One surprise of 2023 has been the appearance on TV and radio of a succession of trade union boot boys and (less frequently) girls. For those of us who are getting on a bit, this brings back uncomfortable memories of the '70's, and earlier, when these yobs ruled the roost and the Country was held hostage by their ransom demands.
Recently the top echelons of the legal professional have been making a fortune preparing reports on a succession of unions following multiple complaints of alleged misconduct ranging from bullying, sexism, racism and misogyny by the comrades right through to the sordid claim that a top official at Sir Keir Starmer's GMB paymasters raped a female Labour MP*.
When these shaven-headed mafiosi talk to the media about their "members" we are no longer sure, given the gruesome details provided by the top lawyers, whether they are talking about the poor dupes who stump up their dues for these roughs to p*ss up the wall, or to the insertion of their engorged penises into sundry orifices of their union "sisters".
Back in the day we thought we had an elected Government, but a ghastly galere ranging from the alliterative Jack Jones to the noisome Scargill attempted a putsch. Of course, many sectors of the economy were nationalised at the time giving these hoodlums the power to bring the economy to its knees (something folk should remember when hankering for a return to this mythical 'golden age').
There is a trite saying, "don't wait for your boat to come in - row out and meet it!". But socialism (and its fraternal bastard, trade unionism) is anti-growth, opposed to entrepreneurship and against freedom in all its forms. The adherents of these twin monsters are not the creators but the takers. They expect other people to take risks to create wealth but then demand a share of it like gangsters throughout the ages. They cannot operate in a global marketplace but expect taxpayers to mollycoddle them and their (often failing) industries. They want the state to provide for their every whim.
And so we come to a pathetic grunt called Rodney Bickerstaffe [1947 - 2017], the General Secretary of the Unison trade union which supposedly represented many in the public sector shirkforce. In any other walk of life this guy would have been outed as a boring non-entity, but such was his power in the bad old days that he was frequently described as a "titan" of the trade union movement [sic].
Margaret Thatcher put the likes of this oik back in their boxes. No more beer and sandwiches at 10 Downing Street but lashings of cold tongue pie. When her heir took power - and I mean Blair rather than Major - he too was unprepared to cede power back to the block-voting mob. Indeed, he took steps to reduce union power within his own Party and saved the nation from another nightmare on Great Russell Street [home of the Trade Union Congress, m'lud].
Of course, this came as something of a shock to Bickerstaffe and Co., who anticipated a seat back at the high table after the wilderness years. But at the Labour Party Conference in 1998, a year after Blair's landslide election victory, this supposed "shining wit" showed his true colours as a whining sh*t, pleading to be thrown morsels of influence. He begged Gordon Brown (supposedly Blair's Iron Chancellor who turned out to be a leaking galvanised bucket):
"Don't just give us a vision of the promised land, give us a place in it."
This cipher managed to use the word "give" twice in a single sentence. And that is the word which defines socialism. The left cannot build a block of public lavatories let alone a New Jerusalem. It cannot motivate its adherents to provide the promised land for themselves and their families, but demands that it is "given" to them by the state. Rodney didn't even want folk to struggle onto the mountaintop to see this earthly paradise, but believed that leftists were simply entitled to enjoy its plentiful fruits: "give us a place in it".
The left anticipates another Labour landslide next year and is gearing-up to expand trade unionism and increase its power to dominate (and wreck) the UK economy. Does Sir Woodenarse have the strength of Blair to face down the racketeers (his financial backers)? I somehow doubt it and seem to see the River Thames foaming with much sh*t.
[Did you know that UK taxpayers have to PAY the wages of many union reps under an old scam called "Facility Time". This needs to be stopped asap - contact your MP today!]
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