time span for delivery to ‘last week’.


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